WKLO-TV was a UHF

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

, United States, that operated from October 18, 1953, to April 20, 1954.

History

Radio station WKLO had applied for a television station construction permit in 1947, shortly before the

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(FCC) imposed a four-year freeze on the grant of new stations. The application specified channel 13, but when the freeze ended, Louisville wound up with just two VHF assignments, forcing WKLO to seek UHF channel 21 for its station. WKLO's owner, the Mid-America Broadcasting Company, was approved for the permit on November 26, 1952. After initially proposing a tower in downtown Louisville, WKLO opted to build instead at the Floyds Knobs site in

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, near a mast then being built by

WAVE-TV WAVE (channel 3) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Television. The station's studios are located on South Floyd Street in downtown Louisville, and its transmitter is located in ...

. Like the radio station, it was aligned with

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. Some

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programs were also seen. The first test pattern went out on September 7, 1953, but the first programs were broadcast on October 18. Channel 21 suffered from the third—and UHF—station in a two-VHF market with insufficient coverage and a poor conversion rate. Because not all televisions could receive UHF signals without converters or a tuning strip—and only some 70,000 to 80,000 sets had been converted out of a total of 330,000—few advertisers were willing to purchase commercial time. As a result, WKLO-TV ceased broadcasting on April 20, 1954. Mid-America Broadcasting retained the construction permit and began years of campaigning to get a third VHF channel moved to Louisville for its use, first appealing for channel 13 to be reassigned from

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and possibly

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. In 1956, Mid-America maneuvered to try and relocate channel 7 from

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, but it was unsuccessful in preventing

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from starting up there, despite a favorable FCC ruling in 1958. By this time, the call letters on the permit had changed from WKLO-TV to WEZI. In 1964, the FCC asked Mid-America to activate WEZI again or risk losing the permit. Mid-America sold the permit to South Central Broadcasting, which owned television station

WTVK WXCW (channel 46) television station licensed to Naples, Florida, United States, serving Southwest Florida as an affiliate of The CW. It is locally owned by Sun Broadcasting alongside two low-power stations: Univision affiliate WUVF-LD (channel ...

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, as well as radio stations in Evansville, in 1965. With

WLKY WLKY (channel 32) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with CBS. The station is owned by Hearst Television, and maintains studios on Mellwood Avenue (near I-71) on Louisville's east side; its transmitter is ...

on the air since 1961 as Kentuckiana's third commercial station, South Central proposed to operate channel 21 as either an independent or an affiliate of a fourth network being considered. It also slated a tower at Floyds Knobs, which the

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declined, citing an existing height limit of . However, WEZI was never rebuilt. In 1977,

WDRB WDRB (channel 41) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Block Communications alongside Salem, Indiana–licensed dual CW/ MyNetworkTV affiliate WBKI (channel 58). Both ...

(channel 41) proposed a move to channel 21. However, Word Broadcasting Network also filed for channel 21. In 1981, an administrative law judge denied the WDRB application and preferred the competing bid from the Word Broadcasting Network, only for the FCC review board to overturn the decision. However, when WDRB was sold in 1983, the new owners dropped the channel 21 proposal, which cleared the way for WBNA to begin in 1986.

References

External links

Print ad for WKLO-TV
{{Louisville TV KLO-TV Defunct mass media in Louisville, Kentucky Defunct television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1953 1953 establishments in Kentucky Television channels and stations disestablished in 1954 1954 disestablishments in Kentucky