WLEV-TV (channel 51) was a

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 ...

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Bethlehem is a city in Northampton and Lehigh Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, Bethlehem had a total population of 75,781. Of this, 55,639 were in Northampton County and 19, ...

, United States. Owned by Associated Broadcasters Inc. alongside

WEST West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

, the station telecast from 1953 to 1957. It was the first station in the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

, which at one point had three local

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

outlets (a fourth was planned but never reached the air). However, the station ultimately suffered from many of the same economic problems that occurred at other early UHF television outlets, and largely due to competition from

very high frequency Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves ( radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

(VHF) stations in Philadelphia, WLEV left the air at the end of October 1957.

History

Establishment

When the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC) ended its four-year freeze on television stations in 1952 and established the UHF band for television broadcasting, the

received four channel allotments: two in

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, one in Bethlehem, and one in Easton. The commission issued a

construction permit Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...

for the Bethlehem station on October 30, 1952.

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

announced that it would ship the transmitter for the WLEV-TV facility the week of April 13, 1953. It was reported that "after many false starts" WLEV finally began broadcasting test patterns on April 21.

Operation

WLEV was, from its beginning, an

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...

affiliate and offered most, if not all, of that network's late afternoon and evening programming. The station also carried local programming (as did every other station during this era), including local high school and college sports and the occasional

Philadelphia Phillies The Philadelphia Phillies are an American professional baseball team based in Philadelphia. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) National League East, East division. Since 2004, the team's home sta ...

baseball game. The station would take to the airwaves in midafternoon, with the first scheduled show of the day typically beginning at 3 p.m. A short local newscast was aired in the 11 p.m. to midnight hour.

Closure

The lack of mandatory UHF tuners on new television sets (until 1964) made it difficult for 1950s UHF stations to thrive. In much of eastern Pennsylvania, improvements in VHF transmitter technology and power, plus the establishment of tall towers at the

Roxborough Roxborough may refer to: Places * Roxborough, Manchester, Jamaica * Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, a neighborhood * Roxborough, Trinidad and Tobago, Tobago Island, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago * Roxborough Castle, Ireland * Roxborou ...

antenna farm, spelled doom for the UHF stations in Reading and the Lehigh Valley as more viewers tuned to the more powerful—and VHF—signals of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

's network stations from which they could now get better reception (and thus better pictures) on their TV sets. October 31, 1957, marked the end of an era in Lehigh Valley television. Within 24 hours of each other, ABC affiliate WGLV in Easton and WLEV both received permission to go

dark Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lum ...

, and both did so on the same night. WLEV announced that it was planning to go dark for six months "to reappraise UHF television in the Lehigh Valley" but stayed dark beyond those six months and never returned to the airwaves. The station returned its construction permit to the FCC in 1965.

References

{{Philly TV LEV-TV LEV-TV Defunct television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1953 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1957 1953 establishments in Pennsylvania 1957 disestablishments in Pennsylvania Companies based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania