analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
channel 14, was an
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
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 ...
licensed
A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...
to
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, United States, which operated from March 5, 1963, to February 12, 1972. It was the first television station in the United States to orient its entire programming to an
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
audience, along the lines of co-owned WOOK radio. Mounting license troubles for the United Broadcasting station group, economic difficulties faced by independent and UHF stations, and an inability to upgrade channel 14's facilities to be competitive in the market led to the closure of WFAN-TV on February 12, 1972.
History
The road to air
In 1953, Richard Eaton's United Broadcasting Company, owners of WOOK AM,
WFAN
WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while ...
FM and Rockville-based WINX among other outlets in the mid-Atlantic states, filed for television channels 18 in Baltimore and 50 in Washington. With no applications pending for channel 14 at
Annapolis, Maryland
Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...
, Eaton petitioned the FCC to move the channel 14 allotment to Washington, which it did in 1955; Eaton also acquired channel 14 equipment at auction from the bankrupt KACY of
Festus, Missouri
Festus is a city situated in Jefferson County, Missouri, United States, and is also a suburb of St. Louis. It had a population of 12,706 individuals as of the 2020 census. Festus and its adjacent neighbor Crystal City are often collectively know ...
.
In February, Eaton announced that WOOK-TV would debut with programming in the evenings only and would not feature a network affiliation or a schedule of films; in addition, Eaton, planned to build out the Baltimore construction permit as a semi-satellite of WOOK-TV. The station signed jazz musician
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles M ...
as its musical director. WOOK-TV would launch from WOOK radio's studio facility in the Chillum Castle Manor subdivision, on 1st Place, NE.
Initially planned to debut in September 1962, WOOK-TV's start was delayed due to technical challenges. It missed another launch date, in February, in part due to equipment issues and also because it had a problem to sort out in the Black community. Leaders in the
Urban League
The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...
and the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
worried that the station would not represent the community well, that WOOK-TV would depict African Americans "in the tap-dancing, shouting type of program", much as in radio; Eaton pledged not to program "distasteful" shows on the new station. The station finally debuted on March 6, 1963. It was the District's second UHF television station, after public
WETA-TV
WETA-TV (channel 26) is the primary PBS member television station in Washington, D.C. Owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, it is a sister station to NPR member WETA (90.9 FM). The two outlets share studios ...
(channel 26), which had gone on the air in 1961. Some 90,000 to 100,000 UHF converters were in place when channel 14 signed on.
Initial programming
At the outset, channel 14's programming included a number of Black-hosted series. The station aired two daily newscasts, as well as the interview show ''Washington Speaks'' and several syndicated shows aimed at an African American audience. However, going against Eaton's promise of a year earlier, WOOK-TV filled its remaining hours with films, primarily pre-1945 fare. It also produced some general-audience entertainment programs, including a high school quiz show, children's program ''Aunt Mary's Birthday Party'', and a talent show. Musical director Hampton produced at WOOK a music show that was syndicated to other stations. ''The Precola DeVore Show'', covering fashion and beauty topics, was hosted by Precola DeVore, who became one of the first black women business owners in Washington when she founded a charm school in 1953; she was nationally recognized for helping to break the color barrier in modeling.
Channel 14's connection with WOOK radio also had its advantages. Six days a week, WOOK disc jockey Bob King hosted ''Teenarama Dance Party'', an in-studio dance show with a black teenage audience. Over a seven-year run on the air (though King left in a dispute with management in 1968), Teenarama hosted rising stars and famous musicians including
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans; October 3, 1941) is an American rock and roll singer and dancer. He is widely known for popularizing many dance styles, including The Twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard & The Midnighte ...
,
Dee Dee Sharp
Dee Dee Sharp (born Dione LaRue; September 9, 1945, in Philadelphia) is an American R&B singer, who began her career recording as a backing vocalist in 1961.
Career
Although Sharp had been playing the piano from an early age and directed chur ...
and
Brook Benton
Benjamin Franklin Peay (September 19, 1931 – April 9, 1988), better known as Brook Benton, was an American singer and songwriter who was popular with rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop music audiences during the late 1950s and early 1960 ...
, as well as musical talent in town to play the
Howard Theatre
The Howard Theatre is a historic theater, located at 620 T Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. Opened in 1910, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
In its heyday, the theater was known for catering to an African- ...
. ''Teenarama Dance Party'' would later be considered the most important program in WOOK-TV/WFAN-TV's broadcast history.
WOOK-TV also produced for local and national advertisers commercials for its target market. The station's production department counted among its clients
Budweiser
Budweiser () is an American-style pale lager, part of AB InBev. Introduced in 1876 by Carl Conrad & Co. of St. Louis, Missouri, Budweiser has become a large selling beer company in the United States.
''Budweiser'' may also refer to an unrela ...
,
Safeway
Safeway is an American supermarket chain founded by Marion Barton Skaggs in April 1915 in American Falls, Idaho. The chain provides grocery items, food and general merchandise and features a variety of specialty departments, such as bakery, d ...
,
Sinclair Oil
Sinclair Oil Corporation was an American petroleum corporation, founded by Harry F. Sinclair on May 1, 1916, the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation combined, amalgamated, the assets of 11 small petroleum companies. Originally a New York cor ...
, Newport cigarettes and Speed Queen washers and dryers.
On March 1, 1967, the Baltimore station, with the call letters
WMET-TV
WMET-TV was a television station operating on channel 24 in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1967 to 1972. It was owned by the United Broadcasting Company and served as a semi-satellite of its WOOK-TV, WOOK-TV/WFAN-TV in Washington, D.C., with some loca ...
and having been moved to channel 24 in a 1961 allocation revision, began telecasting, with plans to carry 80 percent of WOOK-TV's programming. An attempted 1971 sale of WMET-TV to the
Christian Broadcasting Network
The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is an American Christian media production and distribution organization. Founded in 1960 by Pat Robertson, it produces the long-running TV series ''The 700 Club'', co-produces the ongoing ''Superbook'' an ...
never closed, and channel 24 folded on January 14, 1972.
A time of change
In 1967, WOOK's programming began to shift to include more local news and public affairs content. This change would allow the station to spend less on films, where it had found itself uncompetitive with the VHF stations in purchasing the rights to attractive motion pictures. That year, it added two and a half hours a day of local and
United Press International
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ...
news hosted by Tex Gathings and a new talk show, ''Controversy'', hosted by Dennis Richards. ''Controversy'' went through several host changes in its early months on air, while the new news show met with poor reception because of the small size of the WOOK-TV news department. Also in 1967, WMET-TV (moved to channel 24 in an allocation revision six years earlier), the Baltimore station, finally began broadcasting. Early the next year, Channel 14 also added weekly hours in Italian and Spanish, and on February 14, it changed call letters from WOOK-TV to WFAN-TV, matching Eaton's other Washington station, Spanish-language FM outlet
WFAN
WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while ...
100.3.
More than the programming and call letters was changing at the newly renamed WFAN-TV in 1968. John Panagos, the station's general manager and vice president of United, was replaced with E. Carlton "Bud" Myers; Bob King left, leaving ''Teenarama Dance Party'' to rotate hosts until it ended in 1970; and an attempt to unionize led to a walkout at the end of August.
License challenge
In 1965, even as 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 ...
gave short-term renewals to a number of Eaton-owned outlets, WOOK-TV was one of three that received a full-term renewal of its license. In 1966, United's AM and TV stations in Washington came in for competition when two groups vied to take them over: Washington Community Broadcasting Company, led by journalist Drew Pearson and which also sought to take over the radio station, and Washington Civic Television, whose principals included
WRC-TV
WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television se ...
Lewis Shollenberger
Lewis Winnbert Shollenberger (October 12, 1916 – March 15, 1994) was a correspondent for United Press, CBS, and ABC in Washington, D.C. from 1940 to 1963. He covered the White House and the U.S. Senate as well as coordinated network coverage of ...
, former head of Radio Liberty in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
.
At the next renewal cycle, in 1969, the FCC designated Washington Community's challenges alongside WOOK's and WFAN-TV's license renewals for hearing. Washington Community had become the only challenger for channel 14 when Washington Civic Television dropped out and merged with it, bringing Truman-era Assistant Attorney General
Thurman Arnold
Thurman Wesley Arnold (June 2, 1891 – November 7, 1969) was an American lawyer best known for his trust-busting campaign as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Department of Justice ...
into its fold. It then dropped out of the television fight in 1970 after the death of Pearson the year before. (Washington Community would eventually win the 1340 frequency held by WOOK radio, with the result being the launch of
WYCB
WYCB (1340 AM) is an urban gospel station in Washington, D.C., owned by Urban One. Its studios are in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the transmitter site is in Capitol Heights, Maryland.
WYCB is the oldest gospel radio station in Washington; it wa ...
in August 1978.) United also attempted to upgrade WFAN-TV's signal, boosting its effective radiated power to 1,265 kW from a transmitter site in
Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which in ...
; however, the FCC denied the move because of overlap with WMET-TV's signal.
Closure and license deletion
On February 12, 1972, United took WFAN-TV dark, citing the company's financial condition. The February 27 edition of the ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', as well as the next day's issue of ''Broadcasting'' magazine, carried a full-page "In Memoriam" ad for WFAN-TV. The ad, taken out by Eaton, diagnosed channel 14 as being "choked to death literally because of lack of power to cover greater Washington", because of the failure of a common tower site for D.C. television stations in 1966 and the hearing-related freeze on later facility improvements, and revealed that in nearly nine years of operation, the television station had lost $1.45 million—$153,000 of that in 1971 alone. Eaton also noted competition from Washington's other independent stations—longstanding VHF independent
WTTG-TV
WTTG (channel 5) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV outlet WDCA (channel 20). WTTG and WDCA share ...
and UHF newcomer
WDCA
WDCA (channel 20), branded on-air as Fox 5 Plus, is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from MyNetworkTV. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Fox outlet WTTG (channel 5). WDCA and WTTG shar ...
—for programming and advertisers. Thirteen employees lost their jobs, while five continued to provide engineering services to the radio stations.
That November, amid calls to delete channel 14 from television use in Washington and convert it to land mobile use, United found a buyer for WFAN-TV: two Milwaukee businessmen, Robert S. Block and Marvin Fishman, who proposed operation of channel 14 on a subscription television basis and would pay $250,000 for the channel if the FCC approved their plan.
In 1973, while the hearing examiner's initial decision found against WOOK and preferred its competing application to the renewal of that station, it found United qualified to be a licensee and recommended renewal of channel 14's (unchallenged) license. United asked the FCC to keep the WFAN-TV license active while it tried to sell it, but the FCC said that because of the multiple and interrelated proceedings against Eaton that were likely to take years, that would simply take too long. The commission ordered United to put WFAN-TV and WMET-TV back on the air by July 1. The deadline was pushed back to December 1; United notified the FCC that it intended to appeal the order. On April 26, 1974, the FCC ruled that both licenses should be revoked so that new applications could be accepted for Washington's channel 14 and Baltimore's channel 24.
Channel 14 after WOOK-TV
Channel 14 remained unused by a full-power station in Washington for more than 20 years after the closure of WOOK-TV. In 1976, it was reactivated in the form of translator W14AA, relaying the Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation's
WNVT
WNVT, virtual channel 23.3 (ultra high frequency, UHF digital terrestrial television, digital channel 22), is a World Channel-network affiliate, affiliated television station city of license, licensed to Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, Unite ...
from
Annandale, Virginia
Annandale () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia.Goldvein, Virginia, too far to the south to adequately cover the Washington suburbs. CVETC attempted to have the full-powered channel 14 allocation moved to Fairfax, noting that the current transmitter at Arlington often came in the back of Northern Virginia antennas aimed toward Washington, but this request was denied. What was to become WNVC was constructed on channel 56 instead, and on its sign-on in June 1981, W14AA was no longer necessary.
Later in the year, CVETC sold W14AA to Los Cerezos Television Company. Los Cerezos (Spanish for "Cherry Trees") had established in 1980 a satellite-fed translator station on channel 56 of the
Spanish International Network
Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...
, the second such "satellator", initially authorized on an experimental basis. After the FCC gave its approval to feed translators by satellite, W14AA returned to air as the Washington affiliate of SIN (now known as
Univision
Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...
). In order to accommodate the new full-power channel 14, this station moved to channel 48 in 1989 and is today
WMDO-CD
WMDO-CD (channel 47) is a low-power, Class A television station in Washington, D.C., affiliated with LATV. It is owned by Entravision Communications alongside Silver Spring, Maryland–licensed NTD America affiliate WJAL (channel 68).
Histo ...
.
As the FCC began taking applications for a new licensee for channel 14, now licensed to
Arlington, Virginia
Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county is ...
, D.C. mayor Walter E. Washington expressed his desire that the new channel 14 be minority-owned. Overruling his initial decision, in 1984, administrative law judge Edward Kuhlmann selected the bid of Urban Telecommunications Corporation, finding that since Urban was financially qualified, its management and operations were more integrated than those of previous winner WSCT-TV. After years of extensions, the station went on the air in 1993 as WTMW, named for Urban's sole owner, Theodore M. White.