WRAY-TV was a television station broadcasting on channel 52 in

Princeton, Indiana Princeton is the largest city in and the county seat of Patoka Township, Gibson County, Indiana, United States. The population was 8,301 at the 2020 United States Census, and it is part of the greater Evansville, Indiana, Metropolitan Area. Hi ...

, United States. The station was owned and operated alongside radio station WRAY (1250 AM). It broadcast regular programming for just seven months, from December 1953 to July 1954, but broadcast one day a year through 1960 to carry a

March of Dimes March of Dimes is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies. The organization was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, to comba ...

telethon.

History

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) granted the application of the Princeton Broadcasting Corporation, owner of WRAY, to build a television station on Princeton's assigned channel 52 on March 12, 1953. WRAY announced that it would use as much of the existing facilities and personnel as it could, expanding its building on Broadway Street to house the new operation. The facility was designed with a north–south directional pattern, to beam a signal toward

Vincennes Vincennes (, ) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is next to but does not include the Château de Vincennes and Bois de Vincennes, which are attached ...

and

Evansville Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in S ...

. Program features of the independent station, which began broadcasting December 11, included local news, wrestling, and the "Bar 52 Theatre" each afternoon. On July 15, 1954, it was announced that the station would go off air until September 11 to carry out a financial reorganization, citing a lack of advertising revenue. Unlike many UHF stations that were struggling against superior VHF competition, WRAY-TV was far from the nearest VHF outlet, at

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 ...

—more than away—but it was competing with the two UHF stations in the Evansville market, at a time when the market could not support three outlets. The channel 52 facility, however, would not remain completely dormant. While it was fully operational, the station aired its first

telethon. Even though WRAY-TV had gone silent, the underlying permit was still active, and with the support of station and March of Dimes officials and the blessing of the FCC, the station began broadcasting for 30 hours a year, just to air the telethon. Raising thousands of dollars each year, the telethon featured a variety of dignitaries, attractions, and famous personalities, including Princeton native

Gil Hodges Gilbert Ray Hodges (''né'' Hodge; April 4, 1924 – April 2, 1972) was an American first baseman and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB) who played most of his 18-year career for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers. He was widely regarded as t ...

. The first telethon ran 18 hours. By 1960, the last year, more than 1,000 people appeared before the station's cameras; hundreds flocked to the radio and television studio, and the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

was called out to handle the crowds for the 30-hour event. In late 1960,

Vincennes University Vincennes University (VU) is a public college with its main campus in Vincennes, Indiana. Founded in 1801 as Jefferson Academy, VU is the oldest public institution of higher learning in Indiana. VU was chartered in 1806 as the Indiana Territo ...

purchased the channel 52 equipment and filed to have the allocation moved north to Vincennes so that equipment did not need to be modified to work on channel 44, which had been assigned to that town. Vincennes applied for a television station on channel 52 in 1964, but successive reallocations by the FCC meant that WVUT-TV, the university's station, would broadcast on channel 22 instead. Channel 52 in Evansville would later be re-issued to a now defunct television station that signed-on in 1991 by the call letters W52AZ.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wray-Tv Indiana Television channels and stations established in 1953 Television channels and stations disestablished in 1954 Defunct television stations in the United States RAY-TV Princeton, Indiana 1953 establishments in Indiana 1954 disestablishments in Indiana RAY-TV