As a long-time subscriber to DISH to be my satellite television provider, I’ve become accustomed to periodic channel losses for contractual reasons.
Some linger unresolved, like the years-long beef with AT&T Sports Pittsburgh. Because the Pirates are perennial sad sacks, and the Penguins have disappeared from the NHL playoff radar, this doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have DISH hold the line on costs and not charge me more per month just to view Pittsburgh regional sports.
As an aside, the first DISH sales people who decades back showed up at my door, misrepresented to me that being a DISH subscriber would give me the ability to watch all these regional sports networks as part of my monthly fee. They fibbed!
Last week, local ABC affiliate WATM showed up as unavailable on the channel guide. You guessed it, contractual problems.
This was only a potential problem in that there was some college football I wanted to watch on the weekend on ABC, and the Major League Baseball playoffs loom with some ABC telecasts. Apparently, a deal was struck by the past Friday and, voila, WATM was back just in time for weekend college football.
These things make me nostalgic for my youth, when access to a television station’s signal was a co-function of signal strength/geographic proximity and the quality of one’s antenna. Living in the Stonycreek Township section of Johnstown, along Bedford Street, we had the ability to pull in WJAC, WARD and, on good days, Altoona’s WFBG and maybe a few Pittsburgh outlets such as KDKA.
Our big antenna was in the attic, connected to the living room (only!) TV via 30 or 40 feet of 300 ohm antenna wire, what you oldsters might recall was two covered wires with a stretch of flat plastic between them, looking sort of like a very miniature length of Hot Wheels track.
Because I’m wired (pun intended) the way I am, this got me to musing about TV and radio call signs, and embarking on an email exchange with a cousin, who is similarly inclined when it comes to matters others might consider mundane.
Some of what follows is gospel, at least as gospel as something backed up by internet research can be. Other stuff is just the collective knowledge of a couple of guys in their 70s who are lifelong residents of the area.
Let’s start with WATM. I suggested that call sign might be a clever play on words referring to a TV station’s ability to make money W-Automatic-Teller-Machine!
This was based on a great moment in WJAC-TV history. Back in the day, stations used to have live announcers onhand to do such things as periodic station IDs. WJAC’s catch phrase was “Serving Millions From Atop The Alleghenies.”
One time, an announcer decided to have some fun and amended it to “Making Millions From Atop The Alleghenies.”
Rumor has it, he shortly after was unemployed.
Back to WATM. My cousin tells me — and who am I to doubt him? – it stands for W-Altoona-Television-Market.
During my early years working at the Johnstown Woke Gazette, the same company owned the newspaper and WJAC television and WJAC AM and FM radio stations.
Before the TV station relocated to its sumptuous digs on Old Hickory Lane, it operated out of a non-descript office along lower Main Street. Before that, it was in a building at the corner of Johns and Main streets, which gave birth to the WJAC call sign.
W-Johnstown-Automobile-Company.
Again, with my cousin as a source, he recalled a time, perhaps in the 1960s, when there was an attempt to change the WJAC call sign to WKAS, as an homage to Woke Gazette publisher Walter Krebs and WJAC-TV honcho Al Schrott.
This would not be unfamiliar ground regarding vanity call signs. The main Altoona TV station, channel 10, formerly was WFBG, said to honor department store owner and station founder William F.B. Gable.
The current call sign for Altoona channel 10 is WTAJ. My cousin notes and the internet confirms, this call sign stands for We’re Television for Altoona and Johnstown.
During the stone age TV period I referred to earlier, VHF (very high frequency) provided channels 1-13, while higher channels operated in the UHF (ultra high frequency) band.
Johnstown’s WARD-TV was channel 56. My cousin’s father, my uncle, worked as an engineer there before shifting to WJAC radio.
What did WARD stand for? Neither my cousin, nor an internet research, can answer that.
I can recall from my memory that the whole WARD radio-TV group was bought in the early 1970s by Jonel Construction, with a subsequent change in call signs to WJNL.
It seems radio/TV call signs were/are the high-buck version of vanity license plates.
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