WBKZ-TV
| Battle Creek, Michigan United States | |
|---|---|
| Channels | Analog: 64 (UHF) |
| Branding | WBKZ 64 |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations | Independent |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | WBKZ Foundation (WBKZ Foundation) |
| History | |
| First air date | May 10, 1953 |
| Technical information | |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Links | |
| Public license information | Profile LMS |
WBZK-TV (channel 20) is an independent television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned by the WBKZ Foundation.
History
The WBKZ-TV story actually began during the "freeze" on television while the FCC determined UHF's role in it, and by necessity has to continue for two decades beyond its demise. The reason? Channel 64 only represented the first attempt at bringing video to Battle Creek that was not dependent on adjacent market stations (and even then, the station that ultimately survived was dependent on its network service coming from an out-of-market VHF that had tried mightily to keep it from going on the air).
In 1951, John L. Booth (Booth Radio and Television Stations, which owned radio stations WJLB/1400 & 97.9 Detroit, WBBC/1330 Flint and WSGW/790 Saginaw) submitted proposals during comments on the Sixth Report and Order to add channels 6 and 9 in Detroit (making a total of five when added to 2, 4 and 7), but they proved unfeasible; one problem was that channel 9 was -- and still is -- allocated across the border in Windsor ON. After the freeze on new applications was lifted (and with his dream of a VHF station in Detroit killed) Booth filed for the channel 64 allocation in Battle Creek as part of a group of five applications in Michigan, which also included channel 62 in Detroit, channel 23 in Grand Rapids, channel 12 in Flint and channel 54 in Lansing. They withdrew the Flint application in September when they filed for channel 51 in Saginaw (they had announced their intent to file for channel 5 in nearby Bay City but opted not to, for reasons never made public). Almost simultaneously, Michigan Broadcasting, which owned WBCK/930, filed for the other Battle Creek allocation of channel 58. The station was very locally oriented. Some of the local shows included What's Cooking, a cooking show sponsored by Appalachian Electric Power; The Lions Club, a children's show; and Jukebax.
The construction permits for channels 58 and 64 were issued within one month of each other -- October 29 for Booth and November 19 for Michigan Broadcasting -- as was a third CP, for channel 36 in Kalamazoo, on November 26. Booth was to operate from the former WELL-FM/96.1 (which had recently gone silent) site on U.S. 12 near the Calhoun-Kalamazoo county line and Michigan co-locating its studios with its AM station downtown and transmitter nine miles west of the city at a site near Augusta described as "one of the highest points between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo". By the time his competitor's CP was issued, Booth had chosen WBKZ-TV as call letters, and almost immediately was challenged by WBCK, which petitioned the FCC to rescind the assignment to avoid "confusion" between the two stations. Channel 64 argued successfully in January that its call had been issued first and had been "widely publicized" (an argument that apparently disregarded the fact that WBCK had been used by the AM station since 1948). Meanwhile, in December Battle Creek Enquirer columnist Art Middleton wrote a column on what viewers would need to do to receive the two new UHF stations, discussing tuner strips, converters and antennas with "my well-informed friend" G.E. Murphy of the local Electronic Supply Co. In what he likely considered a clever put-down of television in general, Middleton concluded with the paragraph:
Now on a Wednesday night you can switch to channel 58 and pick up Arthur Godfrey or turn to channel 64 and see Arthur Godfrey or go back to 3, 6 or 7 and get Arthur Godfrey.
The channels referenced were VHF network affiliates in Kalamazoo (WKZO-TV), Lansing (WJIM-TV) and Grand Rapids (WOOD-TV, which would move to channel 8 about a year later). As often happened in the early years of post-freeze stations going on the air, the Enquirer and News published a separate 18-page section in their joint Sunday edition on May 10 talking about the new station, the ones in the pipeline, and what was needed to receive UHF. Their section, like most others of its day, was more intended as an advertising promotion, carrying ads from virtually every radio-TV dealer in the area promoting their manufacturer's set as superior, an ad from the Alliance Manufacturing Company in nearby Ohio promoting their "Tenna-Rotor" and declaring stationary aerials "obsolete", and a full-page ad from RCA Victor devoted to the claim that since channel 64 had chosen RCA transmitting equipment then their sets would "receive them best". This was in addition to the newspaper's front page being given over entirely to the station's scheduled start. One week earlier, the station had taken out a large ad announcing its start dates for both test pattern and programming, promoting its affiliation with ABC. (In the excitement, one could forgive WBKZ-TV misstating that their new network was merging with Paramount Pictures rather than with the spun-off United Paramount Theaters division.)
After its first week of operation with a 4½ hour daily schedule of filmed and in-studio programming -- the microwave hookup from ABC was still under construction -- WBKZ-TV said it was receiving "excellent" test reception reports from a 50-mile radius and local TV dealers indicated that "equipment changes" would correct the few exceptions. The schedule at that point consisted of such shows as Twin-City Theater, Your Legislature Reports, Rootie Kazootie, V&E Showcase (a local talent show titled after the aluminum siding company that sponsored it) and the occasional syndicated offering such as Superman, Smilin' Ed's Gang and Wild Bill Hickok. Still pre-network as the weeks turned into months, it wasn't until late August that a handful of ABC shows -- Super Circus, A Date With Judy, You Asked For It, Sky King, Space Patrol and Bishop Fulton Sheen -- began appearing on the channel 64 schedule via kinescope ... known to be kinnies from the testimony John L. Booth subsequently gave during the Senate UHF hearings which confirmed this. (We also know from newspaper articles that AT&T did not begin microwave relay service to Battle Creek-Kalamazoo until January 1, 1954 and that Booth intended to construct its own private relay to Lansing instead; also, the airing of the aforementioned A Date With Judy the evening of Wednesday, October 7, 1953 was one week to the day after its last network airing ... a near-dead giveaway of a delayed airing by film.) One program that most certainly arrived via kinnie was CBS' Revlon Mirror Theater, which aired live performances on the network on Saturday nights but aired in Battle Creek on Wednesday evenings.
There are those who have asked, if ABC was going to send kinescopes to WBKZ-TV until the real-time AT&T link was in place, why did they leave their new affiliate to operate for more than three months without sending any? While there is nothing in the published accounts of channel 64's early days that answers the question, the best guess is that poor timing was to blame; the station signed on just as the regular season was giving way to summer reruns, and ABC -- at that time still running last among the three networks remaining as DuMont gradually faded away -- likely couldn't justify the expense of sending kinnies without paying sponsors' advertisements being included. In any event, once the kinnies started arriving, a review of the published listings showed WBKZ-TV's ran ABC programs as much "in pattern" as their operating schedule allowed, perhaps anticipating eventual live interconnection and wanting that to not disrupt viewership patterns. Nevertheless, whether by their decision or the network's, channel 64 apparently received far less than the full network schedule: Of their 30 hours per week of on-air time the first week of October 1953, only 5½ were filled with network shows. Another check of published listings for the first week of April, just before they went dark (and therefore serves as an indication of what their maximum carriage was) showed just under ten hours of ABC shows during a 48-hour broadcast week. Things did not go well for Booth in the long run as channel 64 went dark exactly four weeks shy of its one-year anniversary, on April 23, 1954. The official reason given to the FCC was that Booth wanted to seek "higher power and a new antenna". At the time, they cited losses of $10,000 per month. At the Senate UHF hearings that year, John L. Booth asked for complete use of VHF for all by reducing the Grade B service area of VHF stations, beam tilting, and reduction of power, saying that not doing so "means the death of UHF and the extension of the clear channel psychosis." WBCK-TV used the hearing as an excuse to halt construction on a replacement tower at its transmitter site; it was already months behind their original schedule when the first tower was brought down on the afternoon of November 30, 1953 in a private aircraft collision (it had taken until March to repair the studio and transmitter building). Subsequently, Michigan Broadcasting attempted to purchase the facilities of WBKZ-TV in an attempt to get "instant viewership" from viewers that had channel 64 tuning strips installed in their sets. Booth held off on the deal pending a decision for channel 10 in Parma, which they had applied for after first trying to have that channel moved to a community 100 miles away, where it would not be in competition with channel 64. (Channel 10 ended up, five years later, being the only share-time operation ever split between commercial and educational operation.) The idea of selling WBKZ-TV to WBCK-TV apparently never got beyond discussions, and the channel 64 CP was deleted by the FCC on October 27, 1954. With no other options left, Michigan Broadcasting subsequently tried for close to another year to complete construction of channel 58 and get on the air before surrendering their CP on September 2, 1955. For the next ten years, television in Battle Creek remained available only by the use of tall antennas with rotors to receive the aforementioned VHF stations in Kalamazoo, Lansing and Grand Rapids, where WZZM-TV/13 joined WOOD-TV on the dial on November 1, 1962. Like WBKZ-TV, it was an ABC affiliate, and was owned by West Michigan Telecasters, which also owned WZZM-FM/95.7.
