Connecticut TV

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

Steve Low wrote:
>
>Is my memory failing, or was it channel 30 that launched the controversial
>experimental pay TV service developed by Zenith, I believe? What was the
>year(s) and what was that service called? I just can't remember.

        That was Ch. 18. Ch. 30 has been the NBC affiliate since it
started. Conn. Public TV ran a documentary a few weeks ago about the early
days of Conn. TV that included an interview with Charles Osgood, who was
the young manager of Ch. 18 in its pay-TV incarnation. He told of how one
reason it failed is the system used was very primitive--a box on the
customer's TV kept track mechanically of the amount of viewing. Each month,
the customer was supposed to cause the box to print out a bill and send in
the payment. Lots of customers just didn't.


Howard Glazer wrote:

>Bridgeport's Channel 43 is still around, still airing Home Shopping
>Network programming. Remember its original premise, that of a Jewish
>cultural station? The recession certainly changed its outlook, didn't
>it?

        Ch. 43 actually began at the very beginning of UHF TV in the '50s
as WICC-TV, co-owned with the radio station. It was intended to be an
independent, full-service station. (It was too close to NYC to get an
affiliation.) The public TV documentary had a clip of the actor Bob Crane
(Hogan's Heroes) being a TV host on Ch. 43. He was there because he started
in radio and was with WICC  (morning guy, I think). The documentary was
vague about when its first incarnation met its demise, but I gathered that
it was dark for some period of years. It had a a particularly hard time as
a UHF in the otherwise all-VHF NYC-New Haven area, where no one bothered to
get those UHF set-top converters.

------------------------------