Re: WTIC/WFSB

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

>Joe Ross wrote:
>The point was that, in those days, stations that were not under common
>ownership couldn't have the same base call letters.  So when channel 3 was
>no longer owned by the owners of WTIC radio, it couldn't be WTIC-TV.
>
>That is no longer the case today.  So, as someone pointed out, the present
>WTIC-TV is not currently co-owned with WTIC radio.
<snip>

        I believe that in the mid-'70s when Travelers Insurance sold
channel 3 to Post-Newsweek and the radio stations to someone else, the TV
station may been sold first, although both radio and TV had been put up for
sale. Under the rules then, that meant the new owners had to get new calls
for the TV. But I believe Travelers had said it intended to make
arrangements so that the heritage calls stayed with the radio one way or
another, as they were considered a valuable bit of the radio franchise.
        I'm hazy on the history of how channel 61 in Hartford got to use
WTIC-TV when it signed on back in the '80s. But, I believe that the rules
at that time were not the same as now, although they had moved away from
the earlier, stricter rules that regulated the use of calls in the
different broadcast services. When channel 61 was founded, it had some
substantial common ownership with WTIC (AM) and WTIC-FM, through Arnold
Chase and his family. The ownership may not have been identical, however,
and it was through different corporations, I believe. In any event, I
believe it may have been reported at the time that the radio company gave
the permission that the FCC required to the TV company so it could use the
calls, but actually that was a technicality because of the ownership
overlap.

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