Re: 1939...

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

>David HARRIS WROTE:
<snip>
>Mr. Waters: "I know that until two years ago CBS never gave an
>affiliation in New Haven, 80 miles from Manhattan, to protect the
>territory for WCBS."
>Apparently they did things differently in the '30s...Bridgeport is a lot
>closer to Manhattan than New Haven is, yet WICC was a Columbia station
>until sometime in 1937 when it turned Blue.
<snip>

       Well,  I thought I knew. I have station lists for scattered years
and the 1936 list shows WICC as CBS. But the 1931 list shows it as
independent and the 1942 list shows it as Mutual. By 1942, it was owned by
the Yankee Network.
        The story I was told by Mike Collins, who's very knowledgeable
about Conn. broadcasting history, was that around 1930, WDRC, then in New
Haven, wanted a CBS affiliation. The network refused and the station moved
to Hartford because it would get the affiliation there. So it did, and so
it was, until it flipped to top 40 and dropped the network in the late
1950s. It's also a fact that there was no CBS affiliate in New Haven until
WQUN/Hamden picked it up about two years ago. WATR/Waterbury has been a
long-time CBS station, but has no coverage of the shoreline area,
especially at night.

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