Re: Channel 7 history

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:28:01 -0700 (PDT), Peter George <radiojunkie3@yahoo.com> said:

>      True. The actual WNAC-TV license was cancelled
> after RKO General was deemed unfit to hold a license.
> However the station you are currently watching is the
> same station that came to the air in 1948 on Channel
> 7. Only the call-letters (twice) and the licensees
> have changed.

According to the legal record, WNEV was a new license, as I noted,
granted subsequent to an application (by the antecedents of NE-TV)
which had been filed in the early 1970s.  Unlike the Herald-Traveler
in 1972, RKO was willing to sell the property which had been used to
operate WNAC-TV.  However, even the FCC records seem to be a bit at
odds on the subject, so I'm not surprised that things are confused.  I
think that, in the conversion of the FCC database to the new system,
the distinction I'm trying to make got even more muddied.

According to the FCC database, an application for assignment of the
channel 7 license was filed on August 30, 1978, and dismissed on
January 23, 1981 (which jibes with my recollection of the appeals
court decision).  The next application in the FCC record is an
application for a license to cover filed on May 24, 1982, and granted
two days later.  (While I was looking over the FCC data I noted that
the current WHDH has requested an STA for its digital TV to operate at
reduced power.)

For the full text of the appeals court ruling, which is also a great
reference to the sordid history of the whole RKO General affair, see
<http://www.cmcnyls.edu/public/USCASES/RKO.htm>, which is also linked
from the Archives' profile of channel 7.  I do not know whether
General Tire appealed to the Supreme Court, but if they did I can't
find it in LII's Supreme Court collection (which may not go back far
enough to be sure) and in any case it seems unlikely that a case
decided in late 1981 could have been argued and decided by May 1982,
so I believe that the appeals court had the final say.

-GAWollman