KYW/WPTZ/WTAM/etc (was Re: Rex Trailer on WCAP)

[Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com>]

>He came to Boston by accident when Westinghouse sold the former WPTZ in
>Philly and offered Rex either WBZ or KYW Cleveland. Westinghouse would
>later swap KYW with NBC and move back to Philadelphia but who did they
>sell WPTZ to in the first place.

Oh dear...THIS whole story again! :-)

In the briefest of nutshells: in 1956, NBC came to Westinghouse with a 
"deal they couldn't refuse." NBC allegedly told Westinghouse
it wanted to trade WTAM/WNBK Cleveland (which NBC owned) for KYW/WPTZ 
Philadelphia (which Westinghouse owned, having
bought WPTZ from Philco a few years earlier). If NBC didn't agree to make 
the deal, the story went, then WPTZ would lose its NBC
affiliation. Philly was then the number four market, NBC was the number one 
network, and if NBC were to defect to, say, WFIL-TV,
the value of WPTZ would drop immeasurably. (There may have been further 
threats of losing NBC affiliation at WBZ as well; I'm not
clear on that. At the time, Westinghouse's TV portfolio was made up of 
WBZ-TV, WPTZ and KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, which
Westinghouse had just purchased from DuMont in 1955. KDKA-TV was then and 
would remain for another year the only VHF
commercial station in Pittsburgh, so perhaps that gave Westinghouse a 
little bit of useful leverage.)

In any case, Westinghouse went along with the deal, trading away 1060 and 
channel 3 in Philadelphia for NBC's WTAM (1100),
WTAM-FM (105.7) and WNBK (3) in Cleveland and a small amount of cash, 
certainly less than the Philly stations were worth. The
KYW calls moved with the deal, so Cleveland became KYW AM-FM-TV and Philly 
became WRCV AM-TV.

The FCC began investigating that deal, as well as another in which NBC was 
to buy WNAC AM-FM-TV in Boston from RKO (that
was never consummated, of course), and the eventual ruling was that NBC had 
used the threat of losing affiliation in an improperly
coercive manner. In 1965, the trade was reversed (ultimately to great 
financial advantage for Westinghouse); the KYW calls returned
to Philadelphia on 1060 and now on channel 3 as well, with Cleveland 
becoming WKYC AM-FM-TV (retaining the "KY" identity that
had become entrenched on AM1100 there in the meantime.) Those stations were 
eventually sold off, with 1100 becoming WWWE and
then returning to WTAM, 105.7 becoming WMJI and 3 staying WKYC, albeit now 
under Gannett ownership (I think NBC may still
have a minority interest in it.)

Many years and regulatory trends later, when Westinghouse swallowed CBS, 
NBC would finally get its Philly O&O. Since
Westinghouse and CBS both owned Philadelphia TVs and Westinghouse wanted to 
keep KYW-TV, CBS traded WCAU-TV 10, its
longtime Philly O&O, to NBC in exchange for a better channel in Miami and 
two stations in Salt Lake City and Denver. And with
the former WFIL-TV, now WPVI, having been eaten by Cap Cities in the 
eighties, which in turn acquired ABC, Philadelphia in
1995 became a three O&O town for the first time in its long TV history.

s