WGBX-TV and "Catch 44" (was Re: WJDW-TV 44 and some interesting trivia)

["Peter Q. George" <radiojunkie3@yahoo.com>]

WGBX-TV, Channel 44 in Boston started life on
September 25, 1967.  The original plan for 44 was to
be more than just a compliment to WGBH.  With color
becoming a BIG thing in 1965, WGBH wanted Channel 44
to be a showcase of all color programmming for the
Educational audience who were pretty much stuck with
the standard black and white telecourses (for college
credit) and In School programming, like the "21 Inch
Classroom" seen on Channel 2.  WGBX was to be more of
an alternative to the standard fare on Channel 2, and
in glorious color.  Well, it didn't quite happen that
way.  For nearly two years, Channel 44 would be mainly
a simulcast of Channel 2.  However, Channels 2/44 did
go color in the fall of 1967 with a documentary on
poet Robert Frost.  The Public Broadcast Laboratory
came into being in 1967 with programming produced in
color, with help of the government.  This would be the
prototype of today's PBS, using NET (National
Educational Television) member stations.
    WGBX would eventually begin separate programmming
in the early 1970's, namely consisting of time-shifted
programming seen on Channel 2.  However, every night
beginning in the fall of 1971, WGBX/44 started "Catch
44", a nightly 9:00 PM "public access" programming
venture that gave 30 minutes of airtime to community
groups in the Boston area.  With "Catch 44", however,
there were some "catches".  Basically, as long as you
didn't slander someone, it was a free-for-all. 
However, if you DID slander and degrade someone, your
time would be cut (fade to black). IN this non-cabled
universe, it was unique!

-Peter Q.    
--- Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:
> I don't expect there are more than half a dozen
> people on the list (if that 
> many) who will recognize the calls in the
> subject line! "WJDW" was the original CP call for
> what's now WGBX, granted 
> as a commercial station back in the
> late fifties to one J.D. Wrather, hence the calls. I
> don't have any 
> information at all on what Mr. Wrather planned to
> use as a transmitter site or what he would have
> programmed; in any event, 
> 56 and 38 got on the air first and WJDW
> never did. I don't even know whether Wrather donated
> the CP to WGBH or 
> whether it had been returned and WGBH
> applied "fresh" for 44. (In fact, the whole early
> history of WGBX is 
> something of a mystery to me, except insofar as it
> fits in with the general trend in the mid-sixties
> for the "big" educational 
> TV stations to start second services - WQEX
> Pittsburgh, WXXW Chicago, WETX Washington, KTCI St.
> Paul, etc - many of 
> which ran in black and white at low
> power and with limited hours from very old
> transmitters. WQEX, in 
> particular, ran for many years from an incredibly
> antiquated transmitter that had belonged first to
> WDTV/KDKA-TV and then to 
> WQED...)
> 
> In any case, I *do* know a little something else now
> about Mr. Wrather: in 
> doing research for my upcoming book about
> New York City FM, I find that a J.D. Wrather Jr.
> purchased WBFM (101.9) for 
> $4.175 million in 1957. That price seems
> to have included not just the station but also the
> entirety of the Muzak 
> Corporation!  ($4 million would otherwise have been
> a ridiculous price for an FM station in that era;
> the same year, WBAI 99.5 
> was sold by Theodore Deglin to paper
> manufacturer Louis Schweitzer for $34,000!
> Schweitzer, of course, would 
> simply donate the station to Pacifica three
> years later. And WBFM itself would be worth only
> $400,000 in December 1963, 
> when it was sold to WPIX by "Muzak
> Corp., a division of Wrather Corp.")
> 
> And it turns out Wrather was quite the character - a
> Texas oilman turned TV 
> impresario, among many other things. He
> even owned the Queen Mary and the Disneyland Hotel!
> 
>
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/wratherjack/wratherjack.htm
> 
> So...anybody know anything at all about what the
> heck Jack Wrather had in 
> mind for channel 44 in Boston?
> 
> s
> 


=====
Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Whitman, Massachusetts
                           "Scanning the bands since 1967"
radiojunkie1@yahoo.com
radiojunkie3@yahoo.com
***********************************************************

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