WTAG-TV?

[Paul Anderson]

On Nov 18, 2009, at 9:48 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote:

> Then would WMUR-TV even exist?

New Hampshire would have had to had a TV station somewhere.  Even a VHF in Worcester wouldn't have served Manchester well.

> Friends who grew up in Worcester tell me the 'ruling families' of the
> city didn't want progress. They fought to keep the Mass Pike away from
> the city and how did that work out?  They built an airport that is
> impossible to get to and other weird things.

I wonder how Worcester would be different today if it had had a strong TV station all these years.  The attention such a station would have brought to the city would have helped in so many ways.

There's almost no coverage of Worcester or its surrounding towns today on TV as the city is inbetween Boston and Springfield.  (Does WBZ-TV still have a studio in Worcester?)  Although WSMW channel 27 was a decent independent in its day, Worcester is left with a Spanish-language station and a "religious" station run by out-of-towners.

As far as the Mass Pike goes, wasn't the placement of the road outside Worcester some sort of political retaliation?  I'm sure the story is convoluted.  But remember, roads like I-90 were supposed to go _near_ cities, not through them, by design.  But the lack of a good Pike connection to the southeast (such as Route 146 is today) and the lack of Channel 5 probably did hurt the city.

Paul