WLNE airing infomercials in place of 7p news

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:46:18 -0400, "Doug Drown" <revdoug1@myfairpoint.net> said:

> Makes me wonder whether a network-affiliated VHF would have survived in 
> Worcester, had WTAG fulfilled its plans back in the '50s. 

Quite possibly.  It would have become a Boston station for all
practical purposes anyway.  You might have seen a situation where the
same network would have been on UHF in Boston, and one of the two
would have gone Fox when it started in the early 1980s.  Another
possibility might have been for channel 2 to have stayed commercial in
Boston, with 5 Worcester eventually failing and becoming a non-comm,
as happened to outlying stations in several major markets (think 13
Newark, 12 Wilmington, etc.).

Recall that any Worcester V would have had a huge disadvantage in
Boston proper because it would not be receivable on an indoor antenna
and outdoor antennas would not have been pointed in that direction.
Given where WTAG-TV would likely have been built -- Paxton -- it would
have been at an even greater disadvantage.  (On the other hand, if
Springfield Television had been able to make WWOR-TV work, you would
have had enough stations for Worcester to be its own TV market, or
alternatively WTAG-TV might have ended up as the CBS affiliate for
Springfield.)

It's interesting to speculate, but of course things actually turned
out differently, and it's hard to say that one alternate history was
more likely than other.

-GAWollman