lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (03/25/84)
Properly speaking, I think that this discussion should probably be over in net.tv ... but anyway ... Most of the VERY early "broadcast" TV systems were only viewable by tiny numbers of people. The early monochrome systems were based on the old spinning disk system, as was the original CBS color system which was dropped in favor of NTSC. Out here in L.A., station KTLA (5) has long claimed to have been the first regular broadcast television station west of the Mississippi. I'd have to do some searching to find their exact startup date. I have a friend who has an amazing collection of old TV Guides and the local-only TV schedule blurbs which preceeded TV Guide in the 40's. There's piles of local TV history in those old volumes. Interesting, with the massive rerunning of 50's programming these days, you can look at primetime listings for 1955 and see the same shows that are on this evening. Of course, many of these 50's shows are far better than current fare -- even if they didn't seem so great originally or when first rerun in the early 60's. By the way, the old TV Guides show that the Los Angeles VHF spectrum was "full" (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) in the early 50's.... Many of the old original stations (like KTLA, KTTV, and KHJ) are still around from those early days.... --Lauren--