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The big local business story here in the Boston area yesterday was that the media mogul who owns the local NBC affiliate here is buying one of the two major UHF stations in Boston, WLVI-TV (known to one and all in the area as Channel 56).
A few years ago, this could not have happened. "Duopolies" (the ownership of more than one TV station in a single market) were against FCC regulations. But the abolition of most of the ownership rules by the FCC has seen quite a bit of ownership consolidation. So far, the coalescence has not been as disastrous as it has been in radio broadcasting, but I think that's in part because there aren't as many TV stations as radio stations in the first place, and in part because the nature of television broadcasting has been different due to the strong role of the networks. With that particular landscape shifting quite a lot in the last five or ten years and showing signs of yet more drastic change to come, I suspect that there will not be a wholesale effort to create many duopolies other than in the largest markets.
As I was reading about this news last night, I wound up perusing through a discussion forum dedicated to talking about the local Boston television business. Once I got through the threads catting away about this news-celeb and that one, I ended up reading one that talked about the history of Channel 56 and found myself reminiscing about it myself.
Though we moved to Maine when I was 7 years old, we lived in this area for those first seven years, and Channel 56 was part of our regular television viewing when I was little, along with the other major UHF station here, WSBK (Channel 38). After we moved to Maine, we were without our familiar Boston stations for a few years, but cable television came early to our town in Maine and along with it came those two stations. At first it felt like a lifeline back to the place we used to call home, but as we grew up and stopped thinking of ourselves as being "from Massachusetts", they were more like a glimpse into a world we knew almost nothing about.
Channel 56 was always the weak sister compared to Channel 38; WSBK had Bruins hockey and then later the Red Sox. Channel 38 also always seemed to have better cartoons in the afternoons, even if you did have to put up with the incredibly annoying Willy Whistle. But Channel 56 had Star Trek and that was the most important thing for me. I vaguely recall an afternoon cartoon host on Channel 56 who was a railroad conductor character, and eventually he was replaced with long-time Boston disk jockey Dale Dorman. I also vividly recalling a period where Channel 56 bought a syndication package of a bunch of classic 1950s sitcoms and also Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life".
Both 56 and 38 ran as independent stations for a very long time, occasionally trading off on which station carried what show (over the years I can recall the Three Stooges running on each one for a time), then in the 1990s both of them affiliated with one of the new networks that popped up after the success of Fox. Of course, all of that is changing again, too. The UPN and WB networks merged and will debut next week as "CW" on Channel 56, while Channel 38 (which was bought up by Westinghouse just before they, in turn, were bought up by CBS) finds itself without any network and returning to its roots as an "independent" station.
Oddly enough, even though I've lived back in the Boston area for ten years now, I never watch either 56 or 38 these days. I am not in the target demographic for the younger audiences that UPN and WB were aimed at. I don't expect the change of owners at 56 to make a bit of difference for me, and I already watch Channel 7's newscast.
Brian:
When I was very young, the only stations available in Boston were 2, 4, 5, and 7 (sometimes 10 and 12 from Providence, if conditions were right). Then my dad bought a UHF converter; a rig that actually hooked up to a VHF-only television and allowed reception of UHF channels on an unused VHF band.
Suddenly, the number of available viewing options increased by... well, somewhere between 33% and 50%, depending upon the weather. Great stuff for a kid like me who adored sitcoms and cartoons, since the staple programming of both 38 and 56 was comprised laregely of both those genres.
38 was always the "classier" of the two, although that's sort of like saying that a $20 hooker is classier than a crack ho. In my mind, Channel 56 was always the "Gilligan's Island" and "Speed Racer" station, while 38 was "Andy Griffith", "Dick Van Dyke" and "The Odd Couple". Alright, make that a $50 hooker.
Anyway, thanks for sending me down memory lane.
Posted by Suldog [URL] at 09/15/06
Our TV had a UHF receiver, but it was back when you had to tune the dial rather than click from one channel to the next.
And, yes, I also tended to think of 56 as the Gilligan & Speed Racer channel.
P.S. Suldog, do you remember when about the only show they had on Channel 38 was "Sea Hunt"?
Posted by Brian [URL] at 09/15/06
I have one thing to say...
Creature
Double
Feature
Posted by jo [URL] at 09/15/06
I had forgotten all about Creature Double Feature. My boyhood friend Marc was a first-class monster geek and was absolutely devoted to watching the monster movies on 56.
Posted by Brian [URL] at 09/15/06
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