I'm in La Grande for a couple of days and, as always, I enjoy scanning the dial when I'm away from Portland. This morning I woke up between 5 and 5:30 so I browsed the AM dial on my Walkman. Would you believe the strongest signal from Portland was KKAD on 1550? Boy it was loud! I then went down to 860 to see how KPAM (from the same site) was doing. It was quite good too, but not as strong as KKAD. KEX was in there too, but not very strong. 620 and 750 were too much of a mess to identify anything. I assume at this time of year everyone in Portland should be on day power/pattern.

The best surprise came this afternoon on FM when I heard KRTN in Raton, New Mexico on 93.9 on the car radio. When I first heard them I thought they were local they were so strong. Then within a few seconds they faded to nothing, and in a minute or so they were full quieting again. I've read about FM DX reception this good before but have never actually heard it myself. Quite an experience!

It's the solstice. The Druids have something to do with this, I'm certain of it. If they could move those big rocks around, certainly they can move signals.

I've posted this before, but can't resist sharing again. In the mid-1970's from my north Seattle bedroom I could DX 590 KFXD (Boise), 610 KFRC, 620 KGW, 640 KFI, 680 KNBR, 730 CKLG (Vancouver), of course 810 KGO, then up to a bunch of Canadians above 1000, including 1400 CFUN. Most of these were doing top40 at the time. What a mosaic of AM radio during its last "heyday" decade! Today, you would be lucky to pick up even one of those signals!

Paul: "C-FUN A Go-Go! Channel 14" was on 1410.

Back in the 1990's I was on my way to Enterprise-Joseph from La Grande. In Elgin I was tuning around the dial during the day and was shocked at how KVAN 1550 was just booming in! As loud as a local station. It must be a good area for that station.

Craig, yes of course, but back then it was "14-CFUN!", and when you are barely 15, that is what you remember! BTW, loved that station 1974-75! Only Andy Barber on KING could equal their energy.

...and KFXD was on 580, now KIDO, which was on 630, now KFXD. KHQ Spokane was on 590 and I don't remember what they are now.

Paulwalker said:

"Today, you would be lucky to pick up even one of those signals!"

For the most part, the signals are still there, but the rich mosaic of programming has been reduced considerably. On how many stations can C to C be heard ?

A quick check of my logs, and some listening last night (using an Eton E-5, with no external antenna) yielded the following for the stations mentioned above:

1410 CFUN... weak
810 KGO... solid
730 CHMJ (was CKLG)... ok, unusual all traffic format
680 KNBR... solid
640 KFI... ok
630 KFXD (was KIDO)... ok
620 KPOJ (was KGW)... Local Station
610 KEAR (was KFRC) ... weak
580 KIDO (was KFXD)... ok
590 KQNT (was KHQ) mostly covered by KUGN

FM DX wasn't too shabby this past weekend. From here in Sheridan (behind a 300 metre hill on the valley floor) I was able to hear to 93.7 JRfm out of Vancouver BC, Kat Country 94 out of Spokane, and 95.7 Bob-FM out of the Tri-cities.

Now if I could just hear KNRK's HD2 stream of local NW music, I would be moderately pleased.

Somebody explained today's lack of AM DX reception awhile back. The science is interesting, but the memories are more important. To hear all those signals on a winter night was just amazing in the mid-1970's. Yes, you may be able to pick up these frequencies today on a good AM radio, but the fact of the matter is, most don't have good AM radios. The era is, sadly, gone. (Of course, with the same syndicated programming on so many AM's today, no big loss.) Phil Hendrie's return may change my opinion!

Yes, I missed a few of the exact frequencies back then, but please understand radios back then did not have digital displays, and 14-CFUN was 1400 in my mind...what else would I have been able to tell?

A by-gone era for sure. AM stereo? I think that was over atleast 15 years ago. The future of AM radio is a maybe completely other thread. I'm sure there will be survivors, but nothing like existed in the "early years" of AM...1920's-1970's. I'm not one to get nostalgic about the "good old days", but the change has been enormous.

Here, it was pretty easy. KPAM was on 1410. It went off at night and CFUN came right in, usually at a slightly lower level.

The last opportunity for really interesting AM DX was in the mid 1990s, as the expanded band was filling up. I remember, on very rare occasions, DXing TIS stations with a Walkman radio!!! I also remember listening to WJDM (from Rochester, NY) when they were the only station on 1660kHz, in fantastic wide AM Stereo.

Paul, I grew up near the intersection of 15th Avenue NE and NE 94th St. in Seattle and, like you, spent time in the early 70s DXing all the stations you mentioned.

Of course, I enjoyed tuning in to CFUN, which went head-to-head with (CK)"LG 73" with the Top 40 format, much like KJR-KOL-and-later-KING did in Seattle.

I also enjoyed pulling in whatever distant TV signals I could there in north Seattle. Our home was slightly down a steep hill, so I had to persuade my parents to get a rooftop antenna installed on a VERY tall pole, and with an electronic rotator. I would regularly pull in 12 out of Bellingham, 2 and 8 out of Vancouver and 6 out of Victoria. Sometimes on a clear day, with the antenna pointing the other way, I would get 2 from Portland.

My favorite memory, however, was several years later when I was living in a mobile home up in Anacortes. On a VERY hot summer night, with just a rabbit-ear antenna on top of my TV, I was watching 2 out of Vancouver when, PRECISELY at the top of the hour, the picture suddenly faded out and -- clear as a bell -- I got the station ID for Channel 2 out of Denver. It only lasted for a second - long enough for me to fall out of my chair.

The other night when I tuned in CFUN they were airing Coast to Coast... gone are the good old days! I was somewhat surprised to hear this, but I waited for a clear Id, it was indeed CFUN !

A good AM stereo catch is CKMX (1060), Calgary. this is a C&W station, but on Sat. evening they have a Bluegrass program. A bit of "platform movement" can be heard at this distance, as the station fades, but still pretty nice!

I have observed many short bursts of signal as described by Johnf on TV and FM. These are "meteor bursts" caused by the signal reflecting off of the ionized trail left by a meteor. Right now, we are on the downside of the peak from the Arietids meteors, still good for several FM or TV bursts per hour. Darn lucky if you get an Id from the shorter bursts, but sometimes the ion trail lasts for a minute or more.

Johnf, as I think we have communicated before, we were practically neighbors!

That TV story is wild. I remember going to one of my parents friends homes in Lake Forest Park, (just north of Seattle) and they actually had cable tv in 1970 or '71! Very rare at the time, atleast in Seattle. I think it was because they were in a location that was hard to get the over the air signals. But they had KVOS-12 Bellingham and a bunch of Canadian stations on there as I recall. This was well before our current cable-universe, no ESPN, no HBO, or for that matter ANY cable-branded stations then. Just rebroadcasts of over the air stations. A different era for sure!

Also I remember there was a lot of talk back then about "pay tv", and how this was going to destroy the TV industry! (Right!...as I open my $116 cable bill!)

I remember pre-sunrise power was listed on the KLSC 1410AM transmitter log as 71 watts (back in the mid 70's). Had to visually take meter readings because the 71 watt transmitter was not tied into the automatic logging system.

A little off thread, but since TV was brought up earlier, anybody know when cable tv really started to become the norm for most households? I know HBO and ESPN started in the late 70's, CNN in 1980, MTV in '81, but if memory serves me, it wasn't until the mid-80's that cable became really mainstream. I could be wrong.
Would be interesting to see an early 80's listing of what cable channels existed then.

Yes, Paul. You and I did communicate earlier about our close proximity growing up.

I also remember seeing cable TV at a friend's house in north Seattle, probably around 1969 or 70. I remember I was amazed to see him watching Channel 12 out of Bellingham even though he lived WAAAY down in one of the local "valleys" and he probably would have had a hard time just getting Seattle TV over the air.

I also remember when I was a student at Seattle Pacific University in the mid-1970s and seeing on a campus TV set that San Francisco-Oakland's Channel 2 was being imported through the cable system. Bay Area TV being watched in Seattle! At that point I realized that the times they were a changin'!

KTVU Channel 2 Oakland was on a lot of cable systems in Oregon in the 60's 70's. At the time it was independent.

Johnf, KTVU Ch. 2 out of the Bay Area on a Seattle system is indeed odd. Probably wasn't on very long, as the local indies (11, 13) would have complained.

The other thing you don't see much anymore is in smaller markets where you used to see the local network affiliate, and the nearest big city network affiliate on the same system. I guess the combination of lack of channels, and the local's trying to maintain dominance ruined that. There are still a few markets that do this, but becoming more rare. Example, as late as the early 90's you could watch all of the Bay Area affiliates way up in Redding, plus the locals. No more! Heck, I even remembering watching SF newscasts in Medford at one time!

The cable system in Seaside used to have both Portland and Seattle network affiliates up through the early 90s (I think). Had no clue what the point really was (different news maybe?), a lot of it was the same network programs at the same time.

I would guess that might have been a "tourist" issue...you still see some of that around the country. For example, at Lake Tahoe, SF stations are still beamed in, even though the Reno market is MUCH closer, probably because of all the tourists from the Bay Area. Palm Springs still brings in L.A., too, for probably the same reasons. Just an educated guess.

On a somewhat different subject, I don't understand why cable systems have different standards with WGN Chicago. This station is shown all over the US on some, if not most systems, but certainly not all. It once was on the main PDX system, (not sure anymore), but has never been seen in Seattle. Yet, you can drive to smaller northwest markets and it is part of "basic" cable! What gives? (Sorry, but I love watching the Cubbies).

Medford. Southern Oregon Cable TV from the 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook.

2 KTVU-Ind, KPIX-CBS, KGO-ABC, KTXL-Ind, KBHK-Ind.
3 KATU-ABC, KVDO-PBS, KOIN-CBS, KOAC-PBS, KGW-NBC, KPTV-Ind.
4 Access. Weather & time.
5 Home Box Office.
6 KOBI-ABC primary with CBS.
7 KATU-ABC, KVDO-PBS, KOIN-CBS, KOAC-PBS, KGW-NBC, KPTV-Ind.
8 Stock market ticker.
9 KTVL-NBC primary with CBS.
10 Showtime.
11 KSYS-PBS.
12 UPI News ticker.
13 KTVU-Ind, KPIX-CBS, KGO-ABC, KTXL-Ind, KBHK-Ind.

The mid 1980s is when cable-TV could be considered to have become mainstream. There was a pretty intense marketing campaign to raise public awareness at that time, and the campaign certainly worked. Does anybody remember the slogan, "Cable's not just more choice. It's your choice." Weird Al Yankovic had a song that satirized the cable phenomenon, too!

The Seattle TV on Seaside cable was perhaps more of a "history" issue, people in Seaside were very accustomed to watching Seattle TV even before we had TV in Portland. Off the air reception from Seattle was easier than Portland, due to the topography. Before cable arrived in Seaside, many houses had multi-Yagi installations, on 20 to 50 ft masts/towers, mostly pointed North. Portland... who needs it? Old habits die hard!

Makes perfect sense!

Cox Cable Seaside. 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook.
2 KATU-ABC.
3 HBO.
4 KOMO-ABC.
5 KING-NBC.
6 KOIN-CBS.
7 Access.
8 KGW-NBC.
9 Time/weather, KXL-FM.
10 KOAP-PBS.
11 KSTW-Ind.
12 KPTV-Ind.
13 unused.

Somebody didn't want Seattle CBS KIRO on there! (Not sure if related, but this was when KIRO was going through its "crime/bleeds it leads" phase.)

It might have been in the cable deal with each station & company. I remember noticing this in other markets also. KGW & KING plus KATU & KOMO were and are owned by the same companies. KOIN & KIRO were not and are not.

It used to be that if a station put a certain amount of signal into an area, it had to be carried on the local cable system. As a result, there were some areas that were required to air 3 full sets of network affiliates with precious little space for anything else! The cable companies really fought that one!

Well, that's interesting. Obviously, the cable companies eventually won that battle.

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember seeing listings from the Register-Guard when I was younger (80's) and seeing some Canadian independent channels listed on Eugene area cable. Am I crazy or am I really remembering things correctly?

Eugene. Teleprompter of Oregon. 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook.

2 HBO.
3 KVDO-PBS.
4 KTVU-Ind.
5 KOBI-ABC primary with CBS.
6 KOIN-CBS.
7 KOAC-PBS.
8 KVAL-NBC.
9 Time/weather & KPNW-FM.
10 KEZI-ABC.
11 Film/studio/video tape.
12 KPTV-Ind.
13 Time/weather & KPNW-FM.

Nothing was listed on Eugene's cable TV station.

Edit: Eugene's cable system was expanded to 36 channels in the late spring of '81, but many of the channels like CNN and TLC were scrambled in a second tier of service for the first year or two. The above list is how it was just before the system upgrade.

Victoria's CHEK 6 was the only Canadian station ever on cable in Eugene, along with KSTW 11. KATU was brought back to Eugene cable at that time because they ran Monday Night Football at a different time than Eugene's KEZI. (I think KEZI took the live early feed, and KATU took the west coast delay.) Shortly after those signals were added, there was a huge increase in royalties that cable companies were required to pay for importing distant over-the-air stations, and all were dropped.

KPTV stayed awhile longer until it and a local station both went with FOX. As was mentioned in an above post, local stations were successful in forcing black-outs of duplicate network and syndicated programming from distant stations on cable to protect local advertising.

"Superstations" like WTBS and WGN stayed on cable systems without the huge royalties by running satellite feeds that were substantially different from their local OTA feeds. WTBS became TBS.

The microwave relays up and down the west coast were not always reliable. The CHEK and KSTW feeds in particular were sometimes in snow for days at a time. KTVU was more reliable, but did occasionally fade out for short periods. I'm guessing KTVU was less reliable as it got farther north.

>The microwave relays up and down the west coast were not always reliable

This may be a very dumb question from a guy who is NOT at all familiar with the technology involved, but, for example, to get the KTVU Oakland signal to a cable system in Seattle, how many "links" in the relay would have been required? I mean, covering that kind of distance, wouldn't that have required a LOT of relay stations? And wouldn't that have been an expensive proposition? And who operates those microwave stations?

I am assuming that today a satellite system would instead be used?

The microwave system in Oregon and California was/is owned by California-Oregon Broadcasting, Inc. (COBI). They were originally built to bring more channels into COBI's own cable systems in southern Oregon, but then the signals were sold to other cable systems as well. Yes, it was expensive, but it must have paid off, since systems like this were built all over the North American Continent.

A broadcast engineer (the late Curt Raynes) once explained to me that the relay stations up and down the western U.S. are/were up to 65 miles (or maybe it was 60) apart, but for rock solid reliability they should have been placed more like 40-45 miles apart. They reduced expenses by locating them farther apart, but sacrificed some robustness. I suspect the system may have been created with a southern Oregon/northern California destination in mind, and perhaps feeding KTVU all the way to Seattle, or importing Seattle and Canadian signals south may have been an afterthought.

When KOIN and KPTV were on cable in Eugene they were received off air at Corvallis (Vineyard Peak) then relayed to Eugene. (I think KATU and KGW must have been received off-air in Eugene because they usually had some video sparkles, while 6 & 12 were solid.)

I don't know the present status of COBI's microwave system, but it brought us some great distant TV back in the day that I miss seeing now.

All I know is, sometimes I wish it were 25 years go where could watch multiple network affiliates in the same market. But there is hope...the number of locals webcasting their local news seems to be growing. I know KOMO and KING in Seattle are doing this with selected newscasts! I just wonder how long this will be offered for free?

Growing up in Astoria, our cable system had all the Portland and most of the Seattle stations, but often you could pick up all of them on antenna in many parts of the county. Astoria, and later Warrenton and Seaside, had cable since 1949. They started to add satellite stations like HBO around 1979.

According to the 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook, Astoria cable had the same lineup as Seaside, which is posted above. Both were owned by Cox Cable Communications, Inc.

The huge increase in royalties for importing distant signals didn't apply to the first 2 signals so somehow, WTBS and WGN survived. Before that, WOR was about as common as WGN.

While fringe areas were cabled through the 50s-60s, most urban areas weren't until around 1980.

HBO went to satellite distribution in 1975 and WTBS in 1979. CNN signed on in 1980. The latter basically marks the transition from CATV to cable TV as we know it today.

Market penetration jumped from 20% to 43% between 1980 and 1985, crossing 50% in the late '80s.

http://www.mediainfocenter.org/compare/penetration/

So, somewhere in there cable became "mainstream." Somewhat arbitrarily, I'd call it at 1985, when it became essentially universal in middle class households.

There was a national cable TV study headed up by one of the Portland commissioners. I'm thinking Connie MacCready but it's been about 30 years. After that, every city awarded a license to build a cable system and the festivities began. I don't think we had cable yet when MTV went on but I definitely remember VH-1s first day. It was New Years Day and I want to say 1983. I had been reading about each new cable network while waiting to actually get cable.

"I think KEZI took the live early feed, and KATU took the west coast delay."

There was no west coast delay of Monday Night Football.

KATU delayed it themselves. So did KOMO. They recorded it on tape and delayed it an hour. It was that way all those years since it started.

Back in the early '70s KPTV was on cable for most of the day in Everett, WA on cable channel 10. About half way through the 10 o'clock news they would change to local cable programming.

Everett Cablevision, Inc. 1982 Broadcasting Yearbook:

2 CBUT-CBC.
3 Time/weather.
4 KOMO-ABC.
5 KING-NBC.
6 CHEK-CTV primary with CBC.
7 KIRO-CBS.
8 CHAN-CTV. (slogan BCTV)
9 KCTS-PBS.
10 Showtime.
11 KSTW-Ind.
12 KVOS-limited CBS programming.
13 KCPQ-Ind.

Listed as "Not Available" were:
KPTV-Ind.
KTPS-Educational.

This seems to indicate KPTV was available at one time but was dropped because of lack of channel space when Showtime was picked up.

Our neighborhood in Oregon City was wired for cable in approximately 1983 IIRC.

Both sets of my grandparents, however, had cable TV since at least the late 70s due to being in poor reception areas(Victoria, BC and Lake Oswego... although one of the neighbors in LO avoided cable by putting their antenna near the top of one of his fir trees to get reception).

I remember as a child being in awe that they got TV on ALL TWELVE channels!

To this day the "big" Seattle stations are imported at least as far north as Nanaimo, BC(and probably further), and other posts on this forum have indicated that Spokane stations enjoy widespread distribution throughout the Canadian interior. Seattle FMs are also still distributed on BC cable systems.

Tadc, in the mid-1990's I drove the entire length of British Columbia on the way to Alaska. I watched KOMO and KING out of Seattle as far north as Prince George, about halfway up the province. Then, even more amazingly, in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory (just north of BC), the US affiliates on their system were from Detroit!
Always wondered about that one...perhaps because Detroit is the one of the closest big cities to Canada?

Starchoice (one of the Canadian satellite services) carries the major networks from Seattle, Spokane, Detroit and Buffalo.

I also remember that in the 80's, some of the Detroit stations were carried on C-band in Canada (encrypted using the old "Oak/Orion" system-the same system as ONTV used here in the States, if I remember correctly) and available to certain subscribers.

We had the big c-band dish where I lived, and I grew up watching TSN instead of ESPN(saw a great Winterhawks game televised to Canada live from Portland one night in the early 90's), MuchMusic instead of MTV, lots of CBC North programming("Cornation Street" still seems boring to me), 610CKRW from Whitehorse("its minus 40 right now in Whitehorse-Fahrenheit or Celsius...") and 590VOCM from St. John's, NF(To this day nobody has given me a good answer about why Newfoundland/Labrador's time zone is shifted 1/2 hour off of everybody else's.)

Another story from when I lived up in Anacortes (near Bellingham) ... Apparently the tower with which the local cable system caught its signals was on top of Mount Erie, a high point immediately south of the city. One of the signals it captured was KCPQ-TV Channel 13, which in 1978-79 was still a PBS affiliate licensed to a school district near Tacoma (Channel 13 didn't revert to commercial ownership until 1980). Anyway, for whatever reason, one summer morning Tacoma's 13 was off the air, and the cable tower was instead capturing a very pretty, clear image from KVAL-TV Channel 13 in Eugene. I was impressed!

Johnf, do you remember Channel 13 KCPQ in its pre-Fox days, 1980-86, or even better, the pre-Clover Park days as KTVW-13 pre-'74? The KTVW days are a little hazy for me as I was a little young,(don't even remember if they did local news), but remember early KCPQ with lots of movies and the new breed of talkshows at the time. Also, when did KCPQ take on KSTW-11 with a 10pm news? Was it right out of the gate, or later when Fox came along?

As for the talkshows, I'm remembering Geraldo, (you know the chair-throwing version!) and the late Morton Downey Jr. That show was wild! (former KJR jock, BTW!)

And to keep this somewhat Portland-centric, I also remember Channel 12 before Fox, one of the last NW news stations to drop film and go to videotape. Heck, I seem to recall them still using film for their field reports as late as the mid-90's!

Paul: I believe you mean KPEC channel 56, not KTVU, that's Oakland.

Detroit TV stations are still carried on Canadian "Repeaters" in the Yukon and on "Translators" in Alaska.

Right, Craig. KTVW, not KTVU. Missed by one letter! Already edited. Thanks for the correction! (Not sure what Ch. 56 is or was)

> And to keep this somewhat Portland-centric, I also
> remember Channel 12 before Fox, one of the last NW
> news stations to drop film and go to videotape.
> Heck, I seem to recall them still using film for
> their field reports as late as the mid-90's!

Really??!? What was their motivation for not switching? Where would they go to get parts and/or service on all that old film gear?

Don't know the answer to that, but I distinctly remember them using film well into the 90's. Had a very "old school" look. Perhaps the news director just thought it looked better. Perhaps they just didn't want to invest in "new" technology (although by then, it wasn't new!)

When I got to KPTV in 1987 they'd already converted from film to the short lived (and awful) Panasonic M format videotape. I heard that they stayed with film long after everyone else had gone to 3/4" videotape because Gene Phelps (the CE) didn't believe the vertical interval specs for 3/4" was within legal tolerance...or something like that. My memory is a little hazy on that, but if that isn't completely right I think it's pretty close.

There are places in this world where the time shifts by 15 minutes! For everything you wanted to know about KPTV, check out Yesterday's KPTV website. http://home.comcast.net/~kptv/kptv.htm I don't know why this didn't form a clickable link.

http://home.comcast.net/~kptv/kptv.htm

Gene Phillips, would that be the brother of Mike Phillips? I Recall his obituary listing a brother Gene. Paul ch 11 here had the10 o'clock news. For an independent stn KSTW had a good news operation. I know they had Jack Eddy from KRON in SFas well as Paul Ryan also from KRON 4 in the early 80s I forget when but ch 11 dumped 10 o'clock news because of budget cuts. It might have been early 2ooo. KONG tv has KING 5 News at 10. KCPQ has a half hour at 10. On the last day of KCPQ being PBS, THE stn signed off with The Way We Were with BARBARA Straisand and ferry boats on the Sound with a sunset

Show off! What do you suppose I did wrong? Could it be because I edited my post?

Hee, hee, hee.

I don't know why it didn't work for you, but it worked for me because I added the formatting manually to force it to work.

http://home.comcast.net/~kptv/kptv.htm

That's weird, it just worked for me by merely copying and pasting your link without adding the formatting, just as it should with this software.

Just a weird software glitch, or maybe the pipeline to Cyberia was frozen when you tried.

Semoochie: I never include a link on the same line as my writing. It could have interfered. You had your writing very close to the link.

Oregon City was mentioned earlier. I remember the city had Liberty Cable back in the 70's long before the rest of Portland was hooked up. I had heard that Seattle and I believe British Columbia stations were imported. I couldn't wait for cable to come to my neighborhood. When it finally did in 1981, the pay channels had taken over all imported channels except for WTBS. By 1982 the Broadcasting Yearbook did not list a channel line-up for Oregon City. It was now part of Portland's over all line up. However this line-up of channels was never seen where I lived. I believe the line-up below is Oregon City's earlier listing:

Portland. Liberty Cable Television, 1982:
2 KTVU-Ind.
3 KVDO-PBS.
4 Access.
5 KATU-ABC.
6 WTBS-Ind.
7 KOIN-CBS.
8 ?
9 KGW-NBC.
10 ?
11 KOAP-PBS.
12 ?
13 KPTV-Ind.

Portland. Trans Video Co. of Oregon, was owned by Liberty. 1982:
2 ?
3 KPTV-Ind.
4 KOAP-PBS.
5 KGW-NBC.
6 ?
7 ?
8 ?
9 KOIN-CBS.
10 ?
11 KATU-ABC.
12 ?
13 ?

Portland. Under construction: Cablesystems Pacific.

Gene PHELPS might have a brother named Mike, and Mike PHILLIPS might have a brother named Gene.
However, I doubt they are the same because Phelps and Phillips are not even close to the same. And Scott_Young was correct when he said the long-time CE of KPTV was Gene Phelps.

I remember when I was in the Air Force up at McChord AFB in Tacoma in the mid '60's watching a Tacoma TV station (I don't remember which one)that was an independent. They ran a movie at night. They were still b/w and the host of the movie sat in a studio that was pretty plain (just a curtain - no props). It was a warm summer night and they had the doors open for cooling. You would see flys and insects flying around because of the light. The "host" would occasionally wave them off with his hand when they got in front of his face. Just the way things were in those early days of tv.

There were small cable companies around Portland area covering backsides of hills in the area back in the 70's and and into the '80's. There was one on the east side of Rocky Butte serving a small area of Parkrose, there was one in NW Portland near the St. Johns bridge up around Linnton. They were used primarily to get local stations into those areas that were shadowed from the towers. There may have been more. The one in NW Portland added HBO around 1979-1980. You could get the montly HBO schedule from a gas station just off the St. Johns Bridge. That was the distribution point (for the little magazine).

Early C-Band distribution of programs were all unscrambled. I put in my 12' BUD back in 1982 and there was nothing scrambled then or for several years. Everything was in the clear. Eventually, the main channels went to the Videocipher scrambler.

I purchased a deep fringe VHF antenna about 1972 when I lived in Rockwood. I put it on a rotor and would turn it north or south and watch the Seattle stations and down to Eugene. I could get a fairly decent signal from those locales. KOMO and KING came in decently. KIRO was sometimes marginal. That antenna is still in use (fixed) for my locals in East County and still works just fine. I have not had any use for cable since they took it out in the mid-80's when they could not get a decent noise free signal to my house. HBO and others would have a snowy signal when they had their free weekends. The cable guy would come out with his little test monitor with a 6" screen and show me that it wasn't bad. I told him I didn't watch a 6" tv. Mine was a 72" screen and it looked real bad. Even the locals looked worse than off my antenna.

I also use that antenna for my local FM signals. I have a filter that passes only FM and that goes to my tuner.

But as mentioned in other threads, DX'ing is no longer what it used to be. It was fun picking up distant stations and signals because they were all different. Now, so what if I can pick up a station from Montana. It is probably broadcasting the same program that I can get multiple times as I tune across the band. Same with streaming on the internet. Unless the station is unique (like KGO), there is no point in picking up something from far away.

>I remember when I was in the Air Force up at
>McChord AFB in Tacoma in the mid '60's watching
>a Tacoma TV station (I don't remember which one)>that was an independent. They ran a movie at
night. They were still b/w and the host of the
>movie sat in a studio that was pretty plain
>(just a curtain - no props). It was a warm >summer night and they had the doors open for >cooling. You would see flys and insects flying >around because of the light. The "host" would >occasionally wave them off with his hand when >they got in front of his face. Just the way >things were in those early days of tv.

Yup, that was definitely the old KTVW Channel 13 in Tacoma! In response to Paul's earlier question, I distinctly watching KTVW throughout my childhood. It was always a low-quality independent, but then things REALLY REALLY got bad in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during what I think was the first of two bankruptcies for the station.

The first was under the estate of the late J. Elroy McCaw (father of Craig McCaw, who later made billions in cellular). Eventually the station was purchased by Blaidon Mutual Investors Corp. of Seattle, which poured millions into the station to upgrade to color equipment, bring in a wide range of nationally syndicated programs, etc. But they lost their shirt, too, and filed for bankruptcy. It was in the mid-1970s then that the Clover Park School District near Tacoma bought 13 for a song, and changed the call letters to KCPQ and made it a public TV station.

It wasn't until 1980 that Kelly Television of Sacramento, which at that time operated that city's NBC affiliate, purchased 13, reverted it to commercial operation, and made it, for the first time, a high-quality channel. And in response to your question, Paul, I don't think KCPQ started a 10 p.m. newscast until they became a Fox affiliate.

But back to the late 1960s... it was during the "Boeing Bust" in 1969 that the Puget Sound economy went sour and KTVW became, as described once in one of the Seattle papers, perhaps "the worst TV station in the nation." I remember another newspaper article describing someone who lived in a sheltered area near Mount Rainier, could only get Channel 13 out of all the stations, and considered it "worse than no television at all."

By that time, KTVW was limping along with just a few hours of programming each day with only aging black and white cameras, horrible audio, graphics at times that looked like a junior high student had done them -- REALLY sad. A total embarrassment. I found it strangely fascinating.

Back in 1982 when Cox Cable was starting up in Vancouver. They had KCPQ in there channel lineup. The station's feed from the Puget Sound area. Was a microwave hop by way of Baw Faw Peak.

However KCPQ was very short live on the Vancouver system. Due to the new syndication exclusivity rule. A year later or so cable channel 13. Was going to some new station with the call letters KLRK.

Channel 13 of Tacoma came in well on the Columbia side of Astoria but wasn't on the cable system. In the late 1960s much of the day was stock market ticker tapes running across the screen during the day with talking heads, but on Saturdays they ran a lot of canned music videos shot in LA at the beach or airport with screaming dubbed in as the ballsy announcer would introduce them.
Then in the early-mid 1970s they went all classic TV shows from the 1950s: Superman, Cisco Kids, The Millionaire, etc, and movies.

Yes KCPQ channel 13 was operated by the Clover Park School District No. 400. Originally Clover Park operated KPEC Lakewood Center on channel 56. The studio & transmitter were located at 4400 Steilacoom Blvd. KPEC broadcast with 21.4KW at 210 feet. KPEC signed on the air April 2, 1960.

--The Oregonian, Behind The Mike - July 20, 1968--
Beginning in the summer of 1968 KPEC was re-broadcast on K04EI Vancouver on channel 4 with 10 watts. K04EI was owned by the Vancouver School District No. 37. The translator site was in Portland's west hills with a mailing address at 605 N. Devine Rd. Vancouver WA. K04EI repeated K70DT Longview on channel 70. K70DT broadcast from Mt. Baw-Faw near Chehalis with 5KW. K70DT was also owned by the Vancouver School District No. 37.

Washnotore2: The KLRK calls was the C.P. for what would become KPDX.

Tropo to the north is pretty good today... Right now I am tuned to KING 98.1 (Seattle) and hearing Brad E's morning classical program in full stereo! RDS has indicated KING-FM/98.1/title & artist info a few times... so far no lock into HD.

Anyone remember Flash Blaidon on Ch 13 in the 70's? He was no JP Patches or Brakeman Bill, that's for sure!
The only memory of the black and white KTVW of the 60s is a commercial for some Chevron station in Tacoma. Just stills with surfer music, maybe the Ventures. Must've been a trade-out, because it was on a lot.