This may be somewhat off topic, but can anyone shed some light on the phenomenon of independent TV stations, which in 2007 appears to be a thing of the past? Is there a website devoted to the subject?

When I was growing up, in the early 1980s, before the fall 1987 launch of the FOX network, most markets had at least one station with no network affiliation. In the larger markets, some of these stations could be quite professional and competitive, such as Buffalo's WUTV 29; smaller market independents tended to be shoestring operations that had a hard time staying on the air, such as Johnstown's (PA) WFAT 19. Weird Al Yankovic parodied independent television stations in his 1988 movie, _UHF_.

The program schedule was made up almost entirely of syndicated programs. A typical weekday program lineup might have been cartoons in the morning, sitcom re-runs and religious program mid-day, cartoons in the late afternoon, dramas or sitcoms in the evening, and a movie on prime time. A typical program approach was to take a series that was originally a weekly show and run the episodes daily.

In 1987, many independents picked up the FOX network programming, although if memory serves me correctly, stations didn't start branding themselves as "FOX" until 1989, or so. Back in 1986, when plans to launch FOX were announced, the idea of a fourth television network was big news. However, today there are enough minor television networks that nearly every station can claim some network affiliation. For instance, KPDX runs programming from "My Network TV," KPXG is now "ION TV," and KRCW is "the CW." Why is the climate so different today?

How about WTBS channel 17 here in Atlanta.
Still an indie but a bit of a different tier independent of course.

Yeah, but TBS is a national brand because of it's superstation status. It basically IS a network, with cable and satellite operators acting as the "affiliates".

I haven't watched the "superstations" in many years. There used to be WGN (Chicago), WTBS (Atlanta), and WOR (NY). Back in "the day," these were like independent stations on steroids because they didn't have exclusive rights to any of the shows that they aired. However, they were able to package their fare better.

I remember that in the early 1990s, WTBS started branding itself "TBS" possibly to get viewers to see it as a "network" like USA, CNN, MTV, etc. instead of a satellite simulcast of an over-the-air station from Atlanta. (W)TBS also cleverly shifted its program schedule by 5 minutes so that programs would start at :05 and :35 instead of the traditional :00 and :30. I would assume that this strategy was intended to catch viewers who flip channels when the commercials come on.

WGN and TBS are still both common on cable tv systems. Perhaps WOR is on the east coast, I don't know

Here in Salem it was fun in the late 70's early 80's when WTBS and KTVU out of SF and CBC out of Canada were on the cable.
There were car dealer ads on WTBS, restaurants, etc, all the local stuff like you would see here, yet it was from Atlanta, seemed so far away.
The SF station had great shows including "Dialing for Dollars", and the Canadian station introduced us to curling and cfl football.
They were all fun stations to watch. This was when cable was not quite so big, it was more along the lines of being there to give you a better signal then your antenna and they threw these other things in.
I remember the local cable company had a black and white camera that would rotate back and forth between a clock and a paste board with notes on programs. That was on all day on one of the channels.
Channel 12, KPTV was always cool to watch before it became a "network".

KPDX-49 is almost an independent. I don't think the UPN (or whatever it is now) takes over programming every night. They've got their host who is always doing little "around town" segments during the early evening hours, etc. It feels very "ma and pa" to me.

In Salem in the late 80's/early 90's, there was KECH channel 22 which was an independent. It later went to broadcasting the Home Shopping Network and was later sold to Pax (now Ion). The CW station (32) used to be a small Christian station in Salem operated by Dove Broadcasting...

"The CW station (32) used to be a small Christian station in Salem operated by Dove Broadcasting..."

Really? I somehow seemed to miss that. I remember when it started that it started with test patterns of the new WB (Warner Brothers) network. They used the studios of some old fishing program in Beaverton as their studio and they started off as an affiliate of the WB.

Jimbo: Here's the KRCW-TV history from Wikipedia. 32 has been through many changes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRCW-TV

I was the main host at the old KECH 22 in Salem. Did a "dialing for dollars" rip off called "Jackpot Movie" and did a live Bingo show.
Then did the news at 11pm.
That was some mess there, we had about 8 total employees.
I had to set the camera in place then run around to the set, put on my lapel mic, and get ready for the live show. Our producer did everything else.
It was a lot of fun and good learning experience.
Ken Lewetag, who now owns Channel 52 here in Salem was with us then.

The thing called TBS on cable/satellite now has almost nothing to do with the programming on channel 17 in Atlanta. The Braves are gone, thanks to the latest MLB/TV deal. The comedy reruns on TBS are just for TBS - they're sold to individual markets in a seperate package. And since WTBS never had much original programming (since the mid 80's), TBS is pretty much just another generic basic cable station. WGN, however, is still very much a local Chicago institution. The fun of watching WGN on cable and the bird is the local news (and I believe the Cubs and White Sox games are still on WGN next year - I wonder what part of the MLB/TV deal that's under).

I thought Atalnta's 17 also changed call letters to WPCH at the same time the split from TBS cable was made...

Isn't channel 17 in Atlanta called "Peachtree TV," now? I believe that cable and satellite systems in Canada get the "local" Atlanta feed of Peachtree TV instead of TBS due to CRTC regs.

Sure enough, the over-the-air signal is WPCH "Peachtree TV" now:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=64033
http://www.tbs.com/tbs17/

Thanks Craig,
I did say I must have missed it. Actually, as time goes by, some things fade. I think I was confusing CH32's latest incarnation with the startup of the WB when I saw the test signals of the WB on the satellite. Waiting for Blind Date and others to come down the satellite, I would always see the WB slides and music.

http://www.uhfnocturne.com/nocturnehome.html is a tribute to California UHFs.

Previously mentioned here is the odd http://platypuscomix.cartoonsdammit.com/fpo/history/index.html
with some clips and grabs from KEBN/32 and "WatchTV" (plus, elsewhere on the site, a sad retrospective of the media during dismal 80s-recession Portland).

I'm sure nearly everyone here is familiar with Ronald Dunevant's amazing KPTV tribute site, http://kptv.home.comcast.net It keeps growing, and Ron invites contributions of info.

Where do the new syndicated shows go now? There used to be a place for shows like Andromeda, Hercules, Xena and all the other action-adventure series we'd watch on weekends, but what with the networking of most of the smaller stations, there isn't enough of an independent market to make such shows profitable any more.

I watched alot of channel 2 ktvu san francisco-oakland when I was younger.there were many shows done there which were of interest..many were live and had studio audience!!
captain sattalite
creature features
captain cosmic with his wonder robot 2T2- r2d2 aparently was not available?
roller derby- bay bombers
wrestling
10 PM News
dialing for dollars
OK station how about more of that type of programming?the above shows seemed to be done with a low budgetperhaps some were also shown up here in portland on ch.12?

Some of the cable networks have exclusive rights, which takes away much of what used to be the bread and butter of independent stations.

A Google search of the phrase "exclusive rights" and the name of a cable network or program yields some interesting results. TV Land now has exclusive rights to The Twilight Zone. The Cartoon Network has exclusive rights to the Looney Tunes cartoons...and on and on.

I'm a little confused about that KPTV history site. I have heard several times that KPTV has been showing Perry Mason at noon either "since 1969" or "for 40 years" or other such grandiose claims.

However, the listings archive has the first reference to Perry in 1975. 32 years is still a long time but I thought for sure it was on before that.

"Running on CBS from 1957-66, KPTV aired reruns of "Perry Mason" from 1966"

From the KPTV history website (Yesterday's KPTV):

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


Check the 1967 schedule on the same site, Perry Mason is shown in the evenings 8:30 to 9:30, so NO, not at noon for 40 years but YES, on KPTV for 40 years.

How about.....
-KONG 16 Seattle
-KBWB 20 San Francisco
-KICU 36 San Jose/San Francisco
-KCAL 9 Los Angeles,
-KDOC 56 Los Angeles
-KUSI 51 San Diego,
-KMCI 38 Kansas City,
-WCIU 26 Chicago
-KTVK 3 Phoenix
-KAZT 7/25 Prescott/Phoenix
-WJXT 4 Jacksonville
-WMOR 32 Lakeland/Tampa
-WAXN 64 Charlotte
-KTXA 21 Dallas
-KFWD 52 Dallas
-KSTC 45 Minneapolis
-WADL 38 Detroit
-WSBK 38 Boston
-KTGF 16 Great Falls

Thanks for the memories, Dodger. What my wife and I really enjoyed was getting the Canadian version of Sesame Street from CBC. It was enjoyable to see all the Spanish replaced with French. And I would laugh to see "Zees" called "Zeds"

My sister used to love the bingo games that were on channel 22...good times...

Well hey qpatrick, yer talkin ta bingo bill himself! Haha. What a funny time that was.
Great promotion, low budget but it made us a little money to hang on with.
I still get the occasional senior citizen recognizes me "hey bingo bill".
LOL!!!

I was wondering(my 80s memories are fuzzy at best) were the bingo games during the KECH or the KWVT eras? Also, were you one of the news reporters during the short lived newscast on channel 22? And didn't they little 5 minute newsbreaks between programmes long before they decided to do a long form newscast? I don't know why, but I seem to remember seeing Eric Norberg in those very short newsbreaks--but I may be wrong--so, very wrong!

(About bingo: I thought it was funny--while I was riding the train from Vancouver to Toronto and back this November, we played bingo games for prizes in one of the lounge cars--and the first thing I thought of was "this is just like channel 22!")

First, yes it was in the KECH era.
We did "Let's Play Bingo" at 5:30pm.
The the "Jackpot Movie" at 7 which was a lousy movie but I spun a wheel and called a number sent in by viewers and tried to give away money.
In between we played old shows like Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore and Ozzie and Harriet, etc.
I did a 15 minute news at 6 and 11pm.
I believe the ones you are thinking of were earlier then my time, and it may have been Eric, I went to work with him just after KECH at KWIP in Dallas.
Bingo was fun, I did commercials at grocery store sponsors dressed in my Shryocks Tuxedo! HAHA!!

Bingo! I remember, back in the '70's at KVAS in Astoria, part of my gig was to call a daily 15-minute Bingo game. Good times!