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February 29, 2020 8:16 pm  #1


CTV Once Had a Buffalo Affiliate Station

Many people don't know this but CTV for a time from 1966 to 1969 had a Buffalo affiliated station. WNYP which still exists today joined the new Canadian network much to the chagrin of Buffalo's other TV stations. Lowell (Bud) Paxton was the owner. He would later own the PAX network which later became the ION television network that is popular in the US today.  Here is the story of CTV's US affiliate courtesy of Wikipedia.. 

It was the first American television station to affiliate with a Canadian network, signing a deal with CTV. Since the station could not afford a direct feed, station engineers switched to and from the signal of CTV's flagship CFTO-TV in Toronto whenever network programming was airing. WNYP was Paxson's first venture into television.WNYP quickly became notorious, almost legendary among Western New York's broadcast community for gaffes and programming mishaps. For instance, the station showed the same episode of The Aquanauts several times, every day at the same time, over a two-week period. Also, the equipment used to pick up the off-air signal from CFTO would sometimes relay the video from another station broadcasting on VHF channel 9 instead (such as WNYS-TV in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syracuse,_New_York]Syracuse[/url] or WWTV in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac,_Michigan]Cadillac, Michigan[/url]) due to tropospheric propagation overwhelming CFTO's signal. Often, when CFTO programming actually was being rebroadcast, the station switcher failed to drop CFTO's identification to display the WNYP-TV call letters, which was considered a violation of FCC rules. Inexplicably, the audio line from a Jamestown radio station could sometimes be heard in the background when CTV programming was airing. Paxson also earned significant animus for airing programming from CHCH-TV and CBC Television's CBLT without permission; although it had been legal to broadcast foreign programming in the United States without permission as a result of laws passed during World War II, the programs' copyright owners took legal action against WNYP.[2][/url]Since CTV, then as now, relies largely on American programming, Buffalo's "Big 3" U.S. network affiliates (WBEN-TV, now WIVB-TV; WGR-TV, now WGRZ-TV; and WKBW-TV) threatened legal action in early 1969. Faced with the loss of its primary source of programming, WNYP cut back its local newscasts, laid off staff, and briefly attempted to use a prototype of what would become the Home Shopping Network's on-air product sales strategy to stay afloat. It briefly started to identify as WJTV, but quickly reverted to WNYP-TV because a station in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson,_Mississippi]Jackson, Mississippi already had those call letters. The death knell for the station sounded with the announcement that WUTV would sign on from Buffalo in 1970. Buffalo was not big enough at the time to support two independent stations, so Paxson opted to take the station off the air. (Paxson later started the Pax TV network, now known as Ion Television, and owns WPXJ-TV (channel 51) in the market; coincidentally, Pax/Ion has also imported much of its programming from CTV over the course of its history).

 

Last edited by paterson1 (February 29, 2020 8:18 pm)

 

March 1, 2020 12:32 am  #2


Re: CTV Once Had a Buffalo Affiliate Station

Interesting story. Thanks for posting.

I bet the big three stations were peeved when this happened.

You've gotta at least give PAX some credit for their chutzpah!

 

March 1, 2020 12:38 pm  #3


Re: CTV Once Had a Buffalo Affiliate Station

I knew I had this somewhere. It's from a 1968 TV Guide. I remember thinking that the CTV listing for Channel 26 was a misprint. It just didn't seem possible. Of course we know now that it was. 

 

March 2, 2020 9:23 pm  #4


Re: CTV Once Had a Buffalo Affiliate Station

The article mentions at the end how the PAX and later ION networks picked up a fair bit of programming from CTV. Lowell (Bud) Paxton founded the arrangement with CTV and WNYP and continued to have ties with CTV programming decades later when he formed the PAX and ION networks.

ION over the years has run a lot of cancon on their various networks. Flashpoint, The Listener, Sue Thomas FB Eye, Private Eyes, Saving Hope, Durham County, Rookie Blue and kids programming from CBC.

Even now ION Plus will still run marathons of Flashpoint, The Listener and Saving Hope on their schedules and in prime time.  Some programs like Flashpoint and Private Eyes, ION co-produced with CTV and Global.

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