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May 14, 1948 saw the arrival of WBEN CH 4. Originally an NBC affilliate because the AM sister station was part of the NBC Blue network, the switch to CBS programming would occur in January 1949.
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This was literally the first local or at least semi-local TV station on the air in the Golden Horseshoe. CBLT (CBC) wouldn't sign on until September, 1952 on channel 9, later moving to channel 5. WBEN channel 4 reportedly had a strong edge in ratings for years after. The same can probably be said about the other Buffalo VHF stations; channel 2 WGRZ, formerly WGR and channel 7 WKBW. It might be hard to imagine especially for those in my age group (20s) that there was once a time when Buffalo was a more major and vibrant media market than the whole Golden Horseshoe put together.
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tdotwriter wrote:
This was literally the first local or at least semi-local TV station on the air in the Golden Horseshoe. CBLT (CBC) wouldn't sign on until September, 1952 on channel 9, later moving to channel 5. WBEN channel 4 reportedly had a strong edge in ratings for years after. The same can probably be said about the other Buffalo VHF stations; channel 2 WGRZ, formerly WGR and channel 7 WKBW. It might be hard to imagine especially for those in my age group (20s) that there was once a time when Buffalo was a more major and vibrant media market than the whole Golden Horseshoe put together.
I am assuming that "5" was a typo. The move to ch 5 came in 1972 They moved from 9 to 6 in 1956.
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mace wrote:
tdotwriter wrote:
This was literally the first local or at least semi-local TV station on the air in the Golden Horseshoe. CBLT (CBC) wouldn't sign on until September, 1952 on channel 9, later moving to channel 5. WBEN channel 4 reportedly had a strong edge in ratings for years after. The same can probably be said about the other Buffalo VHF stations; channel 2 WGRZ, formerly WGR and channel 7 WKBW. It might be hard to imagine especially for those in my age group (20s) that there was once a time when Buffalo was a more major and vibrant media market than the whole Golden Horseshoe put together.
I am assuming that "5" was a typo. The move to ch 5 came in 1972 They moved from 9 to 6 in 1956.
Correct. I forgot that they moved to channel 6 and then to channel 5 at some point in the 1960s.
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tdotwriter wrote:
It might be hard to imagine especially for those in my age group (20s) that there was once a time when Buffalo was a more major and vibrant media market than the whole Golden Horseshoe put together.
I don't I really feel that up to the mid 80s, in MANY ways, when it came to radio and television, that Buffalo was the "big city". If you listen to Buffalo radio in the early to mid 80s, imaging and sound quality was miles ahead, especially when you had access to syndicated resources out of LA, NYC and Dallas. WNYS just sounded BIGGER, as did KB-15, WGR and Kiss 98.5. They had access to songs (and even versions of songs) in Western New York that we just never did.
And even when it came to television, it felt more slick, as though it were more of an event, watching a show on a network affiliate, rather than say CHCH or the like. In fact, outside of Toronto, we all still watched Irv on channel 7, as CHCH didn't really bone up on their local news until 1982 with Channel 11 Newsroom.
The illusion seemed to be was that things were bigger and better if it came from America. Hard to believe I ever thought that way ...lol