WNBC (channel 4) is a television station in New York City. It is the flagship station of the NBC television network, owned and operated through its NBC Owned Television Stations division. Under common ownership with Linden, New Jersey–licensed Telemundo outlet WNJU (channel 47), the two stations share studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, co-located with NBC's corporate headquarters, and broadcast from the same transmitter at One World Trade Center; WNJU's facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, also serve as WNBC's New Jersey news bureau.
WNBC holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating commercial television station in the United States.
History Experimental operations What is now WNBC traces its history to experimental station W2XBS, founded by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA, a co-founder of the National Broadcasting Company), in 1928, just two years after NBC was founded as the first nationwide radio network. Originally a test bed for the experimental RCA Photophone theater television system, W2XBS used the low-definition mechanical television scanning system. Later it was used mostly for reception and interference tests. The call letters W2XBS meant W2XB-south, with W2XB being the call letters of the first experimental station, started a few months earlier at General Electric's (GE) main factory in Schenectady, New York, which evolved into today's WRGB. GE was the parent company of both RCA and NBC, and technical research was done at the Schenectady plant.
The station originally broadcast on the frequencies of 2.0 to 2.1 MHz. In 1929, W2XBS upgraded its transmitter and broadcast facilities to handle transmissions of 60 vertical lines at 20 frames per second, on the frequencies of 2.75 to 2.85 MHz. In 1928, Felix the Cat was one of the first images ever broadcast by television when RCA chose a papier-mâché (later Bakelite) Felix doll for an experimental broadcast on W2XBS. The doll was chosen for its tonal contrast and its ability to withstand the intense lights needed in early television. It was placed on a rotating phonograph turntable and televised for about two hours each day. The doll remained on the turntable for nearly a decade as RCA fine-tuned the picture's definition, and converted to electronic television.
The station left the air sometime in 1933 as RCA turned its attention to all-electronic cathode-ray tube (CRT) television research at its Camden, New Jersey facility, under the leadership of Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin.
In 1935, the all-electronic CRT system was authorized as a "field test" project and NBC converted a radio studio in the RCA Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center for television use. In mid-1936, small-scale, irregularly scheduled programming began to air to an audience of some 75 receivers in the homes of high-level RCA staff, and a dozen or so sets in a closed circuit viewing room in 52nd-floor offices of the RCA Building. The viewing room often hosted visiting organizations or corporate guests, who saw a live program produced in the studios many floors below.
Viewership of early NBC broadcasts was tightly restricted to those authorized by the company, whose installed set base eventually reached about 200. Technical standards for television broadcasting were in flux as well. Between the time experimental, electronic transmissions began in 1935 and the beginning of commercial television service in 1941, picture definition increased from 343 to 441 lines, and finally (in 1941) to the 525-line standard used for analog television from the start of full commercial service until the end of analog broadcasts in mid-2009. The sound signal was also changed from AM to FM, and the spacing of sound and vision carriers was also changed several times. Shortly after NBC began a semi-regular television transmission schedule in 1938, DuMont Laboratories announced TV sets for sale to the public, a move that RCA was saving for the opening of the World's Fair on April 30, 1939, the day that regularly scheduled television programming was to begin in New York on NBC with much fanfare. In response, NBC ceased all TV broadcasting for several weeks until RCA sets went on sale; regular NBC telecasts commenced the day the fair opened.
Firsts for W2XBS As W2XBS broadcasting on "Channel 1" (44–50 MHz), the station scored numerous "firsts". These included: the first televised Broadway drama (June 1938); the first live news event covered by a mobile unit (a fire in an abandoned building in November 1938); the first live telecast of a presidential speech (Franklin D. Roosevelt opening the 1939 New York World's Fair); the first live telecasts of college and Major League Baseball (both in 1939), the first telecast of a National Football League game (also in 1939); the first telecast of a National Hockey League game (early 1940); the first broadcast of religious services (Easter Sunday 1940); the first network (multi-city) telecast of a political convention (the 1940 Republican National Convention, held June 24–28 in the Philadelphia Civic Center) seen also on W3XE in Philadelphia (now KYW-TV) and W2XB in Schenectady (now WRGB); and the broadcast of the feature film The Crooked Circle on June 18, 1940.
In August 1940, W2XBS transmissions were temporarily put on hold, as "Channel 1" was reassigned by the FCC to 50–56 MHz; technical adjustments needed to be made for the conversion. The station returned to the air in October, just in time to broadcast Franklin D. Roosevelt's second and final appearance on live television, when his speech at Madison Square Garden on October 28, 1940, was telecast over W2XBS.The Magic Window by James Von Schilling Haworth Press 2002 pages 28 and 29
First commercial television station On June 24, 1941, W2XBS received a commercial license under the calls WNBT (for "NBC Television"), thus becoming one of the first two fully licensed commercial television stations in the United States, alongside CBS's WCBW on channel 2 (now WCBS-TV), which had evolved from experimental W2XAB. NBC and CBS were instructed to sign on simultaneously on July 1 so that neither of the major broadcast companies could claim exclusively to be "first". However, WNBT signed on at 1:30 pm, one full hour before WCBW. As a result, WNBC (and essentially, NBC) inadvertently holds the distinction as the oldest continuously operating commercial television station (and television network, respectively) in the United States, and also the only one ready to accept sponsors from its beginning. The first program broadcast at 1 p.m. EST by the sign-on/opening ceremony with the U.S. national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner", followed by an announcement of that day's programs and the commencement of NBC television programming.
WNBT originally broadcast on channel 1. On its first day on the air, WNBT broadcast the world's first official television advertisement before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00 (reports vary), displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase "Bulova Watch Time", was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. Bulova-sponsored time signals would still appear on the station on a daily basis as late as 1949.
Although full commercial telecasting began on July 1, 1941, with the first paid advertisements on WNBT, there had been experimental, non-paid advertising on television as far back as 1930. NBC's earliest non-paid, television commercials may have been those seen during the first Major League Baseball game ever telecast, a game between the Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds, on August 26, 1939, over W2XBS. To secure the rights to show the game on television, NBC allowed each of the Dodgers' regular radio sponsors at the time to have one commercial during the telecast; these were done by Dodger announcer Red Barber. For Ivory Soap, he held up a bar of the product, for Mobil gas he put on a filling station attendant's cap while giving his spiel, and for Wheaties he poured a bowl of the cereal, added milk and bananas, and took a big spoonful.
The pioneering special interest/documentary show The Voice of Firestone Televues, a television offshoot of The Voice of Firestone, a mainstay on NBC radio since 1928, became the first regularly scheduled TV program not featuring news or sports when it began on WNBT on November 29, 1943. (Though a one-time-only, trial episode of Truth or Consequences aired on WNBT's first week of programming two years earlier; it eventually returned to TV in the 1950s.)
During World War II, RCA diverted key technical TV staff to the U.S. Navy, which was interested in developing a television-guided bomb. WNBT's studio and program staff were placed at the disposal of the New York City Police Department and used for civil defense training telecasts, with only a limited number of weekly programs for general audiences airing during much of the war. Programming began to grow on a small scale during 1944. On April 10, 1944, WNBT began feeding The Voice of Firestone Televues each week to a small network of stations including General Electric's Schenectady station (now called WRGB) and Philco-owned WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia,The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows by Tim Brooks, Earle F. Marsh. Ballantine Books, New York both of which are now affiliated with CBS (in KYW-TV's case, they are owned by CBS). This series is considered to be the NBC Television Network's first regularly scheduled program.
On May 8, 1945, WNBT broadcast hours of news coverage on the end of World War II in Europe, and remotes from around New York City. This event was pre-promoted by NBC with a direct-mail card sent to television set owners in the New York City area. At one point, a WNBT camera placed atop the marquee of the Astor Hotel in New York City panned the crowd below celebrating the end of the war in Europe. The vivid coverage was a prelude to television's rapid growth after the war ended. In the spring of 1946, the station changed its frequency from VHF channel 1 to channel 4 after channel 1 was removed from use for television broadcasting. From 1946 to 2009, it occupied the 66–72 MHz band of frequencies which had been designated as "channel 3" in the pre-1946 FCC allocation table. It was renumbered Channel 4 in the post-war system (DuMont-owned WABD, now WNYW—had been designated as "Channel 4", before that station moved to the current channel 5 but was only required to retune its video and audio carriers downward by 2 MHz under the new system). In October 1948, WNBT's operations were integrated with those of sister stations WNBC radio (660 AM) and WNBC-FM (97.1).
The station changed its call letters on October 18, 1954, to WRCA-TV (for NBC's then-parent company, Radio Corporation of America or RCA) and on May 22, 1960, channel 4 became WNBC-TV. NBC had previously used the callsign on its television station in New Britain, Connecticut, from 1957 until it was sold earlier in 1960 (that station is now WVIT, and is once again an NBC-owned station). WNBC-TV also earned a place in broadcasting history as the birthplace of The Tonight Show. It began on the station in 1953 as a local late night program, The Steve Allen Show, and NBC executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver brought it to the network in 1954. Studio 6B, the show's home under Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and today Jimmy Fallon, was the news studio for WNBC while Tonight was produced in Los Angeles.