Thursday, November 8, 2007

WKST/WYTV-45/33..Youngstown's ABC-TV


TV Guide Ad in 1968 for the "Dan Ryan Report" Ryan would end up as WKBN-AM 570's morning show host for many years..

Generic ABC-TV ad for the then-new "Real McCoys" Comedy Series, aired on WKST-45 Thursday, May 15, 1958 at 8:30 PM. (Pittsburgh TV Guide)

April 30, 1958 TV Guide Closeup for "Disneyland" on WKST-45 New Castle, Pa. (Cleveland TV Guide)


Early in the Blog, at the end of April/First part of May 2007 we shared the formative years of Youngstown TV with the sign-on of WKBN-27 and WFMJ-21 (at first 73)..Now we'll take a look at a little bit of later Youngstown TV History..

Some background: WKBN, while primarily CBS, carried generous portions of ABC and DuMont TV schedules, some shows in non-prime time hours..October 30, 1957 brought the establishment of WKST-TV channel 45 in New Castle, Pa. The Youngstown Market's first ABC affiliate..As noted in the May 10-16, 1958 TV Guide Pittsburgh Edition, no less than 9 of the 12 listed stations in places like Altoona, Clarksburg, Steubenville/Wheeling, Johnstown, and of course Pittsburgh and Youngstown, were at least partial ABC affiliates. So WKST-45 technically became the first full time ABC affiliate in Western Pennsylvania, a few months before WTAE-TV 4 Pittsburgh signed on..

WKST-45 was the third UHF in a UHF Market..ABC was just starting to establish itself and still didnt have much to go on ratings wise compared to NBC and CBS..45 did carry ABC in pattern pretty much at this time..

Wednesday, April 30, 1958 (Cleveland TV Guide)

3PM American Bandstand
3;30 Do You Trust Your Wife?
4PM American Bandstand
5PM Wild Bill Hickock-ABC
5:30 Mickey Mouse Club
6PM Kasper Kapers
6:15 News, Sports
6:30 Flash Gordon
7PM Sports Focus
7:15 ABC News-John Daly
7:30 Disneyland
8:30 Tombstone Territory
9PM Ozzie and Harriet
9:30 Betty White Show-Last Show of Series-Began as "Date With The Angels" sitcom but appears to be a variety show format now
10PM Boxing-Chicago-Jack Drees
10:45 Movie-Singapore

WKST stayed on Channel 45 through at least most of 1959. Between November 28-December 3, 1959 the station had moved to channel 33, still as WKST but relicensed to Youngstown..

WKST-33
Monday, December 5, 1960

11AM Morning Court
11:30 Love That Bob!
Noon Texan
12:30 Beat The Clock
1PM About Faces
1:30 Young World
2PM Day In Court
2:30 Road To Reality
3PM Queen For A Day
3:30 Who Do You Trust?
4PM American Bandstand
5:30 Captain Gallant
6PM Little Rascals
6:45 ABC News-John Daly
7PM Jim Backus
7:30 Cheyenne
8:30 Surfside 6
9:30 Adventures In Paradise
10:30 Peter Gunn
11PM Movie-The Men In Her Life-1941

of 14 hours-only 2.5 programmed locally-The rest network-and no local news as yet

By 1964 Channel 33's call letters were changed to WYTV..Local News began with Paul Burke at 11PM weeknights by this time..Also, by 1964 Barney Bean had begun a long run as Children's Host..

Thursday, Feb. 15, 1968-WYTV-33

8AM Cartoons
9AM Ed Allen
9:30 Dateline:Youngstown-Charles DeVault-Live talk show-This may have mutated into "Good Morning Youngstown" with Gary Cubberly and Cindy Ikins by the mid-1970's..I remember watching "GMY"
10:30 Donna Reed
11AM Temptation
11:25 ABC News
11:30 How's Your Mother In Law
Noon Bewitched
12:30 Treasure Isle
1PM Fugitive
2PM Newlywed Game
2:30 Baby Game
3PM General Hospital
3:30 Dark Shadows
4PM Dating Game
4:30 Cartoons
5:15 Local News-Joe Shafran
5:30 ABC News-Bob Young
6PM Mike Douglas
7:30 Winter Olympics
8:30 Bewitched
9PM That Girl
9:30 Peyton Place
10PM Felony Squad (delayed from Mon. 9PM)
10:30 Rat Patrol (delayed from Mon. 9:30 PM)
11PM News
11:15 Winter Olympics
11:30 TBA
11:45 Joey Bishop

WKST/WYTV's first location was the First Federal Plaza in New Castle then moving to 3800 Shady Run Road, Youngstown by 1959..They are still located there.

WYTV is also notable for being the Youngstown home of Cleveland Indians Baseball in the 1960's and 70's, as well as Y-Town's first Fox affiliate from 1994-98..They have recently been sold to Parkin Brodcasting, and are now in a "shared services" agreement with WKBN-27..Their digital service is MyTV Youngstown which carries the My Network and WYTV News, and some retro programming..

Next:WXTV 45..A try at an Independent in the Youngstown area..

4 comments:

  1. as well as Y-Town's first Fox affiliate from 1994-98

    I didn't know that; I thought that Youngstown didn't have a FOX affiliate until September 1998. Do you know what channel it was on when WYTV had it?

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  2. At the time of the Big switch of major stations to Fox in 1994, Youngstown didnt have a Fox afilliate..WYTV-33 took on FOX, mostly for the NFL..FOX programming was shown in off-hours and late night on channel 33.

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  3. The FOX net programming inculded COPS (Tues and WED 12:35 AM), the X-files (Sat at 11:30 PM),Melrose Place (Sun at midnite),and The Power Rangers (Mon-Fri-6:30 AM. By the start of 1996 all of the FOX primetime shows was gone and all they aired was NFL Football until the sign on of WYFX/WFXI Fox 17/62 in 1998. I also recall Good Morning Youngstown as My mother watched it when I got home from kindergarten in the early 1980's.

    As for the WYTV of today it is very pale as compaired to their past and after WKBN started handling whatever they do, iit has gotten even worse.

    All live local programming on MY-YTV such as the 10 PM news/ my sports talk ( which have have been replaced by The Tyra Banks show weeknights and cold squad on the weekends), For the people (which was relplaced by Judge David Young) and the 30 minutes of high school programming they said that would air on Sunday morning has been replace by my bed bugs. They also stopped using their downtown news studio and all local programming comes from Shady run road. I also should note that the Tyra Banks show also airs on Fox 17/62 weekdays at 4 PM so that must be part of the deal with WKBN is to provide WYTV with some programming and that is it.

    Sorry for the long post but since the local Radio/TV discussion boards and blogs missed this one, I thought this topic would be a good place to bring it since it fits right in.


    http://www.wytv.com/programschedule

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  4. Bad management, even worse on airtalent and not being owned by a "media" company for the past five or so years was the death blow to WYTV.

    Ditrans.

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