May 2, 1941…Commercial Television Becomes A Reality…ALMOST
May 2, 1941…Commercial Television Becomes A Reality…ALMOST
On this day in 1941, the FCC set the stage for commercial television to begin, when it agreed to grant 10 stations commercial TV licenses effective July 1, 1941, which called for those stations to broadcast 15 hours per week. W2XBS (WNBT) received license number one, and W2XAB (WCBW) received license number 2. Although Dumont was on the air in NYC, it remained experimental station W2XYV until May 2, 1944, a full three years later, due to a war related licensing freeze.
It was only on March 8, 1941, that NTSC formally recommended the new broadcast standards to the FCC, calling for 525 lines and 30 frames per second. On Apr. 30, 1941, the FCC approved the NTSC standards and authorized commercial TV to begin on July 1. -Bobby Ellerbee
In 1976 and 77 I was an NBC Radio desk assistant in 30 Rock. On my lunch hour, I visited the TV Engineering office and asked to borrow the original WNBT test pattern (like the one you see above). They found it and gave it to me — mounted on a plank of wood, as I recall. It was a little shopworn — even then it was pretty old. I rushed it to a local printing shop and had a direct positive made. The huge frame I bought for it cost more than the direct positive. I still have it to this day. They also would have given me the first color test pattern but I didn’t have time to duplicate both.
THIS IS TV!!!!
W3XE T.P.
I remember as a young child, TV stations signing off with the national anthem.
Don’t forget license number 3: WPTZ, Philadelphia, Philco Television, which started as a commercial station the same day. It’s now KYW-TV, CBS3. It started in 1932 as experimental station W3XE and before KYW converted to digital, the last analog image from the station was the old W3XE Philco test pattern.
Fun fact – the figure in the middle of the WABD test pattern was named Alec Electron.