KTLA: First In The West
KTLA: First In The West
Originally owned by Paramount Pictures subsidiary Television Productions, Inc., and located on the Paramount Studios lot, the station was licensed by the Federal Communications Commission in 1939 as experimental station W6XYZ, on channel 4, but did not go on the air until September 1942. Klaus Landsberg (below left), already an accomplished television pioneer at the age of 26, was the original station manager and engineer. On January 22, 1947, it was licensed for commercial broadcast as KTLA on channel 5, becoming the first commercial television station in Los Angeles, the first to broadcast west of the Mississippi River, and the seventh in the United States. Estimates of television sets in the Los Angeles area at the time ranged from 350 to 600.
KTLA originally carried programming from Paramount’s partner, DuMont, but discontinued the practice after the 1947-48 season. Despite this, the FCC still considered KTLA and sister station WBKB (now WBBM-TV) in Chicago to be DuMont owned-and-operated stations because Paramount held a minority stake in DuMont. As a result, the agency would not allow DuMont to buy additional VHF stations—a problem that would later play a large role in the failure of the DuMont network, whose programming was splintered among other Los Angeles stations until the network’s demise in 1956.
Paramount even launched a short-lived “Paramount Television Network” in 1948, with KTLA and WBKB as its flagship stations. The programming service never gelled into a true television network, but during KTLA’s early years, the station produced over a dozen series seen in syndication in many parts of the U.S. Among these series were Armchair Detective, Bandstand Revue, Dixie Showboat, Frosty Frolics, Hollywood Reel, Hollywood Wrestling, Latin Cruise, Movietown, RSVP, Olympic Wrestling, Sandy Dreams, and Time for Beany.
W6XYZ was KTLA’s experimental license callsign.
We just took that truck out of service last week!
If my memory serves I believe that Paramount (through their theatre company) also owned part of ABC while owning part of DuMont, which lead to a major investigation by the government and was one of the reasons DuMont was not allowed to expand. Paramount kept claiming they had nothing to do with their theatre company, which was proven to me false. It was illegal at the time for a studio to also own theatres. That’s has since changed and Paramount partners with Warner Bros and owns some theatres (or at least they did a few years ago).
Growing up in Southern Cali I remember KTLA
I saw a 1947 Gene Autry film “The Last Roundup” that featured a television boradcast and the cameras used on that looked to be maybe the same as in this photo–were only seen from the rear but I think they were the same. he used television as early as 1936 in his films–pretty prophetic guy, of course owenr of KTLA later.
isn’t that a ham radio call sign? Its currently listed as the LOS ANGELES AMATEUR RADIO GROUP