Fifty years ago tonight, WDAF flickered to life in Kansas City
In the fall of 1948 the board of the Kansas City Star Co. met to decide whether to apply for a government permit to build the area's first television station. Today TV stations are some of the most profitable entities on Earth - but Kansas Citians were almost made to wait four more years for their first glimpse of TV because The Star's board wasn't sure it was worth the risk.
They left it up to Roy A. Roberts, the cigar-chomping, larger-than-life editor of the paper, to break a 3-3 deadlock. Roberts cast his vote for TV - not, he insisted, because the station would make a lot of money, although Roberts guessed it would, but because it might "contribute to the good of our community."
And with that lofty ostensible purpose, WDAF, Channel 4, was born. In the time that has passed since Channel 4 began broadcasting - it signed on 50 years ago tonight - those two objectives, to serve the community and to make a profit, have proven a durable pair.
The Star obtained its permit to operate a TV station on Sept. 29, 1948, and then caught a lucky break: A few weeks later, the government stopped handing out television permits because it thought too many were being issued too fast. There wasn't another permit granted until 1953. To make sure its investment paid off, The Star began to beat the drum for television in its pages, extolling the new medium as "a free pass to everything" the wide world had to offer.
As the sign-on date approached, the newspaper held TV demonstrations at the 1949 state fairs in Kansas and Missouri. In September, more than 90,000 curious visitors went through the turnstiles at Municipal Auditorium to see themselves on closed-circuit TV. Dozens of appliance and drug stores began to take out ads in The Star. "It's a Honey for the Money! " declared a Katz Drug Co. ad about the 7-inch Philco TV set it was selling for $ 139.95 (about $ 975 in today's dollars). Another ad touted "Motorola's Thrilling New 9TV1," which had a roomy 8 1/2-inch screen and such simple controls that "a child can tune in a perfect picture without difficulty!"
If the picture tube was tiny by today's standards, the equipment behind it was gargantuan. WDAF's transmitter was eight cabinets long and was powered by vacuum tubes that gave off so much heat the unit had to be water-cooled. By 6 p.m. on Oct. 16, 1949, when chief engineer Joe Flaherty Sr. pushed a big red button to turn on Channel 4's transmitter, 7,500 area households had put down the equivalent of several paychecks to watch that first broadcast from their living rooms. Tens of thousands more Kansas Citians huddled in front of display models at stores that night.
At 6:02, seated in front of garish green drapes and yellow blinds - a color scheme that looked good in black and white - Roberts welcomed the viewers to WDAF. "Television is something different from the movies, the radio, the theater and everything else," Roberts said. "I think television can do things the rest of them have not considered. And I can assure you that you will get the best there is to offer now, and what's better as it comes along."
Well, perhaps. As Roberts spoke, the station's program director, Bill Bates, was struggling to find enough programming even to fill a 4-hour broadcast day. NBC's network cable was still 151 miles east of Kansas City, and wouldn't be extended to WDAF for almost another year. So Bates was left with local programming - which was bulky and expensive to produce - and films, which were nearly impossible to acquire, since most Hollywood studios refused to negotiate with their new rivals. That left Bates to sort through countless ragtag film offerings that had less-than-marquee value. One of them, a series of re-edited "Hopalong Cassidy" features, was a huge hit.
The station turned a Packard hearse into its first mobile unit, with a camera platform on the roof. The hearse was later replaced by a big gray truck that was known as the "Cosa Nostra" because, as former WDAF general manager Bob Wormington said, "It was always going someplace it wasn't supposed to. " (The mobile unit once arrived at the scene of a bank robbery before the police did.)
But much of the evening news was shot on film by the station's roving photographers. On a hot summer's day in 1951 they captured one of the most riveting images seen on WDAF or any other station at that time: a grisly oil-tanker explosion on Southwest Boulevard. Channel 4 also carried live coverage of the flood of 1951.
Viewership grew exponentially, from 50,000 TV-equipped homes in 1950 to 340,000 homes in 1954. WDAF became almost instantly profitable for The Star. But the newspaper would eventually relinquish control of WDAF. In June 1952, the Justice Department opened its probe into antitrust violations at The Star. The government's law enforcers were trained on the newspaper's advertising practices but they were also interested in the company's grip on the local airwaves. It would be six years before the investigation, criminal trial and divestiture were complete, but on May 28, 1958, Roberts appeared on WDAF again, this time to formally announce the transfer of the station to the National Theaters chain. The new owners, said Roberts with emotion in his voice, had pledged to keep WDAF "in the hands of people who had Kansas City interests at heart. " ( The Star recently filed a motion in federal court asking to have parts of the consent decree loosened.)
Two corporate owners came and went. James Schmidt, an engineer at the station from sign-on until 1983, said that when videotape first came on the market in 1959, National Theaters immediately approved the purchase of a room-sized Ampex tape machine. But things changed when Taft Broadcasting of Cincinnati bought the stations in 1964. Taft slashed costs, getting rid of much of the news staff and retiring the mobile unit. At one point, government regulators criticized WDAF for running more television commercials than any other station in the country. Taft eventually dumped its profit-maximizing strategy, but not before WDAF's newscasts had plummeted to third in the ratings. What had taken 20 years to build up required only a few years to unravel, and Channel 4 would spend most of the 1970s reversing its fortunes.
The station rose again as a new generation of on-air talent and managers reasserted WDAF as a local broadcaster and not simply another asset in an out-of-town company's portfolio. In recent years Channel 4 has returned, in a way, to the origins of its early success in Kansas City. The station now produces more than 45 hours per week of local programming. It is no longer the top-rated broadcaster in town, which may owe much to its switching from NBC to Fox in 1994. But its commitment to news is seen by some as a major reason WDAF is adding viewers at a time when many TV stations are losing them.
The biggest changes to affect WDAF in recent years, however, have largely been beyond the station's control. Cable TV gave viewers 20 reasons not to watch local stations, a number that eventually would grow to more than 200 choices. And not even the local market belonged entirely to the big three stations: Channel 41 arrived in 1970, followed later by channels 50, 62, 38 and 29. Perhaps the most dramatic shift in viewing habits is still on the horizon.
In the next decade, WDAF and all the other stations in Kansas City will be required to broadcast digitally. Digital TV will allow WDAF to carve up its signal into four or more separate channels and to air programs in rich, high-definition video with CD-quality sound. WDAF's general manager, Stan Knott, points out that Channel 4's current owner, Fox Television, also owns the Fox News Channel, Fox Sports Net and the FX channel. Why not use those three or four extra signals to transmit Fox's cable networks and give Time Warner Cable a run for its money?
"If we offer an attractive alternative to cable, I think people will switch," said Knott, who points to the success of satellite TV in recent years as proof.
50 Years at WDAF-TV
1949 - Roy Roberts, editor of The Kansas City Star, welcomes viewers to WDAF-TV at 6:02 p.m. on Oct. 16. At 7:30, Randall Jessee reads the news. Nightly sign-off is 10 p.m.
1950 - WDAF airs its first live network telecast, thanks to a new coaxial cable from AT&T.
1952 - "Uncle Frank" Feeley hosts WDAF's first children's program, sponsored by Fritos.
1958 - The Justice Department forces The Star to sell WDAF-AM and WDAF-TV. National Theaters pays $ 7.6 million for the stations.
1960 - The WDAF stations are sold again, to Transcontinent TV Corp. of New York, for $ 9.75 million.
1961 - WDAF-FM signs on the air. It will later become KYYS-FM.
1964 - Taft Broadcasting of Cincinnati buys seven stations, including WDAF-AM-FM-TV, from Transcontinent for a then-industry-record $ 26.9 million.
1981 - WDAF starts a trend by adding a 6 p.m. newscast to its existing 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. broadcasts.
1986 - WDAF is the first Kansas City TV station to broadcast in stereo.
1987 - Taft sells WDAF-AM-TV and KYYS-FM to Great American Communications, which later deals the radio stations to other buyers.
1993 - WDAF general manager Ed Piette leases a news chopper, ending a decade-old gentleman's agreement among Kansas City station managers to keep them out.
1994 - Taft sells WDAF and other stations to New World Communications Group for $ 360 million.
1994 - New World announces that Fox Television has paid it $ 500 million to switch the stations to Fox affiliates. WDAF ends its 72-year association with NBC.
1997 - WDAF and other New World stations are sold to Fox. WDAF-AM and KYYS-FM are bought by Entercom.
Sources: William H. Ryan, Rockhurst University; Broadcasting & Cable Yearbook
