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Television comes to Detroit - 1946/1947

In late October of 1946, WWDT signed on as Detroit's very first commercial television station for a single day of programming. The transmitter and cameras had been purchased from DuMont, and network affiliation was originally intended to be with DuMont. Power input to the transmitting antenna was a paltry 500 watts, and engineers reported nothing but snow at the corner of 9 Mile and Woodward in Ferndale, Michigan. The Evening News, owners of WWDT, were dissatisfied with the test delayed the start of regular broadcasting until changes could be made.

Infrequent unannounced tests continued until March 4, 1947, when a second attempt was made to start regular programming was made. New RCA cameras had been purchased for remote work; the DuMonts stayed at the studios. There was a major advertisement blitz from RCA and DuMont, but again, the News was dissatisfied with results, and regular broadcasting was again delayed. Infrequent tests were made, again generally unannounced while the engineers struggled to get comfortable with the new medium.

On May 15, 1947, WWDT changed its call letters to the more familiar WWJ-TV and switched from a DuMont primary affiliate to NBC. At some point between May and June, the station received a new 5000 watt RCA transmitter. The old DuMont transmitter was sold to Harold F. Gross of Lansing where it would be used at WJIM from 1950 until sometime in early 1954.

Finally, on June 3, 1947, regularly scheduled programming from WWJ-TV commenced with a ball game live from Briggs Stadium at Michigan and Trumbull. The Tigers lost to the Yankees, but the News had considerably better success; engineers reported noisy but watchable reception as far away as Flint and Port Huron, with sufficiently large antennae of course, and a city grade signal throughout much of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties.

The following clippings from the Detroit News document this eight month period in chronological order.

https://preview.ibb.co/d86Za8/Early_...vision_000.png
https://image.ibb.co/mSLGoT/Early_De...vision_001.png
https://preview.ibb.co/nbpWNo/Early_...vision_002.png
https://image.ibb.co/cbHJ2o/Early_De...vision_003.png
https://preview.ibb.co/bEvhTT/Early_...vision_004.png
https://image.ibb.co/jD5hTT/Early_De...vision_005.png
https://image.ibb.co/j6DfF8/Early_De...vision_006.png
https://preview.ibb.co/hKxU8T/Early_...vision_007.png

Has anyone actually ever seen the Scott advertised in the Grinnell brother's advertisement? I've seen a schematic; it is just a DuMont RA-102 chassis, in a homely cabinet, less AM radio, with a 6V6 triode-strapped and connected as a cathode follower to feed the audio to a Scott radio.

Finally, follow this link, www.detroitvintagetv.com, to see 16mm home movie footage from June 3rd 1947. It shows Briggs Stadium, WWJ-TV announcer Ty Tyson, scenes inside a bar (since identified as Hoot Robinson's Bar) with television sets on, scenes of the DuMont iconoscope cameras in action at a WWJ-TV studio (either in the Penobscott or possibly in Hudson's department store) and finally the antenna tower atop the Penobscott.

Very well done! Thanks for putting this together & sharing!

Excellent research. Must have been a very exciting time, the war was over and now this fascinating new “technology of the future” was debuting.

Oh to have a time machine...

This post would be a good candidate for a Sticky.

Thanks for putting this all together. The newsreel footage was very interesting. With so much lighting in the studio, they probably didn't have to turn on the stove for the cooking demo!

Having both the 630TS and 621TS TV's in my collection, I really enjoyed all the information. It made you really see just how new television was in '46-'47. It really wasn't until 1948 when programming improved and lower cost sets hit the market that it really took off.

Television come to Detroit 1946-1947

Are my eyes deceiving me , or is that a DuMont camera at Briggs field?

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldtvnut (Post 3208429)

Are my eyes deceiving me , or is that a DuMont camera at Briggs field?

WWDT/WWJ was a Dumont affiliate in the 1947-48 timeframe.

Darryl

Quote:

Originally Posted by decojoe67 (Post 3200633)

It looks like Detroit got TV almost a year before Milwaukee did, May 1948.
When we got a TV, I was about 4YO. The local programs weren't that great and programing first started at 3:00 PM. One channel carried all the programing from the various networks, NBC, Dumont etc. :scratch2:

WWDT signed on in October 1946 as a DuMont primary, with NBC as a secondary affiliation. By March 1947, the situation had flipped at WWJ. The station was now NBC primary with secondary DuMont affiliation. CBS and ABC were also secondary affiliations until WJBK (CBS) and WXYZ (ABC) went on the air in late 1948. WJBK took the DuMont affiliation in 1948, leaving WWJ with just NBC.

In 1955, CKLW in Windsor took the DuMont affiliation until the network shutdown in August 1956. Nobody knows for sure how much DuMont programming CKLW actually carried in this period. Network operations at DuMont seem to have ground to a halt with the exception of the occasional sporting event after mid-1955.