Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs
I looked up WNDT on Google a while back, and discovered that the station was in fact a commercial station (New Dimension Television, hence the NDT in the call sign) in its early years. I don't recall if the article mentioned when WNDT became a public-TV station, but when it did it changed calls to WNET -- for National Educational Television, but remained on channel 13.
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Actually, 13's status as a commercial station was under two call letters - WATV (1948-58) and WNTA-TV (1958-61). In 1961 - with the help of FCC commissioner Newton Minow - an educational group stepped in to purchase 13 from National Telefilm Associates which had owned the station since 1958 but was losing money hand to foot over it. It had been a non-commercial, educational outlet ever since it was reborn as WNDT in 1962. Within a few short years of that, it was airing NET programs. It was the last of the New York area VHF's to go color in 1967 (this was presumably when the pics of the color test pattern were taken off various color TV sets for that early 1968 issue of
Popular Science referred to earlier - 13 most certainly was an NET affiliate by that point). The 1970 call change to WNET was the result of a forced merger between NET and the station's parent Educational Broadcasting Corporation.