WHCT-TV, Channel 18 (ABC, DuMont, CBS)

Hartford, Connecticut (1954-1991)
Owned by Astroline Communications



  • Channel 18 first went on the air on August 4, 1954 as WGTH-TV (Channel 71), a DuMont/ABC affiliate owned by The Hartford Times newspaper. The station was sold to the CBS Television Network, in 1955. The new station on Channel 18 (now named WHCT originally for "Hartford CBS Television", contrary to some local folklore that it signified "Hartford, CT" or "Hartford Christian Television") swapped network affiliations with Channel 8, WNHC-TV (Now WTNH) in New Haven, CT to become the exclusive CBS owned and operated affiliate for the Hartford market in 1956. The CBS affiliation did not last long, for 2 reasons. One reason was the lack of signal parity with early UHF transmitters and converters. The other reason was a new VHF station had taken up residence in Hartford. Channel 3 WTIC-TV (now WFSB), owned by the Travelers Insurance Corporation, went on the air in 1957 as an independent station. It did not take long for William Paley, shrewd network head that he was, that it made good business sense to have his product on a powerful VHF station (albeit one that CBS did not own) than a weak, money-bleeding UHF station. By 1959, Channel 3 was the CBS outlet in Connecticut, and Channel 18 was sold to the General Tire Corporation, owners of WNAC-TV(now WHDH-TV) in Boston and WOR-TV (now WWOR) in New York, where it became a money-bleeding independent.

  • RKO General, being the shrewd business people and broadcast innovators (Hey ! They invented the "ARKO-Matic", which now lives on in the BIG68 website, linked to from RealRadio.), decided if they were going to lose money, why not lose money on a experiment 20 years ahead of its time.

  • Hence, the first Pay-TV experiment. Not unlike HBO, WHCT would show movies that had recently completed their theatre runs, as well as sporting events from Madison Square Garden (such N.Y. Rangers hockey, and boxing). The station's signal would be scrambled, and subscribers would need a converter to unscramble.

  • Word has it that the converter device included some type of coin box that the subscriber had to feed change into to unscramble the signal. The experiment failed mainly because that it was too far ahead of its' time and also due to the fact that the scrambling system (Zenith's Phonevision) did not work in color.

  • Thus the experiment was abandoned in 1968. RKO continued to operate the station as a limited hour (on the air in the late afternoon, off the air by late night) independent until 1972.

  • The programming fare during this period included New York Yankees Baseball from WPIX, Celtics & Bruins telecasts from WSMW & WSBK as well as reruns like "Lassie", "My Favorite Martian", old movies, and cartoons. The typical standard, low-profit stuff.

  • Change, however, was in the offing for Channel 18. RKO finally bailed out by '72, and gave the station to to Dr. Eugene Scott and his Faith Center crew as a gift. Initially, the change was not readily apparent, as the station continued pumping out the requisite Yankee telecasts, reruns, old flicks. The station also carried World Football League (remember that disaster?) games in 1974 and briefly televised the road games of the WHA's New England Whalers in 1977.

  • Eventually, Dr. Gene became the omnipresent image as the 70's faded into the '80's, just as Channel 18 faded from screens in the Hartford-New Haven Springfield area. Channel 18's transmitter was vandalized in 1979, requiring the station to transmit as a low-power station in its final years under the good doctor. It was a dark time for Channel 18, but darker times were soon to come. To fill the independent TV breach came cable TV, offering great indy's like WSBK, WNEW, WPIX, WTBS, and 2 startups in the Hartford market; WTXX, Channel 20 in Waterbury, CT (formerly a weak NBC affiliate, WATR, renowned for "My Little Margie" reruns and Jets football), and WTIC-TV, Channel 61, soon to become a Fox affiliate.

  • In 1985, the good Dr. Gene, feeling the IRS & FCC pinch, put Channel 18 up for "distress" sale. The FCC stipulated that the station be sold to a group of minority ownership. The FCC approved the sale to a limited partnership, "Astroline Communications", a group headed by former WMJX-FM (Boston) Sales Manager Richard Ramirez, and several backers. One of the applicants for the Channel 18 license, Alan Sherburg, a computer consultant from Rocky Hill, CT, felt the license granting was a farce. He claimed the backers were not a minority group at all, that allegedly Ramirez was simply a figurehead "minority" for the purpose of allowing these backers to own the station, and as such, the station's ownership was not in the community's interest as defined by the FCC distress sale mandate. He pursued his case in the federal courts for the next 5 years, which became a massive financial drain on the fledgling station's resources, as attorneys spent time fighting for the station's right to operate (Shurberg even argued his case on the infamous "Morton Downey Jr. Show" in 1989).

  • The new, revamped WHCT was off to an inauspicious start. The station returned to the air, and many Hartford area cable systems in late September 1985, with a diet of movies, reruns, and bottom-of-the-barrel syndicated programs not wanted by WTXX & WTIC. This included such '70's chestnuts as "The Brady Bunch", "The Odd Couple", "Columbo", "MacMillan & Wife", "The Best of Saturday Night Live", "Dallas", "Mork & Mindy" and "SCTV" (Although this may sound like a cool lineup today, remember that in the mid-80's, all that was associated with the '70's was considered decidedly unhip). This was rounded out by genuine "bottom-of-the-barrel" programming such as "Julia", "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir", and the soon-to-be-put-out-pasture "Merv Griffin Show". The response, as well as the first 2 Arbitron & Neilson books, was pretty under whelming.

  • All the activity was taking place in one large, garage-like room that became the station's main studio when building renovations were completed in March 1986. One part of the room contained temporary wooden shelves which housed the 3/4 inch tapes that were the station's tape library. In one corner was the production area, which housed a Grass Valley switcher, a Chiron machine, a 16-track audio board, and an Ampex ADO computerized editor for special effects. Next to it was a small master control area with a crude switcher, 3 3/4 inch tape decks for program playback, several small B&W monitors and 2 frame syncs. Spread out along the remainder of the room were long tables & chairs holding dubbing stations.

  • One table contained 2 Ampex VPR-80 1 inch VTRs, each wired to both a 3/4 inch VTR deck and a 2 sided time code generator. Another table had a similar setup, except these machines were hardwired to an old telecine in the corner and an equally old, unreliable Ampex Quad VTR. Another part of the room had a film editor, and smack in the middle of the area with the dubbing stations was a mechanized monstrosity containing a bank of 12 3/4 inch tape decks, attached to a PC hard drive, keyboard & screen. It was called the LaKart system.

  • The bitter end nearly came in the Spring of 1986, as several employees were let go amid the mountains of start-up debt. However, WHCT received an unlikely stay of execution. Most improbably, the station signed a 3 year agreement to televise 20 road games per season of the NHL's Hartford Whalers. At the time, the Whalers were enjoying their greatest bout of success, having taken the eventual Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadians through a grueling 7-game quarterfinal series which the Whale missed winning by one goal (Hell, the city of Hartford even had a parade for them!). WHCT thought that burgeoning Whaler mania would be their ticket to the promised land.

  • Instead, the station wound up floundered on the beach. The Whalers never lived up to the promise shown by their 1986 playoff run, taking an early playoff exit in 1987 despite winning the NHL's Adams Division, and mailing in .500 regular seasons with first round playoff defeats the next 2 years. The Neilson ratings reflected this disappointment, as the station averaged 3 to 5 ratings points for Whalers telecasts over the 3 year life span of the contract (Still far better than the typical "Audience too small to measure" ratings for the rest of its daily lineup).

  • Despite this, the Whalers identification brought the station some needed local ad revenue. Most of the local advertising was home grown, as the station opened their facilities, at a minimum of cost to advertisers, to produce local spots that could be aired not only on Channel 18, but other local outlets as well. The station produced ads for Hartford-area car dealerships (including one ad with baseball slugger Reggie Jackson in 1987), furniture stores, yuppie restaurants, menswear stores, and even the Double A baseball New Britain Red Sox. What money was gained from these spots was also ploughed back into producing some local programming. This included a daily, live Catholic mass (for which "yours truly" was responsible for the show's opening center camera smooth zoom down from a close up of Jesus on a silver cross to a wide shot of the priest entering.), a weekly job search program, "Classified 18", telecasts of selected University of Hartford Hawks NCAA Basketball games, and a live, in-studio, call-in post-game show for Hartford Whalers telecasts, hosted by local rock DJ and sports expert, Irv Goldfarb.

  • Despite all this, the station was still ailing financially, and programming distributors were not getting paid. To stave off the repo man, the station began regularly airing paid programming for whatever and whoever would pony up; skin care items, weight loss pills, Home Shopping Network and even Jim & Tammy Bakker (The station showed the "PTL Club" twice a day during the Bakker's famous downfall in 1987). By 1989, the WHCT's creditors had forced the station into an involuntary bankruptcy, which forced it to refrain from regular programming, except for a few hours at night for Columbo & Kojak reruns, a movie or a Whaler game (The Whalers contract was not renewed in 1990, and the station started carrying Boston Celtics games from WFXT instead). The rest of the station's schedule was lousy with paid programming and the Home Shopping Network for the next 3 years to repay their debts. Unfortunately, the debt repayment didn't happen fast enough to satisfy the creditors or the Federal Bankruptcy court. In April 1991, the Federal Bankruptcy court ordered the station to sign off and the equipment repossessed to satisfy the creditor's demands. Channel 18 remained dark for the next 5 years, until the license was purchased by the owners of Channel 26, WHPX, a New London, CT PAX affiliate. The station was returned to the airwaves in the spring of 1996, showing a steady stream of paid programming and shopping channel fare, except for a season of showing Red Sox baseball in 1998. Many local cable companies never bothered to restore the station to their systems (including TCI cablevision in Hartford). The station is now operated from an office building in West Hartford, CT. WHCT's studio building on Garden Street in Hartford had their date with the wrecking ball on June 26th 1999. The original transmitter facilities on Deercliff Road in Avon, CT are still in use to this day (I failed to mentioned the station upgraded from 500,000 watts to 3 Million watts in March 1987, its current radiated power output.)

    Station history written by Kyle Bookholz

    Editor: Kyle Bookholz worked at WHCT for a few years in the late 1980's. We thank him for sharing his many experiences at Channel 18. You may want to know that WHCT-TV came back to the air in February, 1997, just a few days before the FCC mandated that ANY silent stations, not back on the air by February 9, 1997 will lose their license for keeps. Channel 18 just made it by the skin of their teeth. Recently, WHCT-TV has been sold to Entravision, Inc. for $18,000,000. Entravision has converted the station (now WUVN after a call-letter change on 12/15/00) to a Spanish language format. Thus the long saga of WHCT-TV has come to a close after 45 years. "What a long, strange trip it's been......". -Pete

    Many thanks to Marc Bramhall for some updated WUVN information.     1