MY TV JOURNEY

     Now after half a year of building worry and sweat WWAC was pumping out our programming product 7 days a week from 8:AM to Midnight (I was surprised that our Chairman hadn’t asked Whadabout 24 hours a day?  All our competition runs round the clock.  Thankfully he was satisfied with actually getting us on the air - for now!)  And now it was my turn to find out if my program schedule would “sell” to sponsors and viewers too.  The following is the highlight reel of the building of the most watched station in our ADI.   (Area of Demographic Influence which was determined by the ratings companies and ours was Philadelphia to Cape May.  And our major competition was a local Wildwood stations that we really didn’t worry about because it was closed to a cable company’s local access channel when it came to programs.  However, Philly had three big independent UHF stations which were to be our market penetration benchmarks - they had been on th...

And so the TV Titanic was launched.  And it made news as we were one of the last UHF stations to be built in the nation.  Because our fearless leader Frank ordered no rehearsals our first news show which I christened “NEWS & MORE” (which nobody liked at first).  However, my choice was limited because Philly TV and local AC radio had taken most of the cliches’: Evening New, Today’s News, Tomorrow’s News Today, Action News, Headline News, NewsPlus.  I wrestled with our slogan for days - but to every doubter within a month it was familiar to a surprising number of new viewers.  The radio stations were worried.  And the other local station in Wildwood was mortified because they had very few viewers before us. Our sales team really had their fingers on the pulse of our market penetration and they were amazed.  Many outside the industry think the business is about programs - the reality is that it’s about sponsors first and programming is the hook (wheth...