In April 1948, the first television station in the U.S. South signed on the air. Today, WTVR-6 in Richmond is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
But, the E.W. Scripps Co. station affiliated with CBS says the station’s story requires going back even further than that celebratory sign-on date.
WTVR journalist Don Talley shares that the station’s history begins with Wilbur M. Havens, and his “history-making encounter with the law of unintended consequences.”
In 1927, Havens and his business partner, a man named Martin, operated a small automotive battery, ignition, and parts store near Laurel and Broad Street in Richmond. An empty second floor stuck in the craw of the efficiency-minded Havens, and he became determined to find something useful to do with the unfilled space. This is when timing and luck began to show themselves as a couple of Havens’ hidden assets.
Radio, as a commercial entity, was just beginning to flex its muscles in the United States, and Havens was of a mind to join in the romance of broadcasting. Much of the equipment was scratch-built, and with an investment of $500, Havens and Martin were granted a license to begin broadcasting as a ten-watt radio station.
The partners were so convinced their future lay in car parts, they chose WMBG as their call letters, Talley reports; WMBG stood for Motors, Batteries, and Generators.
Almost from day one, things began to take off for WMBG. Havens and Martin secured franchise rights to the NBC radio network; they became Richmond media moguls. In 1939, they sold the automotive business and moved the station. By 1942, Havens bought out Martin’s shares in the company and turned his sights on the new technology of broadcast television.
In 1944, Haven took out a series of full-page ads in the local newspapers telling readers that once the war was won, he planned to introduce a wonderful new entertainment medium to Richmond called television, Talley says. On March 11, 1944, Havens & Martin Inc. filed an application with the FCC for a television station in Richmond.
On August 6, 1945, the United States Armed Forces dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On that same day, Havens was in Aberdeen, Md., at an auction of used U.S. Army television parts.
While he spent the next several years preparing for the TV station’s debut, in February 1947 Havens started the first FM station in Virginia, which in its present incarnation is WTVR “Mix 98.1.”
With sign-on just weeks away, Havens learned that as of January 1, 1948, there were no television sets under personal ownership in Richmond. What did Havens do?
Talley shares the story. “He quickly contacted all of the major television manufacturers and scheduled a series of meetings in the WTVR studios. RCA, General Electric, Westinghouse, and a few others were able to display all of their products and Havens invited every store that sold radios in the Richmond area to attend and get the pitch. It must have been a whale of a sales job, because, by the time WTVR signed on in April, over 1,000 television sets had been purchased and were in local homes.”
While that immediate crisis was averted, “fate wasn’t through with WTVR.”
While NBC affiliation was prepared for WTVR-6, it would take several months for cable to reach Richmond that could relay network programming. What did Havens do? He signed on with all local programming for nearly four months exactly 75 years ago Saturday (4/22).
The sign-on ceremony was a near disaster. Talley reports, “Virginia Governor William Tuck was set to give the opening address, the televisions were all on and the signal was given to switch on the transmitter. That’s when the lights went out, literally. What the engineers hadn’t taken into consideration was that the TV sets of that era had a power supply nearly as big as a car battery, each one requiring a huge amount of power. All of those sets, in addition to the power required of a television transmitter, were just too much for the building’s circuits to handle and fuses started popping. It took several minutes for station engineers to fix the circuit overloads, but fix it they did, and after a brief delay, WTVR was again ready to begin its inaugural broadcast.”
But, the Governor of Virginia went missing. He was found at Tony’s Bar and Grill, and was rushed back to the studio to give the station’s opening address.
With that, WTVR became the eighth licensed television station in the country. And, Richmond remained a one-station town until 1956.
For even more history of WTVR-TV, please click here.
