WPTD
WPTD is a PBS member television station in Dayton, Ohio, United States, serving the Miami Valley. The station broadcasts from studios at the ThinkTV TeleCenter on South Jefferson Street in downtown Dayton and a transmitter near South Gettysburg Avenue in the Highview Hills neighborhood in southwest Dayton. Its signal is relayed by translator station W25FI-D in Maplewood, Ohio, which broadcasts to Celina, Lima, and Wapakoneta.
WPTD and WPTO, licensed to Oxford but primarily broadcasting to greater Cincinnati and providing secondary public TV service in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas, form ThinkTV. ThinkTV, legally Greater Dayton Public Television, and WCET in Cincinnati are separate subsidiaries of Public Media Connect; master control for all three stations is located in Dayton.
Channel 16 in Dayton was originally allocated for educational use, but this changed in 1965. A commercial station—WKTR-TV, owned by Kittyhawk Television and licensed to nearby Kettering—was built on channel 16 in 1967. It operated as a money-losing independent station for nearly all of its four-year history, with one major exception. On January 1, 1970, in a surprise, WKTR was announced as the new ABC affiliate for Dayton. This was vigorously contested by WKEF, which had been airing most of ABC's programming in the market and was widely expected to become the full-time affiliate. Less than two months later, it was revealed that Kittyhawk management had bribed an ABC official in exchange for affiliation with the network, a scandal that led to a conviction, the resignations of two other network employees, and a federal investigation into bribery at the major networks. ABC also moved to revoke the affiliation agreement with WKTR-TV effective that August. In May, a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit filed by WKEF ordered ABC to supply its prime time programming to that station; WKTR-TV aired ABC's daytime shows until August 31, 1970, when all ABC programming moved to WKEF. Facing a challenge to its broadcast license and a petition by television program distributors to force it into involuntary bankruptcy, Kittyhawk took WKTR-TV off the air beginning February 27, 1971.
Plans already existed at that time to activate an educational television station in Dayton. The Ohio Educational Television Network Commission, a state agency coordinating educational broadcasting activities, used funds initially intended for new station construction to acquire the WKTR-TV license and transmitter; channel 16 began broadcasting again on April 24, 1972, as WOET-TV. WOET-TV initially served to simulcast WMUB-TV in Oxford. In 1975, the commission transferred the license to University Regional Broadcasting—a consortium of Miami University, Central State University, and Wright State University. The station changed its call letters to WPTD in 1977; University Regional Broadcasting renamed itself Greater Dayton Public Television in 1982. After previously having offices spread in multiple locations, the station consolidated into new downtown Dayton studios in 1988. WPTO became a separately programmed secondary station in 1992.
WKTR-TV
Construction and early years
channel 16 was the originally allocated reserved channel for educational television in Dayton. However, early exploration of activating the channel proved fruitless. In September 1953, a study group ceased activities, stating that starting such a station was "beyond the ability of this area". Interest increased in 1961 when the Miami Valley Educational Television Foundation was formed.However, in 1965, the Federal Communications Commission reallocated UHF television channels nationwide. The educational reservation was shifted to channel 45, and channel 16 became available for use by a commercial station. That June, Kittyhawk Broadcasting Corporation announced it would file to build channel 16 as an independent station and the fourth commercial outlet in the region; the station would be located in nearby Kettering. The FCC approved Kittyhawk's application and granted a construction permit at the start of December. Kittyhawk announced it would build studios on a property on Stroop Road, previously occupied by the local YMCA in Kettering and a transmitter at Moraine. However, work was delayed while Kittyhawk petitioned the FCC for a taller tower than originally proposed; a start date of January 1968 was set.
Delayed by weather and supply issues, WKTR-TV went on the air on March 20, 1967. Eight hours of programming a day were planned, including locally produced news, educational programs for the Kettering area, and a country and western music program, though the lineup was dominated by syndicated shows and movies. At the time of launch, the company announced its reorganization at Kittyhawk Television and claimed that it could be profitable in six months. Citing strong advertising sales, WKTR moved in September to extend its broadcast day from 8 to 15 hours a day, including shows pre-empted by local network affiliates. However, this was cut back in December, when original general manager Kenneth Caywood quit and the station began broadcasting at 5 p.m. on weekdays with a schedule featuring mainly movies.
ABC sale negotiations
WKTR-TV continued to operate at a loss in 1968, and in January, negotiations were held with the ABC television network over a possible sale of channel 16, with ABC employees visiting Kettering to examine the station. It would have been the first UHF television station owned by ABC; the network already owned the maximum of five stations on the very high frequency band and could own up to two UHF stations such as WKTR-TV. John Campbell, president of the owned-and-operated stations division of ABC, admitted on January 31 that the network was interested in the station. The possibility of WKTR-TV affiliating with ABC posed the possibility of major changes in local television. Even though Dayton had three stations, ABC programs were split between WLWD and WKEF, with the latter seeking a full affiliation and not getting it. WKEF aired 70 percent of the network's output in the Dayton area.On February 13, 1969, ABC's board of directors authorized Campbell to proceed with buying WKTR-TV for $1.85 million subject to FCC approval. However, WKEF—which stood to lose all the ABC programs it carried—and parent company Springfield Television announced they would fight to block the transaction. WKEF general manager George Mitchell expressed dismay that ABC was capitalizing on the "spade work" WKEF had done in establishing UHF broadcasting in Dayton, while Campbell noted that ABC could cancel its secondary affiliation agreement with WKEF on four days' notice and that its WLWD affiliation expired in January 1970. Not wanting to endure a legal fight they predicted could last two to four years, Kittyhawk and ABC terminated the sale agreement in March.
Affiliation with ABC and bribery scandal
Even though it opted not to buy channel 16, ABC still needed an affiliate in Dayton for 1970, when WLWD would become a full-time NBC affiliate. WKEF was predicted to have the inside track on the affiliation. However, in a surprise on November 21, 1969, ABC announced that WKTR-TV would become the new primary ABC affiliate for Dayton. In a statement, Kittyhawk president John A. Kemper hailed the announcement as the "happiest day of our lives" and attributed ABC's selection to its color programming and facilities; the vice president of the company noted that its investors had endured a deficit of nearly $2 million. This announcement also met with legal action from WKEF. In mid-December, it sued ABC, Kittyhawk, and Kemper. In its suit, the station alleged that ABC had invited it in May 1969 to sign an affiliation agreement, though it could not do so until November, and that it had been the primary carrier of ABC network programs in the Dayton area since March 1968. It fretted that, should the affiliation not be blocked in the courts, ABC would eventually move to buy the station outright. The lawsuit also alleged that William L. Putnam and ABC were at odds over plans to add VHF "drop-in" channels in markets throughout the U.S., an action opposed by Putnam but supported by ABC, and that Putnam had thwarted ABC plans in the northeast by dropping ABC from WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts, and preventing the ABC affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut—WTNH—from moving its transmitter closer to Springfield. It also revealed that Kittyhawk had allegedly been rebuffed in its efforts to buy WKEF before filing for and building channel 16. The affiliation switch went ahead on January 1 as planned after WKEF's request for a temporary injunction was denied by a federal judge on the grounds that blocking the affiliation could cause WKTR-TV to lose its financing and its assets to creditors.The affiliation fight took a new and sudden turn when Thomas G. Sullivan, a 43-year-old regional manager for ABC, was fired by the network on February 19. ABC vice president Robert Kaufman then filed a criminal complaint against Sullivan. Kaufman charged that Sullivan had told Kemper that WKTR-TV would need to pay $50,000 to a consultant by the name of John L. P. Daley Jr., which in actuality was a bribe. A lawyer for Kemper denied the allegations.
In light of the bribery case on February 26, ABC gave WKTR-TV a required six months' notice that it was ending its affiliation contract with the station effective August 30. It invited WKTR-TV and WKEF to submit new presentations outlining their cases for affiliation with the network. This marked part of a blitz of cleaning house orchestrated by network vice president James Hagerty, who had been the presidential press secretary in the 1950s. Hagerty told newsmen of the telegram that was sent to WKTR-TV and WKEF and fielded inquiries from reporters. The same day, Kemper resigned from Kittyhawk Television.
With the addition of WSWO-TV in Springfield, all three Dayton-area UHF stations were invited to submit proposals for ABC affiliation to the network. Meanwhile, later in March, WKEF renewed its efforts in court to obtain an injunction barring ABC from supplying its programs to WKTR. This new lawsuit added two names to the case: Carmine Patti, ABC director of station relations, and Theodore H. Shaker, ABC vice president for the owned-and-operated stations. WKEF alleged that Kemper had met Joseph McMahon, who knew many ABC officials including Patti, at a party in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; he then hired McMahon as WKTR's representative in New York to lobby ABC for the affiliation. When Bert Julian, another ABC regional representative whose territory then included Dayton, was found to favor WKEF, it was alleged that Kemper complained to McMahon, who in turn told Patti; shortly thereafter, Dayton was moved from Julian's purview to Sullivan's, and Sullivan then suggested the hiring of the fictitious "John L. P. Daley". On April 11, days before Kittyhawk officials were to visit New York City to present to the network, ABC notified WKTR by telegram that it was revoking its invitation to the station to present an affiliation proposal to continue with the network after August 30—leaving WKEF and WSWO-TV as the only bidders—after additional evidence was uncovered in the WKEF court case and in a private investigation conducted on ABC's behalf.
On May 1, 1970, federal judge Timothy Sylvester Hogan issued an injunction ordering ABC to return to the pre-1970 status quo in Dayton within 20 days, requiring the network to move most shows off WKTR-TV and back to WKEF while the suit continued; however, WKTR-TV retained some ABC programs that WLWD had been carrying prior to 1970. An agreement was reached that saw ABC programming split between the two stations; channel 16 would air daytime ABC shows, while the ABC Evening News and prime time programs would air on channel 22. A revised court order then gave WKEF rights to the ABC prime time programming beginning at the end of May. ABC then awarded WKEF the full-time ABC affiliation in June, giving it first call rights to all network programs for the first time in its history.