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HAPPY BIRTHDAY…COMMERCIAL TELEVISION! 73 Today!

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

HAPPY BIRTHDAY…COMMERCIAL TELEVISION! 73 Today!

At 1PM, July 1, 1941, NBC’s WNBT in New York became America’s first commercially licensed television station to go on the air. At 2:30 PM, CBS owned WCBW became the second.

On June 24, 1941,both the NBC and CBS stations were licensed and instructed to sign on simultaneously on July 1 so that neither of the major broadcast companies could claim exclusively to be “first.”

However, WCBW did not manage to sign on the air until 2:30 p.m., one full ninety minutes after WNBT. As a result, WNBC inadvertently holds the distinction as the oldest continuously operating commercial television station in the United States, and also the only one ready to accept sponsors from its beginning.

The first program broadcast at 13:00 EST in the sign-on/opening ceremony featured the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner”, followed by an announcement of that day’s programs and the commencement of NBC television programming.

On its first day on the air, WNBT broadcast the world’s first official television advertisement before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid $9.00, displayed an NBC/RCA test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase “Bulova Watch Time”, was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. Enjoy and share!



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7 responses to “HAPPY BIRTHDAY…COMMERCIAL TELEVISION! 73 Today!”

  1. D. Sanders

    “A Bulova commercial. Could this had been the one from 1941?
    http://youtu.be/8JenAyMmZ68”

    No, that’s a fake. Someone made a “recreation” of what they thought the commercial looked liked based on erroneous reports that it was as map with a voiceover, It was the WNBT test pattern/Bulova Watch Time clock illustrated on this page which was the first ad. Bulova bought the open and close of each broadcast day when they would show the test pattern. This may be a picture of the sign off at 11.

  2. Mark Yancey

    I remember when test patterns were aired in the early hours of the morning on broadcast television!

  3. Jarbas Jam Mesquita

    64 in Brazil.

  4. Thomas Coleman

    As they say on the Old Ham Radio: 73’s!

  5. Gary Walters

    A Bulova commercial. Could this had been the one from 1941?
    http://youtu.be/8JenAyMmZ68

  6. Gary Walters

    As a kid in the early 50’s, I remember “Bulova Watch Time” as a 15 minute ‘paid commercial’, where at the top of every minute, an announcers voice would say, “10:03pm, Bulova Watch Time. Get your Bulova watch at fine jewelry stores everywhere”.

  7. Jerry Lane

    You probably know this already: My old station, WGRB, in Schenectady, NY, “claims to be the world’s first television station. It traces its roots to an experimental station founded on January 13, 1928 from the General Electric facility under the call letters W2XB.” (Wikipedia) When I worked there in the early 80’s, they had old photos in the lobby of broadcasts from the late 20’s.

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