Epilogue
After channel 48 went off the air, the Philadelphia market was left with two independents. The first station to make a serious attempt to replace WKBS as the market's third indie was WRBV-TV (channel 65, now WUVP), based in Vineland, New Jersey. It had a decent lineup of programs, but never matched what had been offered on WKBS. It was also hampered by an inadequate signal.
Then, in the middle of 1985, former subscription television outlet WWSG-TV (channel 57) became a full-service independent and changed its calls to WGBS-TV. It briefly waged a ratings battle with WRBV, but this was over before it even started due to WRBV's weak signal. Within a few months, WGBS established itself as the third independent in Philadelphia. Despite financial problems within the station's ownership, WGBS gave channel 29 a serious challenge for the top spot among Philadelphia's indies.
In January 1984, just months after WKBS left the air, the FCC put channel 48's construction permit up for auction. Among those bidding on it were Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group; Dorothy Brunson, an African-American radio station owner from Baltimore; and Cornerstone Television, a Christian television network based in the Pittsburgh suburbs. After a two-year process, the auction ended with Brunson winning the permit. Cornerstone had, during the interim, purchased channel 48's transmitter, moved it to Altoona and used it to sign on a new station in 1985 on channel 47, ironically enough under the WKBS-TV call letters.
Brunson signed her station on as WGTW-TV on August 15, 1992. The station carried on as an independent for more than a decade before being sold to the Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2004. The two stations are not related; although WGTW shares the same city of license (Burlington) and the same channel allocation as the old WKBS-TV, it is not the same license. Sometime between Brunson's purchase of the license and 1988, the FCC deleted the license that WKBS operated under, thus according to FCC records, WGTW's construction permit was issued on July 14, 1988.
Read more about this topic: WKBS-TV (Philadelphia)
Famous quotes containing the word epilogue:
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