These days, with electronic devices that can be carried around by hand, loaded with more information than most computers had 20 years ago, with pod-casts that are all the rage, it is hard to imagine the impact that television had when it arrived in the Lehigh Valley in the 1940s. But there once was a time when people thought it would never happen here.
Although television had been invented as early as the 1920s, the Great Depression of the 1930s made investors unwilling to put money into this new “device,” and the market for consumer electronics was not growing. But by the 1940s, at least in large cities, TV stations had begun to offer programs, primarily sports events.
So it makes sense that the first television broadcast in the Lehigh Valley that is known was a basketball game. The date was Dec. 21, 1946, and the Muhlenberg College basketball team was playing the University of Pennsylvania at the Penn Palestra. It was to be broadcast by WPTZ in Philadelphia.
One of the few televisions that existed in the Lehigh Valley at that time was owned by B. Bryan Mussellman, a managing director of radio station WSAN.
The day before, Mussellman’s son had extended the antenna by 60 feet to be sure of reception. Here is how it was reported in the Morning Call the next day by John Y. Kohl, Sunday editor:
“The B. Bryan Mussellmans settled themselves comfortably in the living room of their home at Allentown, R 1. Someone flicked off the lights and there they were in the Penn Palestra watching the first class basketball game between Muhlenberg and Penn. It sounds like magic. Actually it was the first television broadcast received in the area.”
Muhlenberg went on to beat Penn in an exciting game that ended 57-50. And although the players could only be seen during the foul tries and times out, broadcasters described the action in between “the commentary and crowd sounds were crystal clear.”
To judge from comments in the press of the time, many people in the 1940s thought the whole idea of television in the Lehigh Valley was a pipe dream. Sure, radio worked fine, but would TV reception work at all in the region? Wouldn’t South Mountain block out any kind of broadcast from Philadelphia?
Skeptics apparently had a point, but it was a debatable one. The day after the broadcast, the local press noted that while it had its drawbacks, it was inaccurate to write off television just yet.
“While the visual reception was not as clear as it could be if the set was in the Philadelphia area,” one newspaper noted, “the reception was a triumph for the local area inasmuch as it was believed impossible.”
Despite this relative success, few in the Lehigh Valley were ready to jump on the television bandwagon. Perhaps the biggest breakthrough came on February 21, 1947. On that day, according to Allentown’s Evening Chronicle, a local bar owner, Bill “Jazz” Max, installed the first television in his tap-room at 2nd and Tilghman Sts in Allentown.
Now able to see the new broadcast medium, without having to go out and actually buy one, the conservative Lehigh Valley population got to view a television in operation. Soon other bar owners were following Max’s example.
Prize fights were among the more popular bar-room draws on the little black and white screens. Baseball games were another. According to local historian, the late Mahlon Hellerich, between 16,000 and 20,000 Allentown residents saw the World Series games between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees on television in 1947.
The broadcast of national political party conventions in the hotly contested 1948 campaign was another, although one local woman was later to complain that all she could see most of the time were the delegates’ legs.
At the same time department store owner Max Hess was also seeing the opportunities of television. Hess brought in Philadelphia TV dealers and network representatives to prove to them that reception was possible, if not perfect, in the Lehigh Valley.
Electronic appliance dealers were soon putting televisions in their windows as they were broadcasting. “You would walk up and down Hamilton Street which in those days was a very busy street,” recalled Sylvia Lawler, who covered television for the local press for many years, “and you would see little knots of people at the windows.”
But the cost of a 16 inch screen television, $395 for a Motorola, almost $500 for a similar-size RCA Victor, was expensive by the standards of the time. In 1950 a new Philco with an internal aerial was selling for $229.95 plus tax, which was a little better. By 1949, at a time when there were 6 million TV sets nationwide, it was estimated by the Evening Chronicle that there were between 5,000 and 6,000 sets in the Lehigh Valley.
Reception remained a problem. Towers were erected at the cost of $1,000 a piece to receive channels 3, 6 and 10 out of Philadelphia. TV antennas sprouted from roof tops. “It was awful,” recalled Lawler, remembering the visual clutter. “There was this jungle tangle of high television antennas that looked horrid.”
Although largely useless today, those home antennas remain in many places. Few in Allentown at the time were aware of the pioneering work in cable television being undertaken at that point in the coal regions by John Walson. It would be the early 1960s before it finally arrived in Allentown.
Today the Lehigh Valley has many television options including two local stations, WFMZ-69 and WLVT 39. Wouldn’t those people who gathered around a grainy black and white screen to watch a snowy vision of a basketball game in the Mussellman’s living room in 1946, be amazed.
from 69News:Home http://ift.tt/17aU3s4
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