WTVJ Eventful First Year in 1949

Miami's first television station, WTVJ, began broadcasting on March 21,1949. This is the story behind that eventful founding year for a Miami, Florida, institution.

Cover: WTVJ Cameraman in 1949

When there was a contraption added to the top of the Everglades Hotel in December of 1948, observant Miami residents were left wondering what it represented. The most common speculation was that the mooring for the Goodyear blimp was going to be relocated to downtown Miami. The object in question was a steel shaft with three wired butterfly structures emanating from its base. It was a mystery to the inquiring mind.

The addition to the Everglades Hotel tower represented Mitchell Wolfson’s move into home entertainment. At the end of 1948, Wometco, the company founded by partners Wolfson and Sidney Meyer in the mid-1920s, was doing very well with their empire of movie theaters. However, both men knew that that a significant change was coming in entertainment and they chose to lead the way.

Original Antenna & Studio

Figure 1: Antenna on Everglades Hotel in 1950

The addition to the top of the Everglades Hotel was a transmission antenna that allowed a new television station to broadcast video content from downtown Miami to as far as the northern boundary of Fort Lauderdale and an equal distance south. The antenna rose 306 feet above sea level and was fixed at the top of the hotel’s tower.

While downtown residents were pondering the antenna at the Everglades, Wometco’s new television station built a small studio at 17 NW Third Street, which was a side entrance into the Capitol Theater. The address was the former location of the Birmy Photo Engraving Company from 1937 until 1947. The space was vacant in 1948 when the idea of a studio inside the theater was being planned. The Third Street entrance provided access to the studio without having to disrupt the foot traffic for the theater.

In addition to the production facilities and stage, the studio offered a sixty-seat regulation theater for an audience to watch live programming. Wometco invested $500,000 and hired twenty-one employees to support what was considered a risky venture at the time.

At the beginning of 1949, there was an estimated total of only two-thousand television sets in the Miami area and most were owned by businesses, restaurants and residents who were early adopters of the new medium. Only thirty-five televisions were sold in Miami during the first month in 1949, despite most Miami residents knowing that its first television station was coming online soon.

Test Patterns in February

Figure 2: Vladimir K. Zworykin with WTVJ executives on March 6, 1949

Despite the unchartered territory of telecast broadcasting, Bob Venn enthusiastically announced new developments in the launch of WTVJ. Venn was the general manager of the new station and one of three stockholders in the company at the time of launch. The other two were the co-founders of Wometco.

On February 21, the station began sending its first test patterns so that television owners can calibrate their antennas to pick up the signal. The tests were conducted in the evening and began in short timeframes. Over the course of the next several weeks and with each successful trial, longer test patterns were broadcast to validate both the range and fidelity of the signal.

On March 6, WTVJ got a visit from the country’s most famous television research scientist, Vladimir K. Zworykin. He had just come from giving a series of talks to the Cuban Engineering Society in Havana. Zworykin was the inventor of the electrical scanning method which made possible the transmission of video images, in the form of light energy, into home receivers. His ground-breaking invention enabled the early advancements in television broadcasting. Zworykin was very impressed with how fast WTVJ was able to begin sending test patterns from the time they got started.

First Broadcast of WTVJ on Channel 4

Figure 3: Family around TV set in 1949