Iowa Almanac
Iowa Almanac -- Monday, September 30, 2024
TV comes to Eastern Iowa. More from the Iowa Almanac in a Moment. Every detail matters when building a winning game plan. That's why the Cyclones and Hawkeyes rely on better, cleaner now biodiesel to power their team buses on game day. Delivering success on the field, in the field and in the environment. Make biodiesel part of your winning game plan by visiting iasoybeans.com. Biodiesel, grow it, request it, use it. This message brought to you by the Iowa Soybean Association and the Soybean Check-Off. After World War II, Americans were impatient. They sacrificed during wartime and now wanted to enjoy all aspects of life. That included entertainment such as the new medium of television. But there were too many applicants for TV station licenses. So the Federal Communications Commission put a freeze in place to help them determine how best to use the limited television spectrum. For those of us in Iowa, it meant very few local stations. One in Davenport, one in Ames, and one in Sioux City until the freeze was lifted in 1953. William B. Korton was a broadcasting visionary and quickly moved to put Channel 2 on the air in Cedar Rapids to go along with the radio station he ran. And while his WMT radio was successful, local bankers weren't too sure about the promise of television and refused to loan him the money needed to put a TV station on the air. He had to go to the Twin Cities to get financing. Then on September 30th, 1953, local television came to eastern Iowa when Channel 2 signed on just before noon. This is a great day for us and I hope it is for you too. Now we've had a wonderful time building this station. Please do remember that we are not experts. We're trying to do the best we can. We're going to make many mistakes. You're going to have a lot of fun with us laughing at our mistakes. But one of these days we'll end up, I feel confident, we're the very good operations. That was the voice of William B. Korton from that first broadcast. The first full program on the channel was the first game of the 1953 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Channel 9 in Cedar Rapids went on the air two weeks later followed by Channel 7 in Waterloo on Thanksgiving Day. In a unique burst, eastern Iowans went from no local stations to three in the space of less than two months. This is WMT TV, Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids. But it started when Channel 2 went on the air as eastern Iowans first television station on this date in 1953. And that's Iowa Almanac for September 30th. Follow us on Twitter @IowaAlmanac. Until tomorrow, I'm Jeff Stein.