WKTV (channel 2) is a television station in Utica, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC, CBS, and The CW Plus. Owned by Heartland Media, the station has studios on Smith Hill Road in Deerfield (with a Utica postal address), and its transmitter is located in the Eatonville section of Fairfield.
History
The station launched on December 1, 1949, as Utica's first television station, operating on very high frequency (VHF) channel 13. It was the 93rd television station in the United States to sign on. This made Utica one of the smallest cities in the nation with a television station. It was owned by Copper City Broadcasting Corporation, controlled by Myron Kallet, along with WKAL (1450 AM). As the only station in its area, it was affiliated with all four major networks at the time: NBC, DuMont, ABC, and CBS, with NBC being its primary affiliation. It lost DuMont in 1956 following the network's closure, and lost CBS soon afterward following a dispute with the network; after that, WHEN-TV/WTVH in Syracuse served as the default CBS affiliate for the Utica area until 2015.
The station was a major beneficiary of a quirk in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s plan for allocating stations. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available and 69 UHF channels (later reduced to 55 in 1983). The VHF bands were more desirable because they carried longer distances and many television receivers lacked optional UHF tuners. Since there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced.
After the FCC's Sixth Report and Order ended the license freeze and opened the UHF band in 1952, it devised a plan for allocating VHF licenses. Under this plan, almost all of the country would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one noncommercial channel. Most of the rest of the country ("1/2") would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas would be designated as "UHF islands" since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" represented non-commercial educational stations, and "1/2" became ABC (which was the weakest network usually winding up with the UHF allocation where no VHF was available).
However, Utica was sandwiched between Albany, New York (channels 4 (later 6) and 10, later joined by 13) to the east, Syracuse (channels 3, 5, and 9) to the west, Binghamton (channel 12) to the south, and Watertown (channel 7) and Burlington–Plattsburgh (channels 3 and 5) to the north. This resulted in the Utica market having only one VHF license; WKTV was fortunate enough to gain that license, and as a result remained the only television station based in Utica for its first 21 years of existence. Although there were no allocations of channels 2, 8, and 11 in the immediate area, channel 2 was occupied in Buffalo, channel 11 was occupied in New York City, and channel 8 was occupied in New Haven and later Rochester, which were all too close to Utica to reallocate at the time.
In 1951, a young local radio announcer named Dick Clark joined the staff at WKTV. He quickly gathered a loyal following. Clark's father was the manager of Utica radio station WRUN (1150 AM, later to become WUTI and shut down in 2013; and 104.3 FM, now WFRG-FM), and his son wanted to avoid the name recognition factor. To avoid confusion, the younger Clark became known on-air as "Dick Clay". Eventually, Clark would anchor the weeknight newscasts on WKTV (replacing Robert Earle, who would later host the GE College Bowl). In 1952, Clark departed WKTV for WFIL AM-FM-TV in Philadelphia.