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  • Bloomington-founded WTTV continues to grow, change

    The Olathenews, KS
    Aug 24 2014

    Bloomington-founded WTTV continues to grow, change

    By JEFF LAFAVE
    The Herald-Times

    BLOOMINGTON, Ind. WTTV's television legacy started with a converted
    drugstore, Herman B Wells and a puppet show.

    And now, after nearly 65 years on the air, Bloomington's former
    homegrown station will be the host of some marquee TV moments,
    including David Letterman's final "Late Show," with its new network
    affiliation.

    Tribune Broadcasting Indianapolis LLC announced Aug. 11 that its
    formerly Bloomington-based station -- and Indiana's second-ever TV
    station -- will replace WISH-TV as the CBS affiliate in Indianapolis as
    of Jan. 1, 2015. It will show longtime favorites such as "60 Minutes"
    and "The Price is Right" on a daily basis, as well as CBS'
    presentation of Super Bowl 50.

    The programming move for the current CW affiliate, however, is just
    the latest in WTTV's curvy, yet wholesome, history.

    It all started in the careful hands of engineer Sarkes Tarzian, an
    immigrant from Turkish Armenia, and his wife, Mary, in the late 1940s,
    The Herald-Times reported (http://bit.ly/YRxDI7 ).

    As electronics began to capture the attention of postwar America,
    Sarkes Tarzian, the chief engineer of Bloomington's RCA plant,
    manufactured table-model and car radios.

    Together, the ambitious couple had saved $50,000 at a time when many
    Americans were seeking normalcy and long-term direction. Mary was
    pushing Sarkes to start his own business.

    By the end of the decade, the young couple would own a TV station, an
    AM radio station and businesses manufacturing semiconductors, TV
    tuners and broadcast equipment.

    "It's amazing that two people who weren't so well-off were able to
    save that much money," said son Tom Tarzian, current president and CEO
    of Sarkes Tarzian Inc.

    Tom, born in 1946, essentially grew up alongside WTTV. He and sister
    Patricia were raised by parents who also were attempting to curate an
    entire TV station. They saw the struggle firsthand.

    "They had to be thrifty with money they didn't really have," Tom said.

    The decision was sudden, but decisive: Sarkes came home one day and
    told Mary it was time for their mutual dream to become a reality.

    "Let's talk about it," Mary said -- but Sarkes had already quit his
    position at RCA.

    They would set up base camp in an empty storefront with Sarkes as a
    special consulting engineer. He manufactured switch-type tuners to
    keep up with video's broadcast boom, and became responsible for an
    estimated 35 percent of output of electrical equipment, such as
    selenium rectifiers, in the U.S.

    His ingenuity kept overhead low en route to building the family TV
    station. Vintage television blog "Faded Signals" estimates that Sarkes
    Tarzian was able to re-create a $300 microphone boom for a tenth of
    the price.

    The original transmitting antenna for WTTV, Tom Tarzian says, was at
    least partly made from household guttering. Whatever did the trick,
    Sarkes Tarzian's crew of 10 do-it-alls was up for the challenge.

    "To these engineers," Sarkes Tarzian told The Herald-Telephone
    newspaper upon the channel's debut, "I have only the highest of
    praise, since they made most of the major equipment to be used in the
    operation of WTTV."

    On Nov. 11, 1949, WTTV -- "Tarzian TeleVision" -- broadcast its
    inaugural show from a converted drugstore at 535 S. Walnut St.,
    according to H-T archives. Today, that's the street address of an
    Arby's fast-food restaurant.

    Bloomingtonians tuned in to Channel 10 promptly at 7:30 p.m. to see
    the new sensation. H-T records indicate that 96 residents bought their
    first TV set that week.

    Viewers were welcomed by Indiana's U.S. Sen. Homer E. Capehart,
    legendary Indiana University President Herman B Wells, Bloomington
    Mayor Thomas L. Lemon, the city school superintendent H.E. Binford,
    and station owners Sarkes and Mary Tarzian, all in the studio to
    dedicate the channel, according to H-T archives.

    And then, at 8 p.m., NBC's nationally syndicated puppet show, "Kukla,
    Fran and Ollie," promptly took over.

    The pioneer Armistice Day broadcast lasted from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.,
    rounding out with Big Ten football highlights and a feature on the
    lumber industry -- then promptly signed off for the night.

    WTTV had reached the two-hour broadcast minimum established by the FCC
    for that era, and the station would continue this broadcast minimum in
    its early years, operating from 7 to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday,
    with extended hours for sports.

    The station also used coverage of Bloomington High School and
    University High School basketball games as a dynamic selling point.
    Families could see a Hoosier tradition in their own homes for the
    first time. The game between UHS and Ellettsville, on Nov. 22, 1949,
    became the first local sports match shown on Bloomington TV.

    "I'm sure it was very exciting for Bloomington in those days," Tom Tarzian said.

    Even the NCAA got in on the action, when a road game for IU's men's
    basketball team against Illinois further developed the station's
    capabilities. WTTV used microwave hops to get the signal from
    Champaign to Chicago, to two or three locations in Ohio, then
    Cincinnati, and finally back to Bloomington for the Hoosier Nation.

    The same ingenuity was used in local broadcasts: A cable strung across
    the street to the nearby high school would later transmit local sports
    games, student plays and more. "Meet Your Teacher," where students
    interviewed their instructors, became a city favorite.

    Tom Tarzian, only 3 years old when the station was founded, recalls
    being a so-called "plant rat."

    "If you found some people around today, they'd tell you I was a real
    pest," Tom said. "You'd see the tuners and smell the solder. You'd go
    hang out in one of the broadcast studios, especially for the radio
    stations, and try to be quiet."

    WTTV, a station on the move, was anything but quiet. WTTV created and
    fostered its own distinct newscast in 1950, which would last four
    decades.

    The station became an independent juggernaut, adopting a buffet of
    programming from CBS, ABC, NBC and the former "DuMont" network, which
    ceased broadcasting in 1956. Today, the norm of TV broadcasting is
    brand exclusivity -- reflected in Tribune's current decision to
    transfer WTTV to CBS in 2015.

    In 1954, WTTV moved to its longtime Bloomington home at Highland
    Avenue and East Davis Street, where it got a proper 1,000-foot
    broadcast tower. Its signal was strong enough to reach Indianapolis
    and Terre Haute, pivotal TV markets.

    A short time later, WTTV changed its frequency from Channel 10 to
    Channel 4, which remains its current channel number today, and opened
    an official station in Indianapolis, becoming a two-city broadcast
    operation from the 3900 block of Bluff Road.

    And then, there were the glory years folks in Indiana grew to love
    with cult fervor: Bob Carter played "Sammy Terry," a ghoulish figure
    who hosted campy horror movies for WTTV-4 on Saturday nights from 1962
    through the late 1980s.

    "Cowboy Bob" Glaze joined the mix for a Western-themed program
    starting in the 1970s, earning the hearts of kids and adults alike.

    And "Janie" Woods Hodge, the ukulele-playing woman who hosted cartoon
    segments -- thus, the titular "Popeye and Janie" -- received her own
    variety show simply called "Janie," appearing every weekday from 1963
    to 1986, according to the websites "Hoosier History Live" and
    IMDB.com.

    The regional achievements came rolling in, too, for the young station:
    WTTV became the first Indiana station to broadcast a show in color,
    and made a full-color transition in 1965. It was the first Indiana
    station to extend its broadcast day to 24 hours, in 1979.

    But by the late 1970s, the Tarzian family was finished with WTTV.
    According to David J. Bodenhammer's book "Encyclopedia of
    Indianapolis," Sarkes Tarzian sold WTTV-4 to the Teleco Media company
    for more than $26 million in 1978, the most of any nonmajor network in
    the United States at the time.

    WTTV would be subject to constant repackaging, including ownership
    from the Tele-Am Corporation in 1984, Warner Brothers in 1998 and
    current parent Tribune Broadcasting since 2002.

    Sarkes Tarzian Inc. continues to operate as a radio and TV company
    from 205 N. College Ave. in Bloomington. Its child, WTTV, is almost
    completely an Indianapolis station these days: It operates adjacent to
    sister Tribune station WXIN, near West 71st Street and I-465, under
    Tribune's FCC license permit issued to Bloomington.

    WTTV's closest relation to Bloomington today is its massive
    broadcasting antenna signal near Trafalgar -- the largest structure in
    the state at 1,132 feet -- built in 1957. Under the FCC's power rules,
    that location is the closest spot to Indianapolis where Bloomington
    can still consistently get a city-grade signal.

    And although the WTTV station has gone from a simple two-hour-a-day
    operation into a national affiliate within the span of a lifetime, its
    early history is truly Hoosier: Created with saved money, built with
    callused hands and managed by local folks.

    However, Tom Tarzian remembers vividly what made Sarkes Tarzian Inc.'s
    affiliation with the channel a homespun Bloomington success for nearly
    30 years:

    "Dad came home every night for dinner and stayed," he said. "He
    traveled a lot, but he made time for the thing he considered to be
    more important -- his family."

    ---

    Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com

    http://www.theolathenews.com/2014/08/24/2558420/bloomington-founded-wttv-continues.html

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