WPTD (channel 16) is a television station in Dayton, Ohio, United States, serving the Miami Valley as a member of PBS. The station broadcasts from studios in downtown Dayton and a transmitter near South Gettysburg Avenue in the Highview Hills neighborhood in southwest Dayton. Its signal is relayed by translator station W25FI-D in Maplewood, Ohio, which broadcasts to Celina, Lima, and Wapakoneta.
WPTD and WPTO (channel 14), licensed to Oxford but primarily broadcasting to greater Cincinnati and providing secondary public TV service in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas, form ThinkTV (stylized as ThinkTV). ThinkTV, legally Greater Dayton Public Television, and WCET in Cincinnati are separate subsidiaries of Public Media Connect; master control for all three stations is located in Dayton.
Channel 16 in Dayton was originally allocated for educational use, but this changed in 1965. A commercial station—WKTR-TV, owned by Kittyhawk Television and licensed to nearby Kettering—was built on channel 16 in 1967. It operated as a money-losing independent station for nearly all of its four-year history, with one major exception. On January 1, 1970, in a surprise, WKTR was announced as the new ABC affiliate for Dayton. This was vigorously contested by WKEF (channel 22), which had been airing most of ABC's programming in the market and was widely expected to become the full-time affiliate. Less than two months later, it was revealed that Kittyhawk management had bribed an ABC official in exchange for affiliation with the network, a scandal that led to a conviction, the resignations of two other network employees, and a federal investigation into bribery at the major networks. ABC also moved to revoke the affiliation agreement with WKTR-TV effective that August. In May, a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit filed by WKEF ordered ABC to supply its prime time programming to that station; WKTR-TV aired ABC's daytime shows until August 31, 1970, when all ABC programming moved to WKEF. Facing a challenge to its broadcast license and a petition by television program distributors to force it into involuntary bankruptcy, Kittyhawk took WKTR-TV off the air beginning February 27, 1971.
Plans already existed at that time to activate an educational television station in Dayton. The Ohio Educational Television Network Commission, a state agency coordinating educational broadcasting activities, used funds initially intended for new station construction to acquire the WKTR-TV license and transmitter; channel 16 began broadcasting again on April 24, 1972, as WOET-TV. WOET-TV initially served to simulcast WMUB-TV (the now-WPTO) in Oxford. In 1975, the commission transferred the license to University Regional Broadcasting—a consortium of Miami University, Central State University, and Wright State University. The station changed its call letters to WPTD in 1977; University Regional Broadcasting renamed itself Greater Dayton Public Television in 1982. After previously having offices spread in multiple locations, the station consolidated into new downtown Dayton studios in 1988. WPTO became a separately programmed secondary station in 1992.
However, in 1965, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reallocated UHF television channels nationwide. The educational reservation was shifted to channel 45, and channel 16 became available for use by a commercial station. That June, Kittyhawk Broadcasting Corporation announced it would file to build channel 16 as an independent station and the fourth commercial outlet in the region; the station would be located in nearby Kettering. The FCC approved Kittyhawk's application and granted a construction permit at the start of December. Kittyhawk announced it would build studios on a property on Stroop Road, previously occupied by the local YMCA in Kettering and a transmitter at Moraine. However, work was delayed while Kittyhawk petitioned the FCC for a taller tower than originally proposed; a start date of January 1968 was set.
Delayed by weather and supply issues, WKTR-TV went on the air on March 20, 1967. Eight hours of programming a day were planned, including locally produced news, educational programs for the Kettering area, and a country and western music program, though the lineup was dominated by syndicated shows and movies. At the time of launch, the company announced its reorganization at Kittyhawk Television and claimed that it could be profitable in six months. Citing strong advertising sales, WKTR moved in September to extend its broadcast day from 8 to 15 hours a day, including shows pre-empted by local network affiliates. However, this was cut back in December, when original general manager Kenneth Caywood quit and the station began broadcasting at 5 p.m. on weekdays with a schedule featuring mainly movies.
On February 13, 1969, ABC's board of directors authorized Campbell to proceed with buying WKTR-TV for $1.85 million subject to FCC approval. However, WKEF—which stood to lose all the ABC programs it carried—and parent company Springfield Television announced they would fight to block the transaction. WKEF general manager George Mitchell expressed dismay that ABC was capitalizing on the "spade work" WKEF had done in establishing UHF broadcasting in Dayton, while Campbell noted that ABC could cancel its secondary affiliation agreement with WKEF on four days' notice and that its WLWD affiliation expired in January 1970. Not wanting to endure a legal fight they predicted could last two to four years, Kittyhawk and ABC terminated the sale agreement in March.
The affiliation fight took a new and sudden turn when Thomas G. Sullivan, a 43-year-old regional manager for ABC, was fired by the network on February 19. ABC vice president Robert Kaufman then filed a criminal complaint against Sullivan. Kaufman charged that Sullivan had told Kemper that WKTR-TV would need to pay $50,000 to a consultant by the name of John L. P. Daley Jr., which in actuality was a bribe. A lawyer for Kemper denied the allegations.
In light of the bribery case on February 26, ABC gave WKTR-TV a required six months' notice that it was ending its affiliation contract with the station effective August 30. It invited WKTR-TV and WKEF to submit new presentations outlining their cases for affiliation with the network. This marked part of a blitz of cleaning house orchestrated by network vice president James Hagerty, who had been the presidential press secretary in the 1950s. Hagerty told newsmen of the telegram that was sent to WKTR-TV and WKEF and fielded inquiries from reporters. The same day, Kemper resigned from Kittyhawk Television.
With the addition of WSWO-TV (channel 26) in Springfield, all three Dayton-area UHF stations were invited to submit proposals for ABC affiliation to the network. Meanwhile, later in March, WKEF renewed its efforts in court to obtain an injunction barring ABC from supplying its programs to WKTR. This new lawsuit added two names to the case: Carmine Patti, ABC director of station relations, and Theodore H. Shaker, ABC vice president for the owned-and-operated stations. WKEF alleged that Kemper had met Joseph McMahon, who knew many ABC officials including Patti, at a party in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; he then hired McMahon as WKTR's representative in New York to lobby ABC for the affiliation. When Bert Julian, another ABC regional representative whose territory then included Dayton, was found to favor WKEF, it was alleged that Kemper complained to McMahon, who in turn told Patti; shortly thereafter, Dayton was moved from Julian's purview to Sullivan's, and Sullivan then suggested the hiring of the fictitious "John L. P. Daley". On April 11, days before Kittyhawk officials were to visit New York City to present to the network, ABC notified WKTR by telegram that it was revoking its invitation to the station to present an affiliation proposal to continue with the network after August 30—leaving WKEF and WSWO-TV as the only bidders—after additional evidence was uncovered in the WKEF court case and in a private investigation conducted on ABC's behalf.
On May 1, 1970, federal judge Timothy Sylvester Hogan issued an injunction ordering ABC to return to the pre-1970 status quo in Dayton within 20 days, requiring the network to move most shows off WKTR-TV and back to WKEF while the suit continued; however, WKTR-TV retained some ABC programs that WLWD had been carrying prior to 1970. An agreement was reached that saw ABC programming split between the two stations; channel 16 would air daytime ABC shows, while the ABC Evening News and prime time programs would air on channel 22. A revised court order then gave WKEF rights to the ABC prime time programming beginning at the end of May. ABC then awarded WKEF the full-time ABC affiliation in June, giving it first call rights to all network programs for the first time in its history.
On February 27, 1971, WKTR-TV failed to sign on the air. An employee told the Dayton Daily News that the board of directors had decided to cease telecasting.
The return of channel 16 to the air was planned for September to coincide with the start of fall programming on Miami University's WPTO (channel 14) in Oxford, but the FCC had yet to approve the license transfer due to the pending bankruptcy case. This meant that Sesame Street went unseen in Dayton for a brief time, as WKEF had been airing the show and dropped it in anticipation of WKTR returning. The FCC did not approve the transfer until October 15, but it was not until 1972 that the station returned to the air. During that time, the call letters were changed to WOET-TV, for Ohio Educational Television, and the universities agreed to pay for nighttime programming on the station after funding was cut by the Ohio General Assembly.
WOET-TV began broadcasting as an educational television station on April 24, 1972, by rebroadcasting WMUB-TV. WMUB-TV then rebroadcast PBS programs from WCET in Cincinnati. Even though WOET-TV was now broadcasting, Miami, Central State, and Wright State continued to quarrel over the shape of their partnership to run channel 16. The Network Commission intended to transfer the license to the consortium, but Wright State objected to the inclusion of Miami, which the network commission had insisted on because of its existing studios and previous television experience. Wright State believed it should be the sole operator of the station, though it ultimately relented and agreed to the tri-university consortium.
The shift to University Regional Broadcasting coincided with the maturation of channel 16. WOET-TV held its first fundraising drive in March 1975 as part of a PBS national initiative. Operations moved to a facility on Dixie Drive,and translators were built at Celina and Piqua to extend coverage. The station changed its call letters to WPTD (Public Television in Dayton) on March 1, 1977 (with WMUB-TV becoming WPTO, Public Television in Oxford). On May 30, 1980, the FCC approved the change of WPTD's city of license from Kettering to Dayton. University Regional Broadcasting renamed itself Greater Dayton Public Television in 1982, reflecting its status as a community licensee without active university management.
The new studios also helped lay the groundwork for providing separate programming from WPTD and WPTO. Over a year, between late 1986 and late 1987, the two stations split for fewer than 10 programs. However, it was not until transmitter improvements at both Dayton and Oxford created services with signal overlap that this vision was deemed feasible. This eventually came to pass on July 1, 1992, when WPTO began airing a secondary lineup of primarily instructional and educational programs as well as documentaries and rebroadcasts of key PBS shows in different time periods. WPTO was added to the major cable systems in Cincinnati and Dayton in 1993.
Wareham left Greater Dayton Public Television in 1993 to become the president of WVIZ, the public television station in Cleveland. He was replaced by David M. Fogarty, who had previously served under Wareham as station manager.
In 2000, ThinkTV and WCET began sharing a senior executive, Scott Elliott, who had previously only worked at WCET. While the employee-sharing did not represent a merger, it paved the way for further collaboration between the public broadcasters, who had talked four times in 25 years about merging. On October 31, 2008, Greater Dayton Public Television and the Greater Cincinnati Television Educational Foundation (CET), owner of WCET, announced plans to merge their resources into one non-profit organization serving all of Southwest Ohio while maintaining separate identities. In May 2009, after two years of discussions, Public Media Connect was formed as a merger of the two groups, with each continuing as local nonprofits and subsidiaries. The merger resulted in the July 2010 transfer of WCET's master control operations to ThinkTV's facilities in Dayton.
The 2000s also saw the initiation of digital telecasting from WPTD on May 1, 2003; WPTO followed suit on June 28, 2004. Originally, the station broadcast four additional channels, one in high definition, in addition to a simulcast of its main service. ThinkTV ceased analog broadcasting from Dayton and Oxford on May 1, 2009, earlier than the June 12 national transition deadline. The WPTD digital signal moved from channel 58, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to channel 16 at that time. WPTD then moved to channel 35 on October 18, 2019, as part of the FCC's spectrum reallocation process.
In July 2019, ThinkTV and WCET lost all service for nearly four days due to the failure of a multiplexer in the master control power supply at ThinkTV in downtown Dayton. That November, WPTD temporarily broadcast the main channel of WHIO-TV (channel 7) for three days after the station suffered a transmitter failure.
Fogarty retired as president of Public Media Connect in June 2020. That year also saw WCET and ThinkTV combine their previously separate annual auction fundraisers, Action Auction and Great TV Auction, into a single event, the CET/ThinkTV Action Auction.
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Both transmitter sites were on towers owned by the state of Ohio, which began planning a next-generation tower system in the late 2000s and intended to demolish the Maplewood site if ownership was not transitioned to Shelby County. The county then sold the site at auction. On March 30, 2010, W63AH lost its ability to use the tower at Maplewood and was taken off the air; on January 5, 2011, the state of Ohio shut off power to the Celina translator in anticipation of dismantling the tower. The Maplewood translator was then moved to another tower near Celina, where it began service in January 2011 as W32DS-D. From this location, the translator covered Celina. Due to interference that would be caused to a repacked WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the translator moved to channel 25 as W25FI-D in January 2020.
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