TOS on WGN channel 9 -- in the 70's

[Morpheus 02]

Just thinking, & wanted to shre the thought...anyone from the Chicagoland area remember seeing TOS on (i believe) Tuesday & Thursday nights at 7pm on channel 9 (WGN) during the 70's?

That was one of my first exposures to Trek (eventually seeing TAS & even a couple of 12in records!)


Just wondering if anyone else remembers, or if i am just goin' crazy!

 

[Saxman1]

You are not crazy - I remember. They later got DS9 first-run and pre-empted it half the time for sports programming, often not bothering to broadcast the ep in question until weeks later, often unannounced at 2 or 3 a.m.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Definitely not crazy. Besides being run 5 nights a week at 7pm or 6:30pm (and interrupted by Cubs games), there was even a time when they did run it Tue & Thu while Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ran on M, W, & F.

The 70's were a fun time for watching Trek in the area for 2 1/2 hours a day. TAS on Ch 32 WFLD/Chicago; TOS on Ch 28 WSJV/South Bend; and TOS again on Ch. 9 WGN/Chicago. That was long before the cable explosion came along.

 

[Hambone]

In my area, in the mid-1970's, it was on WTCN channel 11 out of Minneapolis. The only way to see it was on (then) fledgling cable-TV, which I had to pay a whopping $6.00 a month to subscribe to. All my friends would come over and watch Star Trek every night at 5:30, while my parents were trying to watch the news.

Later, the local ABC affiliate started running Star Trek at 11:30 PM Saturdays. This caused a conflict with Saturday Night Live, so I would switch channels quickly to see which episode it was and make my choice. All this drove my parents crazy.

Me: "I need to turn to channel 5 and see what's on Star Trek"

Mom: (sigh)

Me: "Ooh, 'Balance of Terror'! Cool!"

Mom: (sigh) "Haven't you seen this one before?"

Me: "Umm, no, I think it's a new one."

Dad: **snicker**

Mom: (goes to bed)

 

[UnknownSample]

I wasn't in the Chicago area till 1978. It was on in prime time?!

Milwaukee (24) was great for Trek around 2000. Every weeknight, they ran Next Gen, Voyager, and DS9, 3 hours straight.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

Yeah, UnknownSample, Ch 9 carried TOS around the 6:30 pm or 7pm time slot for quite awhile with an occasional break for a few months before dropping it around the early '80s. Ch. 32 WFLD finally got it around the mid 80's and stuck in on Sat and Sun afternoons around 4 or 5pm. I moved away and don't pick up the Chicago stations anymore but I think Ch. 26 WCIU is carrying TOS-R nowadays.

 

[Corran Horn]

I remember the airings on 32 in the 80's. That was my first exposure to Trek.

I watched on a tiny little black and white set that you need to have a pair of pliers to change the channel. Oh yeah, and it used a bent coat hanger as an antenna. Good thing 32 was/is UHF!

 

[Kryton]

Well, the OLD ('70s) WGN would throw almost anything against the screen to see if it stuck. They were also a burgeoning "SuperStation" at the time (though the WGN that upfeeds NOW is quite different from the broadcast in Chicagoland version).

Yeah...that was in the era when TV and rebroadcast copyright and cable and such were just developing, let alone satellite (which,in its current form, was a couple decades away).

 

[UnknownSample]

KOT... bastardized original Trek is actually on channel 23 in Chicago, owned by the same people who own 26, and WGN too, I think. I can't pick up 23. I get it faintly on 58 from Milwaukee though.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

CHANNEL 23??!! They already had 15 broadcast stations in the area when I moved out of reception range (2,5,7,9,11,20,26,32,38,44,50,56,60,62,66), you mean they've added yet another one to the airwaves??!!

 

[Morpheus 02]

Actually 17...23 was 1/2 Korean 1/2 multiethnic, when WOCH became channel 28, it was 1/2 korean, 1/2 Video Jukebox (later MTV2--could be mixing that history a bit)

Later the FCC made 28 switch to channel 41 (a station in Milwaukee i believe has 28 now). It is a low power but 24 hour Korean station (with some shows with subittles).

The company that owns channel 26 bought 23, making it "METV", basically reruns from 50's 60's & 70's

so add 23 & 41 to your list!