WWLP Founder William Lowell Putnam Dies
In 1953, he founded WWLP, the first TV station in Springfield, Mass., and the first licensed UHF television station in the United States. He made the station a leader in the community by showcasing a variety of local events including the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Day Parade. He added stations in Dayton, Ohio, and Salt Lake City, Utah, in the years that followed before selling the corporation in 1980s.
This article was originally posted on wwlp.com
Mr. Putnam championed the rights of UHF stations in the analog era when those stations were often at a competitive disadvantage. It cost more to transmit on UHF than it did on VHF, and the signal did not reach as far. He advocated that markets be either all VHF or all UHF, and he helped bring about the 1964 act that required UHF tuners be included in all newly manufactured TV sets. Locally, he frequently challenged the broadcast license that The Travelers Insurance Company held on VHF in Hartford for powerhouse WTIC-TV 3 (now WFSB). He sought to have that VHF license used for an educational television station so that all commercial stations in the area would be on the level playing field of UHF. In a 2012 interview on WWLP, he mentioned that his decision to sell his TV stations in 1984 and exit broadcasting was due to the retirement of a “friendly” FCC commissioner who was empathetic to the plight of UHF stations. His death comes almost exactly one year after his wife’s (broadcaster Kitty Broman Putnam) death in the first week of January, 2014.