The WTVR tower, above the television station’s West Broad Street headquarters (Photo by Jay Paul)
“Wilbur Havens was a visionary in broadcasting. He got the potential for television from day one. His passion made everything that you see here today,” says Don Talley, senior account executive at WTVR.
He’s referring to the distinctive building on Broad Street with the 843-foot tower, home of WTVR Channel 6, the South’s first television station. Seventy-five years ago, on April 22, 1948, at exactly 7 p.m., Havens pulled the switch to launch his new television station … and blew out the building’s electricity.
For Havens, everything about his television venture was an obstacle to be overcome. “Fate was throwing him stuff left and right, but he managed to always figure out a way to fix it,” Talley says. “Wilbur was a lucky guy. He walked between raindrops, but he made a lot of his own luck.”
It all started with a conundrum. Havens was the owner of an auto parts store. “He had a floor above his shop that wasn’t being used, and that bugged him. He also thought it would be glamourous to be in radio,” Talley says.
In 1926, Havens invested $500 and turned the floor upstairs into WMBG-AM 1380. The venture was successful, then in 1947, he started one of the first FM stations in the country.
But radio was just the beginning. Havens started following television technology in the 1920s. For decades he planned his own television studio, but during World War II the government froze all broadcast technology and licensing. Undeterred, Havens began buying up Army surplus broadcasting equipment and tweaking it in his garage until it met the quality standards needed to broadcast. Equipment he couldn’t purchase and repurpose he made from scratch, including microphones and receivers.
WTVR founder Wilbur Havens places a beacon bulb in the top of the TV station tower in 1953. (Photo courtesy WTVR)
Just after the war, with two other large Richmond companies gearing up to go into television, Havens leapt first. In January 1948, when the Federal Communications Commission briefly opened its licenses and channels, Havens was ready to go. Months later, when the FCC abruptly froze licensing across the country, Havens was the only licensed station south of the Mason-Dixon Line. At the time, there were only 37 stations on the air nationally. Havens was determined to be the next. There were just a couple of problems.
“No one in the South had a privately owned television,” Talley says. “No one really knew what television was. But Wilbur thought of a way to fix that.” Teaming up with Sam Wurtzel, a New York businessman who learned of the station while on vacation in Richmond, Havens sold the concept of television while Wurtzel sold television sets. Wurtzel opened Wards TV on Broad Street, eventually growing his business into Circuit City.
But while television sales were gaining steam, the station itself was stalling. “Just before he was to throw the switch, NBC called to say they were short on coaxial cable,” Talley says. “The war had created a shortage, and it would be three months before they would have enough coaxial cable to reach Richmond. What do you do when you have a television station but no programming?”
Again, Havens had the solution. “Wilbur sent the message far and wide, ‘If you can do anything, do you want to be on TV?’ Most people were like, ‘What’s TV?’ ” But grassroots talent came from all over the commonwealth — magicians, musicians, artists, “even ladies showing how to grow African violets,” Talley says.
Virginia sports and recreation officials appear on WTVR’s “Sportlight” program in the 1950s. (Photo courtesy WTVR)
Amid much fanfare, including a full-page ad in the Richmond News Leader announcing the big day, television fever took over the city. Department stores put televisions in their display windows and hotels in their lobbies. Movie theaters set up screens, with The Byrd Theatre outdoing them all by projecting on a 7-by-9-foot screen in its crowded lobby. Everywhere, crowds gathered around any available television for the 7 p.m. launch.
Then on April 22, 1948, a minute before the magic hour, the switch was pulled, and … the building went dark. A few minutes later, technicians were able to get the power back up, and WTVR was on the air.
Over the next two decades, Havens grew his station. “He was the sole owner. He was in this building every day. If something needed to be done at Channel 6, he was the guy. It’s hard for us in corporate America to understand that kind of management. It’s crazy the stuff he did,” Talley says.
Havens sold the station to Park Broadcasting in 1965. The station has changed hands a few times since then; most recently, The E.W. Scripps Company purchased it in 2019.
A crowd waits to enter the station in 1956. (Photo courtesy WTVR)
“There is such a tremendous amount of history when you walk through that door,” says Greg McQuade, reporter and weekend anchor at WTVR. “How things have changed. It used to be just the 11 o’clock news. Then the 6 o’clock. Now we have expanded our morning news from 4:30 to 7. We are back again at noon, the 5, 6 and 11. That’s a lot more time to fill.”
Keeping up with those changes, particularly with a 24-hour news cycle and the ramifications of social media, is critical to keeping WTVR going. The secret sauce is keeping it local. “We strive to get the voices of the community out there, to think about things on a local level. The stories in the Northern Neck matter just as much as the stories in Richmond,” McQuade says.
“Our biggest asset is our ability to give Central Virginia local, local, local,” Talley says. “There will be a time when there will be a cable channel to cover just about everything, but the stuff for Central Virginia? That’s us.”
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