60 Years of KTLA

The first commercial TV station west of the Mississippi, KTLA celebrates its 60th anniversary on Monday.

The station first broadcast on Jan. 22, 1947. Originally owned by a Paramount Pictures subsidiary (hence that first logo, seen above), KTLA was originally licensed by the FCC in 1939 as experimental station W6XYZ (and went on the air in Sept. 1942) on channel 4. Wikipedia notes:

Klaus Landsberg, already an accomplished television pioneer at the age of 26, was the station manager. On January 22, 1947, it was licensed for commercial broadcast as KTLA on channel five, becoming the first commercial television station to broadcast west of the Mississippi River. Estimates of television sets in the Los Angeles area at the time ranged from 350 to 600.

Bob Hope served as the emcee for KTLA's inaugural broadcast, which was broadcast that evening from a garage on the Paramount Studios lot. The program, titled as the "Western Premiere of Commercial Television", featured appearances from many Hollywood luminaries. Hope delivered what was perhaps the most famous line of the evening when, at the program's start, he identified the new station as "KTL", mistakenly omitting the "A" at the end of the call sign. The surviving kinescope of the historic telecast shows Hope asking what camera he should look at.

KTLA has been owned by Tribune since 1985 (and its fate, like that of all Tribune properties, now hangs in the air).

The station isn't making much of a fuss over its 60th birthday (it aired a 50th anniversary special in 1997, as well as a 45th spec in 1992 and a 40th special in 1987). But timed to its birthday, KTLA will be receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next Wednesday.

By the way, that's legendary KTLA fixture Stan Chambers in the clip above. Stan's been with the station since December 1947 -- and he's still there!

KTLA's web site has a nice (although slightly outdated) section on its history. Read here for background on KTLA, and here for a timeline.