WLUK 70: The all-night theater

Continued from last week

WLUK later became the first station in the Green Bay market to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Beginning May 6, 1977, viewers were no longer left with “dead air,” as host Doug Heim presented “TJ and the ANT” — television jockey and the all-night theater — from midnight to sunrise.

The show featured fantasy, horror, mystery, sci-fi and thriller features that included titles such as Blood of Dracula, Planet of the Apes, The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes, The Ghost Ship, The War of the Worlds, The Skull and The Thing

“TJ and the ANT” aired on WLUK-TV Channel 11 in Green Bay from 1977 to 1982.

“Originally, the All Night Theater was only supposed to be a four-week experiment. Well, after only two weeks on the air, TV 11 got flooded with so much mail that the show went on,” Heim said in his YouTube series “All Nostalgic Television,” which features clips from the historic show.

Heim said that WLUK also had the region’s first videotape machine capable of movie projector animation.

“At the beginning was made frame by frame on videotape. TV 11 had the region’s first videotape machine that had that kind of capability. The rest of the footage was shot frame by frame on 16-millimeter film. I know because I did it myself, but the real credit goes to Sue Campbell,” Heim said.

“She was the art director at TV 11 and she had no computer, so she had to hand-paint everything. Back then, each frame was hand painted onto a clear acetate film cell.

“Sue was also the region’s first true stop-action film animator.”

In April 1983, WLUK secured the Green Bay market’s NBC affiliation, when WFRV obtained the ABC affiliation.

A year later, Gillett Broadcasting purchased Post Corporation and sold the station to Burnham Broadcasting.

In July 1994, Burnham Broadcasting started working on a sale of WLUK-TV to SF Broadcasting and making WLUK a FOX affiliate.

But, NBC wasn’t going to walk away without a fight, contesting the transfer of ownership before the FCC.

The November 1994 transfer date came and went and FOX and NBC were still battling over the Green Bay station.

However, in February 1995, NBC withdrew its petition and in April the FCC approved the transfer of the station, changing the station’s affiliation to FOX.

To be continued
Many thanks to Dan Spangler, Jay Zollar and Juli Buehler of WLUK and Tom Hutchison for their assistance with this article.