Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Continued from previous week
In August 1959, WMBV changed its city of license to Green Bay and later became WLUK-TV, moving its transmitter just six miles northwest of Green Bay at 1,000 feet in the air and 316,000 watts of power, reaching Appleton and Sheboygan.
Later that year, the station began broadcasting network programming in color.
The following year, what was now Channel 11 applied to increase its Flintville tower height by 300 feet to aid in reception of its “fringe area.”
Raymond Grandle was named manager of the station, coming from WGN-TV in New York City.
In March 1961, the station announced plans to erect a 1,000 tower on Scray’s Hill, relocating to De Pere from Flintville.
The tower boosted the station’s reach to 2,046 above sea level at its new location.
“Because of the length of guy wires, the tower installation will cover an area of 73.7 acres,” a Press-Gazette article stated.
“Eventually, if the tower reaches the full 1,700-foot height, it will be 228 feet higher than the Empire State Building and twice as high as the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”
In 1964, M & M Broadcasting President Morgan Murphy announced the appointment of Philip J. Richtscheidt as general manager.
He had previously worked in New York City and Youngstown, Ohio.
Seven months later, Appleton’s Post Corporation announced plans to acquire WLUK, by purchasing over $3 million in M & M Broadcasting stock.
The sale was approved by the FCC in January 1965 and included WLUC-TV in Marquette, Mich.
The stations joined two other TV station, three AM radio stations and one FM station in the Post family.
Local programs began airing in color that same year.
In May 1966, WLUK broke ground on a new $500,000, 22,300 square-foot, two-story building on Highland Avenue — now Lombardi Avenue — just east of the Brown County Arena, with plans to beef up its local programming production.
The facility included a 20-foot revolving stage for producing local commercials.
New programs included “Packerama” with Packers Guard Jerry Kramer and “Romper Room” with Sherry Bias.
In 1967, Tom Hutchison was named station manager for WLUK.
Hutchison had previously worked at the Oconto Reporter and Green Bay Press-Gazette and was co-owner of the Manawa Advocate before joining the Post Corporation as the director of promotion and public relations.
“Other than making a brief on-air appearance in Milwaukee to promote West Allis’ Western Days, I’d never been in a television station. Dave Nelson and Vic Minahan offered me the job over lunch at Billotti’s Restaurant next to the station,” recalled Hutchison in his book The Land of Milk & Honey.
“They said WLUK wasn’t performing as expected and they would bring in Howard Trickey from Eau Claire as the station manager. Howard would help me in the transition from newspaper to television.”
Hutchison was soon named station manager.
“Of all the attributes that The Post Corporation had, honesty in management was perhaps the greatest asset,” Hutchison added.
“Never once in my 22 years with the company did I have reason to question the integrity of the corporate owners.”
To be continued
Many thanks to Dan Spangler, Jay Zollar and Juli Buehler of WLUK and Tom Hutchison for their assistance with this article.
