THE TV ABCS
Allow me to refresh Melville Shavelson’s memory (Letters, Jan. 15).
Paramount’s experimental television station, which became KTLA, was not W6XAO but W6XYZ. Altogether, there were six experimental TV licenses in Los Angeles--and nine applicants for just seven commercial VHF channels (not counting commercial Channel 1, on which KARO Riverside was the first and only U.S. station ever authorized).
W6XAO, founded in 1931 by noted automobile dealer and pioneer broadcaster Don Lee, is the station that became KTSL, KNXT and KCBS-TV.
In 1939, when W6XYZ signed on, W6XAO moved from its original site, atop the Don Lee Cadillac building at 7th and Bixel streets downtown, to Mt. Lee in the Hollywood Hills, where its former tower and building still stand, above the Hollywood sign.
THOMAS D. BRATTER
Los Angeles
The complete guide to home viewing
Get Screen Gab for everything about the TV shows and streaming movies everyone’s talking about.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
