The station builders: a university's channel, a newspaper's channels, and the men who ran them

WSBT radio 1922 · WSBT-TV 1952 · WNDU-TV, 15 July 1955

The producing side of the foundings: The stations' institutional history belongs to the Newspapers & Media record; the people who built and programmed them belong here. South Bend's television was built by two owners. The first was the newspaper: the South Bend Tribune's company put WSBT radio on the air in 1922 and WSBT-TV in 1952, the market's first television station — the company that became Schurz Communications. Its sports director, Joe Boland, originated the Irish Football Network in 1948 — the date in the university’s 2008 athletics history; the Indiana Football Hall of Fame dates the origination to 1947, and both stand — the national radio network for Notre Dame football that Mutual and then ABC carried at hundreds of stations: a national program produced out of a South Bend newsroom, seven years before the university owned a station of its own. The second builder was the university. WNDU-TV went on the air on 15 July 1955 as a project of Notre Dame's president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, owned by the Michiana Telecasting Corporation, a university subsidiary, with its studios on the campus grounds — where they stood until 1982 — and David Sarnoff of RCA and NBC himself at the dedication convocation that September, telling three thousand people that television on the campus was "the modern counterpart of the blackboard and textbook." The station's early schedule carried the first local telecast of a Notre Dame football game. It was a commercial NBC affiliate in every respect but its owner, and Notre Dame held it for half a century: the sale to Gray Television, for $85 million in cash, was agreed in November 2005 and completed in 2006, the money placed in the university's endowment.

The man who ran the university's station through its formative decades was William Thomas Hamilton, a New York broadcasting executive who took the job at a third less salary, in the record's account, as a matter of faith, and became general manager in 1960. There was no board to answer to; Hamilton said he never had to take orders from Notre Dame, and under him the station embodied his philosophy of commercial broadcasting's responsibility to its community — the philosophy that chartered WJA-TV, stood behind Beyond Our Control (whose advisers called him the show's "guardian angel"), and made the station a training ground. One earlier student staffer makes the point at pointer size: Phil Donahue worked at WNDU while a Notre Dame student in the mid-1950s, a decade before his own program remade daytime television. Hamilton died in 1983. The producing bench the two owners built — a newspaper's network origination, a university's commercial station and its student company — is the foundation every later entry in this chapter stands on.

Sources:

1. WNDU-TV station record — first air date 15 July 1955, originally UHF channel 46, to channel 16 in 1957; owned by the Michiana Telecasting Corporation, a Notre Dame subsidiary; a project of President Theodore Hesburgh; early programming including Romper Room and the first local telecast of a Notre Dame football game.
2. Notre Dame News, 5 March 2006 — Gray Television's acquisition of all the capital stock of Michiana Telecasting Corp. for $85 million in cash; "Founded by Notre Dame in 1955"; the proceeds to student and academic initiatives and the endowment. (The agreement to sell was reached 24 November 2005, per the station record.)
3. Beyond Our Control research project (Notre Dame) — the studio on campus grounds until 1982; Sarnoff's dedication address, 30 September 1955; the profile of general manager William Thomas Hamilton: GM from 1960, autonomous authority, the JA sponsorship of 1960–61, "guardian angel" in Joe Dundon's words, died 1983; Donahue's student work at WNDU.
4. Notre Dame athletics record (fightingirish.com), 22 February 2008 — "Joe Boland, former sports director at WSBT in South Bend, originated the Irish Football Network in 1948"; Mutual carriage from 1956 at approximately 560 stations.
5. WSBT station record — the Tribune company (later Schurz Communications) as the builder of WSBT radio (1922) and WSBT-TV (signed on 1952).