WJJY TV Mast
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| Jacksonville/Quincy/Springfield, Illinois | |
|---|---|
| Channels | Analog: 14 (UHF) |
| Owner | Look Television Corporation |
| First air date | August 18, 1969 |
| Last air date | September 15, 1971 |
| Former affiliations |
Primary: ABC (1969–1971) Secondary: OSPI video feed (1970–1971) PBS via WILL-TV (1970–1971) |
| Transmitter power | 4500 kW |
WJJY-TV was a short-lived television station based in Jacksonville, Illinois that was on the air from 1969 to 1971. It was the ABC television affiliate for Quincy, Illinois, and also reached Springfield as well.
West-central Illinois had limited choices for television in the 1960s. Most of the western portion of the region was in the Quincy market, while most of the eastern portion was part of the Springfield/Decatur trading area of the Champaign/Urbana/Springfield market. A significant part of the Quincy market lay in the states of Missouri and Iowa. For much of the region, television was limited to WGEM-TV and KHQA-TV in Quincy, or grade B signals from the St. Louis VHF stations. A few homes in the area (mostly in the eastern part of the region) could watch UHF stations from Springfield, and with luck could pick up signals from Peoria.
Keith Moyer, an out-of-town promoter who also started WTIM radio in Taylorville, believed that Quincy was big enough to support a third station. With the help of several Jacksonville-area investors, he formed Look Television Corporation and applied for the channel 14 license. Jacksonville was chosen because it was the nearest city to Quincy with an available commercial license, even though it was located on the Springfield/Decatur side of the Champaign/Urbana/Springfield market. On August 18, 1969, WJJY-TV started broadcasting as an ABC affiliate.
WJJY had a lot going for it on paper. It signed-on using every watt of its legally permitted 4.5 million watts of effective radiated power — at the time, the most powerful UHF station in the world. It operated from a 1,610-foot tower near Bluffs, Illinois, one of the three tallest structures in North America at the time. It was topped with an experimental RCA "Vee-Zee" antenna, one of only three ever constructed. Since the station aired on the lowest portion of the UHF dial, the antenna weighed 26 tons—one of the heaviest ever put into service. On its first day on the air, reception reports came in from as far south as Cape Girardeau, Missouri and as far north as Minneapolis.
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