WTTG

WTTG began in the last days of World War II when the station's transmitter and other components were driven from New Jersey to Washington DC by engineer Thomas G. Goldsmith Jr and three associates. They managed to transfer all of the equipment to a room on the 12th floor of the Harrington Hotel, then employed unused elevator cables to feed power up to the equipment fro the hotel's basement.

On May 19, 1945, the FCC issued the construction permit. Only nine days later, an experimental license was issued because station W3XWT was ready to begin telecasting. This station was being put on the air under the auspices of Allen B. DuMont Laboratories of Passaic, NJ, where Goldsmith was the director of research.

W3XWT (W meaning North America, 3 for the region, X for experimental, and WT for call letters) began as the second affiliate of the DuMont Network, after the one in New York, NY. W3XWT hadn't gotten around to doing more than getting a signal on the air. The station ran a test pattern, and a repeating audio message asking viewers to call the station at the hotel. It took three months before they got any response, and that was in August when the war in the Pacific ended.

That day, crowds of celebrating people were surging through the streets. Goldsmith, therefore, decided to take his pen and write "War Is Over" across a blank video slide. That's when the Navy called the station. They had been monitoring the radio spectrum for clandestine activity, and became curious about the signals. This was the station's first "program," and its first viewer reaction.

In November 1946, the FCC licensed W3XWT as commercial station WTTG. The call letters incorporated Thomas T. Goldsmith's initials. Washington DC, New York and Pittsburgh eventually became the nucleus of the DuMont Network. DuMont later sold an interest in the network to Paramount Pictures. This proved counterproductive and resulted in programming cutbacks, forced the sale of the profitable Pittsburgh station, as well as creating FCC inquiries.

WTTG claims a number of broadcasting firsts: the first live sporting event Senators baseball in 1948. On December 24, 1946, the first church service telecast from Grace Episcopal Church in New York, was carried on WTTG and two other stations on the DuMont network. WTTG's Bob Wolff became the first television sportscaster in the Washington, DC area. On June 27, 1949, DuMont's longest running series, "Captain Video," premiered on WTTG. NFL broadcasts began for the first time on WTTG. Ted Bergmann went to Philadelphia and negotiated a deal with the first NFL Commissioner Burton Bell. There were 12 teams in the NFL at the time. Ted Bergmann bought the rights to 10 of them for $1 million.

In addition to those firsts, other firsts included: