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WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Covers all of Northern Lower Michigan (from Ludington to Tawas northward), as well as the Straits Area and Soo Region.
TVC_DX5678
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WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by TVC_DX5678 » Sat Apr 24, 2021 6:31 pm

Today I was at a thrift store in Honor and found a sold-as-blank VHS tape. I brought it home and to my surprise... whoever recorded the tape left it on Fox 33 (back in the Gary Knapp era) THE WHOLE TIME. The whole 8 hours. The tape is from around 1994, and I'll be uploading commercial breaks from the tape as soon as I get them captured, but for now... here's some clips of what I've found:

https://youtu.be/n8Q2vpA-CaY



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MWmetalhead
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by MWmetalhead » Sun Apr 25, 2021 10:14 am

Cool video.

Those sure were some puny signals back in the day. Only 61,700 watts from Vanderbilt? I bet there were areas less than 15 miles from the tower site that couldn't pick up WGKU, especially given the terrain in the region!

Even when Cadillac (WGKI) more than tripled its power, there were viewing locations where I was camping or vacationing maybe 30 to 35 miles from the tower site where I received a very snowy picture. Granted, the reception outperformed analog WCMV in both spots, where in one case, I could receive no discernible signal at all.



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Jim Sofonia
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by Jim Sofonia » Sun Apr 25, 2021 12:28 pm

Surprisingly, I could get Vanderbilt better than the other UHF signals here on the East side of Traverse City, probably due to close in terrain.



Milk
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by Milk » Sun Apr 25, 2021 7:36 pm

I remembered WGKI's early days watching them on cable. Talk about low, low budget! The sound was muddy, the picture was shaky and the graphics resembled what 7&4's looked like from 1980. But, Gary never gave up and the station only grew more and more under his leadership!



organman95
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by organman95 » Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:01 pm

I vaguely remember the cable signal (channel 2 on TCI Cheboygan) wasn't very stable during severe weather in the early-90s. There were a few times I remember getting a signal out of the Pickford translator, and it was better than Vanderbilt!



CJ
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by CJ » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:21 pm

I remember moving to the Evart/Reed City area in the early 90s and barely got the Cadillac signal with a rooftop antenna. It’s wasn’t even viewable. We must of been contending with some bad terrain issues with that signal. Not having Fox Kids in the afternoon while you were in elementary school in the 90s was about as bad as it gets. After getting cable, I was surprised with how low budget the channel looked compared to moving from the Bay City area and Fox 66’s look.



ftballfan
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by ftballfan » Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:53 pm

I barely remember having to witness my great-grandma try to adjust her antenna rotor to get a snowy Fox 33 for Lions games (she lived near Onekama). After the upgrade around 2000, Fox 33 was much easier to get.

The clips were from before its short-lived superstation run in the mid 1990s, when it had widespread cable carriage in a good chunk of Michigan, including almost the entire UP, and into Wisconsin.



organman95
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by organman95 » Mon Apr 26, 2021 9:26 pm

ftballfan wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:53 pm
I barely remember having to witness my great-grandma try to adjust her antenna rotor to get a snowy Fox 33 for Lions games (she lived near Onekama). After the upgrade around 2000, Fox 33 was much easier to get.

The clips were from before its short-lived superstation run in the mid 1990s, when it had widespread cable carriage in a good chunk of Michigan, including almost the entire UP, and into Wisconsin.
I remember my grandfather in Frederic adjusting the rotor for the Lions games. Sometimes he'd pull in 45, other times 33. Then he got satellite in '98 and never worried about it again.



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rugratsonline
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by rugratsonline » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:37 pm

ftballfan wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:53 pm
The clips were from before its short-lived superstation run in the mid 1990s, when it had widespread cable carriage in a good chunk of Michigan, including almost the entire UP, and into Wisconsin.
This was following the Detroit affiliation changes in 1995, which saw WKBD swapping Fox for a new network, UPN. To keep Fox available in the UP (where there were no affiliates), the distributor replaced WKBD with WGKI. This, in consequence, got them on cable in areas where WKBD was previously available, including Grand Rapids, Bay City, Saginaw, Lansing, and the Thumb region. However, it was not long until WKBD replaced WGKI on many downstate systems, mainly due to the fact that WGKI was otherwise blacked out most of the time, due to syndex and exclusivity with local Fox affiliates, as well as the fact that the Flint / Tri-Cities market had no UPN outlet.



ftballfan
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Re: WGKI/WGKU footage found at last!

Post by ftballfan » Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:59 pm

rugratsonline wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:37 pm
ftballfan wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:53 pm
The clips were from before its short-lived superstation run in the mid 1990s, when it had widespread cable carriage in a good chunk of Michigan, including almost the entire UP, and into Wisconsin.
This was following the Detroit affiliation changes in 1995, which saw WKBD swapping Fox for a new network, UPN. To keep Fox available in the UP (where there were no affiliates), the distributor replaced WKBD with WGKI. This, in consequence, got them on cable in areas where WKBD was previously available, including Grand Rapids, Bay City, Saginaw, Lansing, and the Thumb region. However, it was not long until WKBD replaced WGKI on many downstate systems, mainly due to the fact that WGKI was otherwise blacked out most of the time, due to syndex and exclusivity with local Fox affiliates, as well as the fact that the Flint / Tri-Cities market had no UPN outlet.
I know Grand Rapids had WKBD until around 2000, when WXSP came on. It would be very interesting to see a cable conversion chart from 1995 from downstate areas.

Side note: WGKI -> WFQX replaced WKBD on most of its cable systems. For example, in Traverse City, WKBD was on cable channel 3, which is now home to WFQX



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