WTMJ-TV

Click on the TV to see an editorial on 1960s style filmed on the UWM Campus.

Starting in April 1929, The Journal Company began experimenting with television and was granted a construction permit and license for station W9XD in September 1931.  The Company's early experiments took place in the corner of the garage used to house the newspaper circulation trucks.  The television laboratory was later relocated to the 25th floor penthouse of the Schroeder Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.  Experiments on television as well as radio newspapers or facsimiles, were continued until 1938.

The development of television was delayed by World War II but progressed rapidly after the war.  WTMJ-TV went on the air on December 3, 1947. It was the seventeenth television station in the country to go on the air, the first television station in Wisconsin, and the first commercial station in the Midwest.

Throughout its history, WTMJ-TV documented Milwaukee. It also documented its own evolution as a station and the evolution of broadcasting technology. Political press conferences, historical events, cultural shifts are all reflected through the lens of the WTMJ-TV camera. As television as a medium grew, it faced new challenges. The station had to develop policies for cameras in the courtroom and deal with accusations of censorship.

WTMJ and communication:

The main function of television news has always been to communicate the daily events of the world to the public. Having a record of this communication shows us events unfolding as they happened.

Television news in and of itself communicates, but the people behind the scenes who dictate what is broadcast also affect our understanding of events. What about the people who appear? Politicians? Reporters?

In the Archives: The WTMJ-TV News Film Collection contains local news footage spanning the 1950s to the early 1980s. There are also news scripts, photographs, audience surveys and several papers regarding the surveys, broadcast contracts, a number of magazine articles about the television station, a retail rate card, and material relating to the operation and history of the television station.

There is also a large number of scripts for editorials read on WTMJ-TV, WTMJ-Radio and WTMJ-FM between September  1964 and May 1966.