# Channel 56
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 7, 2026, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219 "2026-08-07T22:28:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/1 "2026-08-07T22:28:17Z")
I grew up in the Los Angeles media market and I could access (at most) about half a dozen UHF channels. About half were foreign language stations (CH 14-25 roughly). The local PBS station was CH 28. Moving up the dial, there were one or two channels with a place holder card indicating some institution that held no interest to a ten year old. The last channel I could tune in (despite the tuner going to 80-something) was CH 56. CH 56 broadcast repackaged movie shorts and serials (Little Rascals, Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, Buck Rogers, etc) and Japanese children’s cartoons (Speed Racer, Kimba, Gigantor..). It was a nice break from the afternoon reruns on the independent VHF channels.
I listen to a lot of podcasts where men my age (60-ish) wax nostalgic about things like local TV channels. What I’ve noticed, and what puzzles me, is that it seems like they all had a CH 56 that pretty much ran the same stuff, whether they grew up in New York, or Boston, or Chicago. All those empty bands on the UHF dial and the channels featuring cheap old and foreign stuff appealing to ten year-olds all settled on CH 56. Coincidence?
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/2 "2026-08-07T23:01:24Z")
I lived in Chicago in the late '60s and early '70s. We had several independent UHF TV stations, which carried similar programming to your channel 56, but they weren’t, in fact, on that channel; they were on channels 26 (WCIU), 32 (WFLD), and 44 (WSNS).
There is now a channel 56 in the Chicago market, but it’s a public broadcasting station, out of Gary (just over the border in Indiana); I’m not sure that there was ever an independent station on that channel number.
We moved to Green Bay in 1975, and at that time, there was no independent TV station in the region; we only had CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS. It wasn’t until I was in high school, in the early 1980s, when an independent UHF station, then called WLRE (it’s now WGBA), started in the area, but they were, and still are, on channel 26.
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/3 "2026-08-07T23:03:05Z")
In 1964 there was a mandate that televisions sold had to have a UHF tuner built in. I think the higher numbers became more accessible. Why they chose 56 I wouldn’t know.
Boston had a big broadcast line up on that channel according to Google.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/4 "2026-08-07T23:04:28Z")
At least back in the analog days, it looks like the FCC tried to keep a separation of six “channels” between UHF stations in a given market, probably to minimize interference.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/5 "2026-08-07T23:05:35Z")
I wasn’t sure about Chicago, but I know guys who grew up in Boston, New York, and other places I can’t remember reminisced about CH 56.
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### Author:  [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/6 "2026-08-07T23:21:16Z")
Growing up, I lived in the following places:
- **Spokane** (twice) – Didn’t have a UHF station (Channel 28) until I was 17 and two years after my family got cable.
- **LA** – I can confirm what **Elmer J.Fudd** said, but I barely noticed at the time since I was 2 and 3 years old.
- **Sacramento** (twice) – Had Channel 40, which showed old movies and cartoons, and Channel 31, which showed old serials, until it switched to an all-foreign-language format.
- **Bay Area** – In addition to the independent Channel 2, there was Channel 36, which didn’t have any cartoons but aired a lot of pre-Code comedies from W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers; Channel 44, which had a solid block of Warner Brothers cartoons in the afternoon and, for some reason, barely came in at my house; and (briefly) Channel 20, which went bankrupt shortly after my family moved to Cupertino.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/7 "2026-08-07T23:28:11Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#):
>
> I wasn’t sure about Chicago, but I know guys who grew up in Boston, New York, and other places I can’t remember reminisced about CH 56.
Really? I grew up in the Connecticut suburbs watching much television from New York and don’t remember a Channel 56. And now I’m reviewing the television listings for the New York Times of exactly fifty years ago and don’t see that channel listed, though I do see 21, 25, 31, 41, 47, 50 and 68.
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### Author:  [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/8 "2026-08-07T23:45:24Z")
It must have been the stations in Buffalo or Syracuse. Google tells me there were also CH 56’s in central KY, Orlando, FL, and Scranton, PA . There are others, but they were PBS or network affiliates. The closest analog in programing to my CH 56 (KDOC) was the one in Boston.
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### Author:  [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2026, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/9 "2026-08-07T23:49:54Z")
Motor City weighing in:
> **[WTVS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTVS)**
>
> WTVS (channel 56) is a PBS member television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, owned by Detroit Public Media. Its main studios are located at the Riley Broadcast Center and HD Studios on Clover Court in Wixom, with an additional studio at the Maccabees Building on the campus of Wayne State University on Woodward Avenue in Midtown Detroit. The station's transmitter is located at 8 Mile and Meyers Road in Oak Park (on a tower shared with independent station WMYD, channel 20, and CB The ...
We also had UHF channels 20, 50, and 62, IIRC.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/10 "2026-08-08T00:20:03Z")
Never had a Ch. 56 in St. Louis. The highest full-power station we have was and is 46. When TV went digital a bunch of low-power stations started up, but the highest is 51.
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> At least back in the analog days, it looks like the FCC tried to keep a separation of six “channels” between UHF stations in a given market, probably to minimize interference.
Apparently not true anymore. All the stations in the St. Louis area, no matter what channel they call themselves, actually broadcast on channels 14-35. In faact, I counted at least eight different signals from multiple stations broadcast on Ch. 26.
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### Author:  [@KCB615](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KCB615)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/11 "2026-08-08T00:27:24Z")
Channel 56 in Boston (WLVI, Roman numerals for 56) was one of the two mainstays of my childhood TV watching. They had Looney Toons, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Munsters, a fair number of 1950s black and white shows, etc. Everything a child of the late 70s and early 80s could need.
Channel 38, WSBK, was the other great. More sports stuff on 38, plus the Stooges on Sunday mornings. The one other Boston UHF Channel, 25, came along in the late 80s if I remember right.
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/12 "2026-08-08T00:28:04Z")
I don’t remember Channel 56 in Des Moines, but I do remember Channel 17. It was mostly syndicated and religious programming.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/13 "2026-08-08T00:30:54Z")
When I was growing up, Cleveland had 3, 5, 8, 19, 25, 43, and 55. 3, 5, and 8 were the Big Three, NBC, ABC, and CBS (not necessarily in that order). 19 was Fox (though 19 and 8 eventually swapped, for reasons I don’t know). 25 was PBS. 43 was independent and mostly had syndicated shows, but somehow managed to always secure the rights to Indians games. 55 went through many different incarnations, including Home Shopping and infomercials, and was always very hard to pick up, but they eventually boosted their power and became Paramount.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/14 "2026-08-08T00:37:46Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> Apparently not true anymore. All the stations in the St. Louis area, no matter what channel they call themselves, actually broadcast on channels 14-35. In faact, I counted at least eight different signals from multiple stations broadcast on Ch. 26.
Yup, the switchover to digital broadcasting changed a lot.
Each station was granted a number of “digital subchannels,” which they use for a variety of things; channel #-1 is usually their primary/main broadcast, while the subchannels (#-2, #-3, etc.) carry programming such as syndicated channels like MeTV, 24/7 news, weather radar, etc.
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### Author:  [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/15 "2026-08-08T01:12:26Z")
Page 22, of the 1979 Vane Jones log lists the stations on channel 56:
> **[Jones-Log-13-1979-Final.pdf](https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Logs-Lists-Directories/Archive-Jones/Jones-Log-13-1979-Final.pdf)**
>
> 6.57 MB
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/16 "2026-08-08T01:26:01Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#):
>
> Motor City weighing in:
Thank you. Our local PBS was 56.
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### Author:  [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/17 "2026-08-08T06:01:51Z")
Dallas/DFW here. We had lots of UHF channels(21,27,33, and 39 were the larger ones), but no channel 56 that I can recall. Lots of them broadcast ancient re-runs of older stuff. Non-UHF channel 11 had a block of Three Stooges and Little Rascals it would run every weekday morning, and they had a pretty good afternoon movie slot after the local news (first place I saw Silent Running as a kid!)
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### Author:  [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/18 "2026-08-08T06:52:36Z")
I also grew up in L.A. I’m nearly certain it was Channel 52. I don’t recall it being the last number.
> **[KVEA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVEA)**
>
> KVEA (channel 52) is a television station licensed to Corona, California, United States, serving the Los Angeles area. It is the West Coast flagship station of the Spanish-language network Telemundo, owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC West Coast flagship KNBC (channel 4). The two stations share studios at the Brokaw News Center in the northwest corner of the Universal Studios Hollywood lot off Lankershim Boulevard in Universal City; KVEA's transmitter is ...
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### Author:  [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/19 "2026-08-08T07:45:54Z")
Toronto, 1970s and 1980s.
On the UHF dial, we got channels 19 (TVO, educational public TV), 22 (Global), 25 (CBC French), 29 (Buffalo independent), 47 (Multicultural), and 79 (holy hannah).
Channel 22 was fairly straightforward, and would have made a fine channel on the VHF dial. Channel 29 had Creature Features on weekend afternoons. Channel 47 lived up to its motto, with news broadcasts in Chinese, Hindi, Italian, and a few others. Except French, that was up to channel 25. But it also broadcast much of what the OP describes, and I recall seeing “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” “The Prisoner,” and any number of Three Stooges shorts and cartoons, among other offerings.
Channel 79 was … well, it simply was. Rather like channel U62 in the 1989 film _UHF_ starring Weird Al Yankovic. Newscasts usually led with something lurid (“Bloody night on Queen Street!”), the station owner’s daughter hosted a show about fashion, a movie reviewer nobody had ever heard of hosted a movie review show (and was beautifully parodied on SCTV), “Great Movies” which were basically drive-in B-pictures, and the real reason we adolescent boys tuned in Friday nights at midnight: “Baby Blue Movies,” which were softcore porn.
Given that you actually had to turn a dial (click-click-click) to go way up the dial to Channel 79, it eventually went further down the dial to channel 57. Still a ways to go (click-click-click), but I’d suggest that it is close enough to channel 56 to count.
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### Author:  [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2026, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/20 "2026-08-08T16:26:13Z")
It was channel 52. They also had _Ultraman, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot_, and all the _Flash Gordon_ serials. Channel 56 came later, in 1982. It was based in Orange Country, and was best known as the home Wally George, who was an early Rush Limbaugh type.
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