# Channel 56 **URL:** \ **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:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/21 "2026-08-08T16:32:15Z")
> [@sciurophobic](#): > > was best known as the home Wally George His show wasn’t carried in my city, but he, like Morton Downey Jr., was nationally-known at that time for being loudmouthed and abrasive. The only other thing I knew about Wally George was that he was the father of actress Rebecca De Mornay. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/22 "2026-08-08T16:40:46Z")
> [@sciurophobic](#): > > It was channel 52. They also had _Ultraman, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot_, and all the _Flash Gordon_ serials. Thanks! That solves a lot of the mystery for me. As the only channel in the 50s after 52 became scrambled for ON TV, I assumed the station I remembered just evolved into the right wing Christian channel 56 has been since the 1980s. Another staple of CH 52 was British mystery shows like _The Saint_ and _My Partner the Ghost._ ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/23 "2026-08-08T16:43:56Z")
Wally George was the first inkling I had that my generation had a vicious fascist streak. Most of his audience were young men my own age. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/24 "2026-08-08T16:58:08Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > 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..). Ditto, in San Diego. KTLA also had movies interesting to kids, such as _Mad Monster Party_ (1967), and frequent Kaiju and Sinbad movies. [Side note: When I first watched _Gigantor_, it was called _Tetsujin_ and was in Japanese. I had an inflatable Tetsujin toy.] ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/25 "2026-08-08T19:07:07Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Wally George was the first inkling I had that my generation had a vicious fascist streak. Most of his audience were young men my own age. I left LA in 1982 but I watched Wally George when I lived in San Diego. Most of the audience was young men who went to a college near where he broadcast and a lot of them were pretty much trolling and playing along. That said, it was the beginning of the Reagan Youth movement and the College Republicans blowing up in membership. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/26 "2026-08-08T19:15:03Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Most of the audience was young men who went to a college near where he broadcast and a lot of them were pretty much trolling and playing along. Possibly playing along. But then, they were behind the Orange Curtain. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/27 "2026-08-09T10:08:56Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > 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!) The early to mid 70s were my core DFW TV watching years, and 21 was dead by then, so you must be a bit older than me. 27 and 33 weren’t around yet, but 39 was there for religious broadcasting, and channel 11 was the big independent, with all the sitcom syndications. And PBS on 13! Proud first US presenters of a show called Monty Python’s flying circus. And like you, I don’t remember any channel 56 at all. That must’ve been some big fancy city kind of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/28 "2026-08-09T13:31:50Z")
No 56 here. We had 16 (local religious) 21 (Fox) 29 (PBS) 33 (weaker PBS) 40 and 62 (WB and UPN, don’t remember which was which). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/29 "2026-08-09T15:33:37Z")
Thank you for that, which seems to definitively answer the question; there were television stations on Channel 56 in Anaheim, California; Salinas, California; Salisbury, Maryland; Cambridge, Massachusetts and Detroit, Michigan. Many lower channels were in more cities than that. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/30 "2026-08-10T12:01:23Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > 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. There wasn’t a channel 56 in the New York area when I was growing up, and I don’t think there’s one there now. When I came to Boston I discovered 56 and 38 (mentioned already by others), the place where Old TV Shows went in syndication. But in the New York area in the 1960s and 1970s the stations that did this were in the VHF band – channels 5 (WNEW Metromedia, although it’s now a Fox station), 9 (WWOR, usually called simply WOR in Secaucus NJ) and 11 (WPIX). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/31 "2026-08-10T12:52:18Z")
I don’t know if it was ever advertised on Channel 56, but does anyone remember commercials for [King Snedley’s Beer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Snedley%27s_Beer)? ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/32 "2026-08-10T13:40:35Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > they were on channels 26 (WCIU), 32 (WFLD), and 44 (WSNS). In the 80’s, Chicago also had 60 and 66 that showed these types of reruns, particularly after 32 started transitioning to high-quality, original content like _Small Wonder_. > [@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. I didn’t know this, but it is the reason there was no 56 in Chicago. From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WXFT-DT#): > The WDAI construction permit had existed since 1982, but short-spacing concerns to channel 60 and to two allocations in southeast Wisconsin had meant channel 56 could not be placed on the Sears Tower; this finding crippled a previous attempt to build the allocation as WGMI in 1968 ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/33 "2026-08-10T15:20:15Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > high-quality, original content like _Small Wonder_. I’ll give you original content, but “high-quality”??? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/34 "2026-08-10T15:20:44Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > I’ll give you original content, but “high-quality”?? I suspect that that was a bit of sarcasm. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/35 "2026-08-10T16:45:04Z")
Do you remember the interstitial “Snipets”, especially this one about how to make a “come back” can? ![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/S0yhq4GP740/maxresdefault.jpg)https://www.youtube.com/embed/S0yhq4GP740?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&list=PL_-h39wZ2CXjX8Z1xMkdU6xt_SGeH1yOP ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/36 "2026-08-10T16:47:28Z")
A teacher in junior high school or high school had a Quaker Oats can that would do that. I never figured it out. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/37 "2026-08-10T16:54:22Z")
Was there any technical reason why 56 was commonly used? It’s not as memorable as 44 or 66. > [@sciurophobic](#): > > how to make a “come back” can? Yeah! > [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I suspect that that was a bit of sarcasm. Exactly correct. We must never forget _Small Wonder_ lest humanity repeat its greatest mistake. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219/38 "2026-08-10T17:28:15Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > Was there any technical reason why 56 was commonly used? It’s not as memorable as 44 or 66. The short answer is that Channel 56 _wasn’t_ particularly common. The cite from @whitetho says there were five stations at Channel 56 nationally in 1979. There were many channels lower on the UHF band that were more common nationally, like seventeen stations on Channel 19. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/channel-56/1032219.md?page=1)