Remember WQEX?
August 21, 2024Upon reading about the passing of P.J. Maloney, avid PBRTV Reader (and Smooth, Relaxing and Easy listener), Kevin, recalled Maloney’s involvement at WQEX – when channel 16 was a non-commercial outlet.
You remember WQEX. It was the kid-sister of the refined WQED (13). WQEX was like the tom-boy who really couldn’t be bothered to be like it’s sibling… and that’s okay! It was where everyone who sounded so perfect and rehearsed on the “big station” could let their hair down and celebrated in the backroom. If WQED was the business out front, WQEX was the illegal op…. well no, they still operated within the confines of the FCC regulations. Anyway, you get the picture.
Anyway, in the early-to-mid 1990s, the daily sign-ons and sign-offs were, shall we say, epic? They used (and bleeped the one word out of) Eric Idle’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” before the final ID of the night!
There hasn’t been anything like ’em since! Here are a couple of examples. Let us know if you remember them!
ahhh…..good times! I was living in a rented house in West Mifflin where for various reasons I won’t bore you with I could not get cable. WQEX was one of my rabbit ear go-to’s supplemented by VHS rentals from Phar-Mor. I especially appreciated the Britcom Block. The just departed Mr. Maloney looking and sounding great in these.
I remember Channel 16 very well!
Way back they were transmitting in black and white only, and their video had a little bit of fuzz in it, thinking they must have been a lower power station. They’d run lectures about encyclopedia topics, like famous painters or chemistry, a teacher with an easel flipping pages or a marker board, and they had a ‘Mr. Science’ type of guy, how do volcanoes work and other scientific topics. There was almost no production then, just slides about the show that was coming up. They had limited hours also, it wasn’t always on the air.
It went along like that, and sometime in the 1980s, I can’t really place the timing of it, they went off the air, and came back a while later, like months, in full color and with high production values, I thought it was dazzling, going from how they had been broadcasting!
I’m a selective TV viewer, and was diggin’ Doctor Who when they ran it in the dinner hour, that’s how I made friends with the series, seeing it on WQEX.
I think they could have kept the word in Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, they were in ‘safe harbor’, but Pittsburghers, being more a gentle folk, might not like it, and reduce their donations accordingly.
Boomer
Where I First saw my Idol Tom Baker on Doctor Who! Cheers WQEX!