WDEF News 12

WDEF-TV – Chattanooga’s First Television Station Signs on April 25th, 1954.

The Chattanooga Times and News Free-Press heralded the news that WDEF History Letter Chattanooga would now have a television station … WDEF-TV providing local programming as well as network programs from CBS and NBC. The first broadcast, of course, was merely a test pattern. For at least two weeks, anxious Tennessee Valley households tuned their brand-new television sets into Channel 12, and were greeted by an Indian head with various gradations of grey, and a voice announcing the coming station, and that this was a test broadcast. You’d have thought that test pattern would win an Emmy. For the first time since there was TV, local residents wouldn’t have to strain to pick up grainy Atlanta stations. It was the talk of the valley.