Spring Meeting at Paducah

Date: Saturday, April 28
Location: WPSD, Channel 6, 100 Television Lane, Paducah KY
Program: The Fight for Paducah’s Channel 6
Featured Speaker: Bill Evans, Vice-President of News and Operations, WPSD.
Description: Bill Evans will discuss how the Paxton family of Western Kentucky dominated the newspaper business for almost six decades and owned two radio stations when they battled two other families for the new television license the federal government would award to Paducah, Kentucky. In preparing his historical presentation he had rare access to Federal Communication Commission testimony from the 1950’s, original Associated Press dispatches to the Paducah Sun-Democrat, and WPSD television’s historical archives. Family patriarch and former WPSD-TV President and General Manager Fred Paxton also granted him face-to-face interviews before his death in 2006. He also interviewed two of the 20 original employees of WPSD-TV. Other information came from a review of the archives of the Paducah Sun, the McCracken County Genealogical-Historical Society and other published works. Bill will illustrate his talk with many archival photographs and documents. There will be a brief tour of the TV station after the meeting for anyone who is interested.