Indiana Broadcast History Archive

Robert Flanders, an engineer with WFBM Radio, Indianapolis, returned to the station from the Navy in 1946 with an interest in television. WFBM was moving in that direction anticipating a license. “Nobody really knew anything about television. We had to teach ourselves everything,” he later recalled. Flanders and his engineering staff built their own cameras and much of the equipment for the start-up of Channel 6 in May, 1949. Later they built cameras for other stations…40 in all by 1957. Flander’s layout of the station’s equipment and facilities served as a model for other stations. In 1950, he designed and built one of the first programmable automated switchers. 

Indiana Broadcast Pioneers