WLOX TV Biloxi MS

WLOX-TV has been The Station for South Mississippi since signing on the air for the first time in the fall of 1962. Our area was sure a lot different back then. If you were hungry you could visit the Friendship House on the beach in Biloxi and order a T-bone steak for a $1.75. After dinner you might cruise down to the Gulf Coast Drive-In and see Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella.

If you didn't have a car, you could register to win one at the Bayview Plaza Delchamps on Pass Road in Biloxi. Bayview Plaza is now Popp's Ferry West Plaza - the shopping center where Office Depot is. Delchamps was giving away a shiny 1963 Ford Fairlane 500 sedan for its grand opening in October, 1962.

Mississippi Power declared October to be "Dryer Month." Ads from the time urged you to "take the worry out of wash day" with a dependable washer-dryer which you could conveniently buy at your nearest Mississippi Power Company.

October, 1962 was also the time WLOX became affiliated with the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). If you watched WLOX the first week we started carrying ABC programming you would have seen the debut of ABC's new wartime action series COMBAT!. You would have also entered the world of gangland crime and drama with The Untouchables. And you would have seen Father Knows Best make its debut on ABC after switching from CBS.

Of course, if you wanted to watch those shows on WLOX you needed a television set. There were plenty of new models available in October, 1962. You could go to a Firestone tire store on 35th Avenue in Gulfport at the time and buy a "Miss America" model Philco "Vivid Vision" TV set for three dollars a week on the installment plan. Advertisements from the time proclaim it had exclusive "beam booster" circuitry! That meant you could see WLOX in "startling lifelike realism" with "no more premature gray pictures." Ah, the glory days of black and white! A few years later WLOX started beaming color signals into your home.