In September 1965, WXXW signed on as Chicago's second UHF television station and second non-commercial outlet. However the station, known as "the Classroom of the Air", was essentially a failure. Plagued by a weak signal and a schedule filled with what former WTTW station manager Edward Morris called "talking heads and a blackboard," WXXW limped along until it quietly went dark in 1974. Throughout its entire existence, WXXW was only able to transmit in black-and-white, making it and commercial independent station WCIU-TV (channel 26) the only television stations in the Chicago market that had not transitioned to color broadcasts in the early 1970s. The monochrome transmissions were just another nail in the station's coffin.