WGRZ-TV

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WGRZ-TV
Buffalo, New York
Branding	Channel 2
Slogan	"On Your Side"
Channels	2 (VHF) analog, 33 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	NBC (1954-55 and since 1958)
Owner	Gannett
Founded	1954
Call letters meaning	WGR (radio station) Z=2
Former callsigns	WGR-TV (1954-1983)
Former affiliations	ABC (1956-1958), DuMont (1954-1956) [1]
Website	www.wgrz.com

WGRZ-TV is the NBC affiliate in Buffalo, New York. Its studio is located at 259 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, while its transmitter is located at 11526 Warner Hill Road in South Wales, New York. The station is currently owned by Gannett Company, Inc., publisher of the national newspaper USA Today, and owner of numerous television stations.

The station's newscasts are called Channel 2 News; prior to 1998, it was 2 News and previously NewsCenter 2. Until July 2005, its partner station for the area was WPXJ-TV (Pax 51).

It is one of four local Buffalo TV stations seen in Canada on the StarChoice satellite service. It is also seen throughout Toronto and Central Ontario on Rogers and Cogeco cable systems.

Rich Kellman (news anchor) and Ed Kilgore (sports) have been staples of "Newscenter 2" since the 1970s. Barry Lillis, the station's weatherman for almost twenty years, left WGRZ in the mid-1990s and is now a priest with the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America.

Contents 1 History 2 Logo 3 Infamous moment 4 Historic slogans 5 Local programming 5.1 Newscasts 5.2 Other local shows 6 News reporters and journalists 7 External links

[edit] History

The station premiered in 1954 as WGR-TV, owned by the WGR Corporation along with WGR-AM 550. It was an NBC affiliate sharing the Barton Street studios of UHF outlet WBUF/Channel 17. In 1955, WBUF was sold to NBC. WGR affiliated with ABC and then switched back to NBC in 1958 after NBC shut down the money-bleeding WBUF. The station also carried programming from the now-defunct DuMont Television Network[2].

Over the years, WGR Corporation bought several other radio and television stations across the country, including WNEP-TV in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, WHAM-TV in Rochester (the call letters of which Transcontinent would change to WROC-TV) and WDAF-AM/FM/TV in Kansas City, and eventually became known as Transcontinent Broadcasting. Transcontinent merged with Taft Broadcasting in 1964.

In 1983, WGR's callsign changed to WGRZ after it was sold by Taft Broadcasting to General Cinema Corporation, which operated the Coral Television division. Taft gave Coral WGRZ, while in exchange, Taft got Miami's WCIX. (Taft held on to WGR radio until 1987, when it was sold to Rich Communications; today, it is owned by Entercom Communications.)

In the years following the 1983 exchange deal, WGRZ changed hands several times. General Cinema exited the broadcasting business by selling Coral Television to WGRZ Acquisition Corp., a subsidiary of SJL Broadcast Management (one of SJL's present-day subsidiaries is Montecito Broadcast Group) for $56 million in 1986. Two years later, Tak Communications purchased WGRZ from SJL for $100 million in 1988. Less than four years later, Tak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992, and a group of creditors seized the company's assets in 1994. Argyle Television (now part of Hearst-Argyle) purchased the station (and then-sister KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii) from Tak's creditors for $91 million (on WGRZ's end) in December 1995.

Gannett became the station's owner in 1997. Argyle (which merged with Hearst's broadcasting unit shortly after the trade was finalized) traded WGRZ and Western Michigan's ABC affiliate WZZM-TV to Gannett for Oklahoma City's ABC affiliate KOCO-TV and Cincinnati's NBC affiliate WLWT in a four-station deal between the two companies.

Since 2000, lottery drawings have been presented on Channel 2.

[edit] Logo

In the 1980s, the "futuristic" logo consisted of two lines, making an outline of the number two. In 1988, the station's logo consisted of simply a large number "2" in a common Avant Garde font, with a yellow triangle over blue added in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, the logo changed to a blue-on-red box with the bottom reading WGRZ-TV Buffalo. The NBC logo is placed to the left of the numeral "2"; however, "NBC" is not mentioned orally in the station's on-air brand (which is simply "Channel 2").

[edit] Infamous moment

According to the Baseball Hall of Shame book series by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, WGR-TV did not complete the telecast of the game between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 26, 1981. The station went to an Army training film as scheduled at 5 p.m. that afternoon. As a result, local baseball fans missed Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan's record fifth no-hitter.

[edit] Historic slogans

• Your 24 Hour News Station
• NBC in Western New York
• It Takes 2 (1995 - 1999)
• Channel 2 is on Your Side

[edit] Local programming

[edit] Newscasts

• Daybreak - 5:30 to 7:00 a.m. ET
• Channel 2 News at Noon - 12:00 p.m. ET - 5 minute update
• Channel 2 News First at Five - 1 hour, prior to 2002, 30 minutes - 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET
  • 2 On Your Side
  • Channel 2 Weather
    • Doppler 2000
  • Channel 2 Sports
• Channel 2 News at Six - 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. ET
• Channel 2 News Tonight- 11:00 to 11:35 p.m. ET
• 2 News on 49, Ten at 10 - On April 13, 2006, Sinclair announced that WGRZ will produce a new 10 p.m. newscast for Sinclair-owned WB affiliate WNYO-TV, to be called 2 On NYO 10 at 10, using WGRZ's current news staff. That newscast began Thursday, April 20 as "2 News on 49, Ten at 10" as the "NYO 10" name never made it to air. This is WGRZ's first 10 p.m. newscast since the cancellation of Channel 2 News First at Ten on WPXJ-TV, which aired in the early 2000s. [3]

[edit] Other local shows

• 2 Your Home - housing show about renovation of homes throughout Western New York
• Western New York Living - a show about living in Western New York hosted by Maria Genero
• WGRZ has also aired Buffalo Bills football games that aired on ESPN in recent seasons. This included Saturday Football and Sunday Night Football. With recent changes in the NFL's contract, including the moving of games to the NFL Network and the move of Sunday night games to NBC, the future of this agreement is unclear. Since the Bills were not scheduled for any night games, this agreement would not come into play in 2006. That being said, the reason had WGRZ had the rights was because it was an NBC affiliate and did not have any other NFL rights. (The same was true for other stations that held Bills night game rights in the past, WPXJ (a Pax affiliate) and WNYO (then aligned with the WB).) With the addition of Sunday Night Football, it is possible that the Bills night games will be moved to WKBW-TV, which is an affiliate of ABC (the sister station to ESPN) and already the official carrier of Bills preseason games and other Bills content, in 2007 and beyond.

[edit] News reporters and journalists

(as of 2006)

• Adam Benigni, weekend sports
• Josh Boose, reporter, joined 2006
• Stu Boyar, sports reporter
• Erika Brason, Daybreak Saturday Morning anchor/reporter, joined 2005
• Scott Brown, joined 2002
• Mary Alice Demler, co-anchor of the 5:30, 6, 10, and 11 p.m. newscasts, joined 1993
• Lynne Dixon, reporter, joined 1997
• Claudine Ewing, reporter, joined 1999
• Mary Friona, As Seen on TV reports/reporter
• Pete Gallivan, co-anchor of Daybreak, joined 1999
• Maria Genero, host of Western New York Living, joined 2006
• Mike Igoe, Money Matters reporter, joined 1989
• Jodi Johnston, co-anchor of 5 p.m. newscasts and Daybreak, joined 2000
• Rich Kellman, Senior Correspondent, now working part-time, joined 1972
• Ed Kilgore, sports director, joined 1972
• Scott Levin, co-anchor of the 5, 6, 10, and 11 p.m. newscasts, joined 1998
• Heather Ly, reporter, joined 2006
• Chesley McNeil, meteorlogist for Daybreak, joined 2004
• Stefan Mychajliw, reporter, joined 2001
• Kevin O'Connell, chief meteorologist
• Andy Parker, meteorologist on weekends
• Matt Pearl, sports and reporter
• Ron Plants, anchor of Channel 2 News at Six Weekend/reporter
• Liz Vetrano, Traffic Tracker 2, joined 2006
• Julie Wolfe, Daybreak reporter, joined 2004
• Robyn Young, Daybreak reporter
• Kevin O'Neill, Daybreak - Celebrate WNY Reporter, Joined 2006

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WGRZ-TV