KYW-TV

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KYW-TV
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Branding	CBS 3
Slogan	We are CBS 3
Channels	3 (VHF) analog, 26 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	CBS Corporation
Founded	September 3, 1941 (originally experimental W3XE from 1932–41; off the air c.1942-45)
Call letters meaning	None, derived from sister station KYW radio
Former callsigns	WPTZ-TV (1941-56) WRCV-TV (1956-65)
Former affiliations	NBC (1941-95)
Transmitter Power	100 kW/305 m (analog) 770 kW/375 m (digital)
Website	www.cbs3.com

KYW-TV, channel 3, is the CBS owned-and-operated television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. KYW-TV shares studios with CW sibling station WPSG (channel 57) at Independence Mall East in Center City Philadelphia. On April 2 the stations will move to new HD facilities at 1500 Spring Garden Street, west of Broad Street. Its transmitter is located in the Roxborough section of the city.

Contents 1 History 1.1 As WPTZ-TV 1.2 As an NBC-owned station 1.3 As KYW-TV 1.4 As a CBS-owned station 2 Logos 3 News operation 3.1 Newscasts 3.2 Current Personalities 3.3 Former Personalities 4 Trivia 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

[edit] As WPTZ-TV

The channel 3 facility in Philadelphia is one of the world's oldest television stations. It began in 1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philco. In 1941, it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now WNBC-TV) in New York City, becoming NBC's second television affiliate, and creating a link between the station and the network that would last for 56 years.

On July 1, 1941, W3XE received a commercial license--the third in the United States, and the first outside New York City-- as WPTZ-TV. The station signed on for the first time on September 3. The station originally broadcast from a tower in the Main Line suburb of Wyndmoor. It suspended operations after the U.S. entered World War II, but returned to the air in 1945. It then became one of three stations (along with WNBT and WRGB in Schenectady, New York) that premiered NBC's regular television service in 1946. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owner of Philadelphia's NBC radio affiliate KYW, purchased WPTZ-TV in 1952.

[edit] As an NBC-owned station

In late 1955, Westinghouse traded the licenses for WPTZ-TV and KYW radio to NBC in exchange for those of Cleveland's WNBK television and WTAM-AM-FM. NBC, who had long sought an owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, was at first rebuffed by Westinghouse. NBC remained persistent, as it threatened to cancel its affiliation from WPTZ-TV and Westinghouse's other NBC-TV affiliate, WBZ-TV in Boston, unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade.

When NBC took over in February 1956, channel 3's calls letters were changed to WRCV-TV (for the RCA-Victor record label; KYW radio adopted the WRCV calls as well). Shortly after NBC took control of channel 3, the FCC ruled that most of Delaware, the Lehigh Valley and most of southern New Jersey (including Atlantic City) were part of the Philadelphia market. NBC realized WRCV-TV's existing tower was inadequate for this enlarged market. In 1957, channel 3 moved to a new 1,100-foot tower in Roxborough. The tower was co-owned with WFIL-TV (channel 6, now WPVI-TV) and added much of Delaware, the Lehigh Valley and southern New Jersey to the station's city-grade coverage. Along with the transmitter move, NBC upgraded channel 3 from black-and-white to color transmissions.

However, almost immediately after the trade was finalized, Westinghouse complained to the FCC and the United States Department of Justice about NBC's extortion. After a thorough investigation and a protracted legal battle, the FCC ordered the swap reversed without NBC realizing any profit on the deal. Westinghouse had moved the KYW call letters to Cleveland after the swap, and upon regaining control of WRCV-AM-TV on June 19, 1965, channel 3 became KYW-TV. Group W, as Westinghouse's broadcasting division was known by this time, took over a transmitter facility far superior to the one it relinquished in 1956. To this day, KYW-TV insists that it "moved" to Cleveland in 1956 and "returned" to Philadelphia in 1965 ^[1]-- in fact, some staffers who worked at KYW-TV in Cleveland (talk show hosts Mike Douglas and Tom Snyder among them) moved to Philadelphia along with the call letters.

[edit] As KYW-TV

Despite its status as NBC's largest affiliate, KYW-TV spent much of the next thirty years pre-empting many NBC programs, choosing to air local or syndicated programming instead. The production arm of Westinghouse Broadcasting was partially responsible for the pre-emptions, as channel 3 aired shows produced and syndicated by Group W, such as The Mike Douglas Show, The David Frost Show, and Hour Magazine. Pre-empted network programming was usually lower-rated daytime game shows, soap operas, or reruns of primetime programs, with an average of two hours per day. At one point, in the fall of 1980, KYW-TV preempted NBC's entire morning schedule after the Today Show. Over the years, NBC contracted independent stations WPHL-TV (channel 17), WTAF/WTXF (channel 29) and WKBS/WGTW (channel 48) to air programs pre-empted by channel 3. However, NBC has always been far less tolerant of pre-emptions than the other networks, and was rather peturbed at losing valuable advertising in the nation's fourth-largest market.

Like most affiliates that pre-empt poorer performing network programs, KYW-TV used the pre-emptions in order to gain an increase in local advertising rates which potentially come with ratings increases. This proved to be a very profitable decision at first, as KYW-TV was either first or second in the Philadelphia television ratings for most of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the station (and NBC) faltered in the late 1970s, and by 1980 KYW-TV was the lowest-rated network affiliate in Philadelphia. The station continued to pre-empt network programs, which didn't sit very well with NBC. This was especially the case in the middle 1980s and early 1990s, when KYW-TV was NBC's lowest-rated major-market affiliate during a very successful period for the network as a whole. (As a sidebar, sister station WBZ-TV pre-empted NBC programming almost as often as KYW-TV, but NBC did not seem to mind as much since WBZ-TV was always one of its strongest affiliates.)

In 1994, sister station WJZ-TV in Baltimore lost its affiliation with ABC after that network announced a deal with the E.W. Scripps Company to switch all but two of Scripps' television stations to ABC. One of the Scripps-owned stations joining ABC was Baltimore's NBC affiliate, WMAR-TV. Westinghouse was outraged, and as a safeguard began shopping for affiliation deals for the entire Group W television unit. Group W eventually struck an agreement to switch KYW-TV, WBZ-TV, and WJZ-TV to CBS (Westinghouse's two other stations, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and KPIX in San Francisco were already CBS affiliates). The announcement also meant that CBS would sell its longtime owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, WCAU-TV (channel 10), despite that station's stronger ratings performance.

[edit] As a CBS-owned station

On September 10, 1995, KYW-TV and WCAU-TV swapped network affiliations, part of a more complex affiliation/ownership deal involving NBC, CBS and Westinghouse. Group W and CBS formed a joint venture which assumed ownership of channel 3, with Group W retaining majority interest. NBC then traded its stations in Denver and Salt Lake City to the Group W/CBS partnership in return for WCAU. Group W/CBS and NBC also traded broadcasting facilities in Miami to compensate each other for the loss of stations.

Under the terms of Westinghouse's deal with CBS, KYW-TV began carrying the entire CBS schedule in pattern, with no pre-emptions. Westinghouse bought CBS in early 1996, making KYW-TV a CBS owned-and-operated station.

In 2000, the combined company was purchased by Viacom. The Viacom deal brought KYW-TV under common ownership with Philadelphia's UPN station, WPSG, and that station moved into the KYW facility on Independence Mall. On January 1, 2003, KYW-TV went into compliance with the CBS Mandate and officially rebranded itself as CBS 3. When Viacom spun off CBS Corporation in 2005, KYW-AM-TV, WYSP and WPSG, along with the rest of Viacom's broadcasting interests, became a part of the new company. On April 2, 2007, KYW-TV and WPSG will move to a new HD broadcast complex located at 1500 Spring Garden Street in Center City. The first scheduled broadcast from the new facilities will be a late edition of Eyewitness News following the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Game.

[edit] Logos

From 1965 to 2003, KYW-TV's logo was a distinct "Stylized 3" in the distinctive font made famous by Group W. It was the longest continuously-used logo in Philadelphia television history until 2006, when WPVI-TV's simple "6" logo passed it. The only major change came in 1997, when the CBS Eye was placed in front of the "3". The logo was finally retired after KYW-TV rebranded itself as CBS 3. In its place, it used a plainer "3" in a font similar to that of other CBS O&Os.

[edit] News operation

Shortly after Westinghouse regained control of KYW-TV, news director Al Primo pioneered the Eyewitness News format. This format has the reporters actually presenting their stories instead of having an anchor read them. Primo used the cue "007" from the film From Russia with Love as the theme. Within a few years, Group W's other television stations had adopted the format. Around this same time, its radio sister became one of the first all-news radio stations in the country.

Channel 3's newscasts, anchored by Vince Leonard starting in 1958 (during its stint as NBC-owned WRCV-TV), had long been second behind WCAU-TV, but the new format catapulted KYW-TV to first place. Also seen on the air during that time were future talk show host Tom Snyder and Marciarose Shestack. Primo took the concept with him to WABC-TV in New York in 1968, albeit an improved version which introduced the concept of chatter among the anchors ("happy talk"). It was this modified format that was emulated throughout the United States.

Channel 3 dominated the ratings for the rest of the 1960s, but faced a new challenger after WFIL-TV introduced Action News to Philadelphia. For most of the 1970s, KYW-TV traded first place with WFIL/WPVI. In 1972, KYW-TV hired Philadelphia-area native Jessica Savitch as a reporter, and later co-anchor alongside Leonard. Mort Crim also joined as an anchor during that period, forming what native Philadelphians called the "Camelot of television news." However, after Savitch left for NBC News in 1977 and Crim for WDIV in Detroit in 1978, KYW's ratings went into rapid decline. The station tried to stop the decline by adopting a new format called "Direct Connection", with reporters assigned to "beats" such as medical, consumer, entertainment, and gossip, among others. It didn't work, and by the time Leonard left for KPNX in Phoenix in 1980, Eyewitness News had crashed into last place. For most of the 1980s, KYW-TV was a very distant third behind WPVI-TV and WCAU-TV. Despite the presence of personalities such as Maria Shriver and Maury Povich (who anchored briefly in the early 1980s), Eyewitness News stayed in the ratings basement.

In 1991, KYW-TV rebranded itself as KYW-3 after being known on-air as simply "channel 3" for most of its history. It also abandoned the longstanding Eyewitness News name after 26 years and experimented with giving each newscast a different name. The morning and noon news became "Newsday," the 6 p.m. news "Newsbeat" (the 5:30 p.m. news was cancelled) and the 11 p.m. news "The News Tonight." It also started using a theme based on the musical signature of its radio sister, one of the top all-news stations in the country and the highest-rated radio station in Philadelphia for most of the last 40 years. Group W hoped to gain the trust of viewers who already associated KYW radio with high-quality news. However, neither of these fixes worked, and channel 3 stayed in the ratings basement. The experiment with different newscast names ended in 1994, just before it became a CBS station, when the station began calling its news operation "News 3". The Eyewitness News name was restored in 1998.

KYW-TV used music packages based on KYW radio's musical signature until 2003. That year, it adopted News in Focus by composer John Hegner as its theme song. This package, like the majority of themes for CBS' owned and operated stations, is based on "Channel 2 News," written in 1975 for sister station WBBM-TV in Chicago. It originated at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles in 1997. Channel 3 used an updated version written in 2003 for sister station WCBS-TV in New York. The change to "News In Focus" came just after KYW began calling itself CBS 3. Ironically, WCAU-TV used music based on this theme for its last decade as a CBS-owned station. In 2005, KYW-TV ditched "News In Focus" in favor of another "Channel 2 News"-based tune, "The Enforcer" by Frank Gari.

Also in 2003, KYW-TV became a factor in the Philadelphia news race for the first time in over 20 years. The previous summer, it persuaded WPVI-TV's longtime 5 p.m. anchor, Marc Howard, to jump ship to anchor its 11 p.m. news. Kathy Orr, weekend weathercaster at WCAU, also moved to channel 3. In September 2003 the station added Larry Mendte (from WCAU) and Alycia Lane (from WTVJ in Miami), and they became the station's new top anchor team, anchoring the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news. The 5 p.m. news was moved to 4 p.m., anchored by Marc Howard and Denise Saunders. The change proved successful, and for the last two years KYW has waged a spirited battle with WCAU for second place behind longtime leader WPVI. Saunders left the station in 2004 and was replaced by Lane until January 16, 2006; when Lane in turn was replaced by current anchor Angela Russell.

In 2005, it introduced a customized graphics package created by Emmy Award winner Randy Pyburn of Pyburn Films. A variant of this was used on WPSG for its morning news program until September 2006, when they were replaced to go along with its new affiliation -- the CW (since the old package worked in UPN's logo and red color scheme too much). Interestingly, the Pyburn graphics package is quite similar to the one it created for WNBC-TV in 2003, which some of NBC's owned and operated stations are currently standardizing around.

KYW-TV cooperates with sister station WCBS-TV in the production and broadcast of statewide New Jersey political debates. When the two stations broadcast a statewide office debate, such as Governor or U. S. Senate, they will pool resources and have anchors or reporters from both stations participate in the debate. Additionally, the two stations cooperate in the gathering of news in New Jersey where their markets overlap; sharing reporters, live trucks, and helicopters.

Like other CBS-owned stations, KYW-TV offers a web only newscast called "CBS 3 At Your Desk", shown daily.

[edit] Newscasts

Weekdays

• Eyewitness News This Morning - 5:00-7:00 a.m.
• Eyewitness News at Noon - Noon-12:30 p.m.
• Eyewitness News at 4 - 4:00-5:00 p.m.
• Eyewitness News at 6 - 6:00-6:30 p.m.
• Eyewitness News at 11 - 11:00-11:35 p.m.

Saturday

• Eyewitness News This Morning - 5:30-7:00 and 9:00-10:00 a.m.
• Eyewitness News - 6:00-6:30 and 11:00-11:35 p.m.

Sunday

• Eyewitness News This Morning - 5:30-9:00 am
• Eyewitness News - 6:30-7:00, and 11:00-11:35 p.m.

[edit] Current Personalities

Anchors

• Susan Barnett, weekday mornings
• Pat Ciarrocchi, weekdays at noon (also reports early evenings)
• Marc Howard, weekdays at 4 p.m.
• Alycia Lane, weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m.
• Larry Mendte, weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m.
• Angela Russell, weekdays at 4 p.m. (also reports nightside)
• Mary Stoker Smith, weekend evenings
• Lesley Van Arsdall, weekend mornings
• Anne Marie Green, weekend mornings
• Ukee Washington, weekday mornings and noon

Weather

• Carol Erickson, weekend morning meteorologist
• Maria LaRosa, weekday morning meteorologist
• Tom Lamaine, weekday noon meteorologist
• Kathy Orr, Chief Meteorologist, weeknights
• Brooks Tomlin, weekend evening meteorologist

Sports

• Don Bell, fill-in
• Steve Bucci, weekends
• Beasley Reece, weekdays

Additional Reporters

• Stephanie Abrams
• Karen Adams
• Brandy Bell
• Don Bell, sports reporter and fill-in sports anchor
• Jim Donovan, 3 On Your Side
• Anne Evans, weekend traffic reporter
• Harold Hairston, public safety consultant
• Walt Hunter, I-Team chief
• Bob Kelly, traffic reporter
• Liz Keptner, Lehigh Valley correspondent
• Valerie Levesque
• Cydney Long, New Jersey correspondent
• Robin Mackintosh
• Sean Murphy, fill-in traffic reporter and weekday morning traffic anchor on sister station WPSG
• Jim Osman, I-Team
• Marge Pala, Delaware correspondent
• Todd Quinones, evenings
• Robin Rieger
• Jamie Smith, evenings
• Dick Standish
• Stephanie Stahl, medical reporter
• Lesley Van Arsdall, Bucks County correspondent

[edit] Former Personalities

• Diane B. Allen
• Steve Baskerville
• Steve Bell
• Amy Caples
• Mort Crim
• Mike Douglas (deceased)
• Pat Farnack
• Linda Gialanella
• Nancy Glass
• Max Gomez
• Trudy Haynes
• Calvin Hughes
• Eleanor Jean Hendley
• Jack Jones (deceased)
• Larry Kane
• Ernie Kovacs
• Bill Kuster (deceased)
• Vince Leonard
• Larry Litwin
• Al Meltzer
• Barbara Monaco
• Ray Murray
• Tom Negovan
• Jerry Penacoli
• Susie Pevaroff
• Deborah Potter
• Maury Povich
• Jessica Savitch (deceased)
• Dick Sheeran
• Maria Shriver
• Tom Snyder
• Lou Tilley
• Beverly Williams

[edit] Trivia

• KYW-TV is the third station in Philadelphia to affiliate with CBS. WFIL-TV (now WPVI) had aired CBS programming for a little more than a year before WCAU-TV began its 47-year run with the network in 1948.
• KYW (along with a few other TV/radio stations in the US) is an exception to the FCC rule that call signs must start with W east of the Mississippi River and K west of it.

[edit] See also

• KYW-TV Anchors and Reporters
• KYW-TV Alumni

[edit] References

1. ^ KYW Newsradio Station History, which details the evolution of the station from Chicago, to Philadelphia, to Cleveland and back to Philadelphia.

[edit] External links

• KYW-TV website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KYW-TV
• Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia

v • d • e

Broadcast television in the Philadelphia / Camden / Wilmington market (Nielsen DMA #4)

KYW 3 (CBS) - WPVI 6 (ABC) - W07DC 7 (ABC) - WELL-LP 8 (DS) - WCAU 10 (NBC) - WHYY 12 (PBS) - WPHL 17 (MNTV) (The Tube on DT2) - WNJS 23/WNJT 52 (PBS/NJN) - W25AW 25 (A1) - WFPA-CA 28 (TFR) - WTXF 29 (Fox) - WQAV-LP 34 (AV/Ind) - WYBE 35 (Public) - WLVT 39 (PBS) - W40AZ 40 (Smile) - WMGM 40 (NBC) - WGTW 48 (TBN) - WTVE 51 (Religious) - WPSG 57 (The CW) - WBPH 60 (FamNet) - WPPX 61 (ION) - WWSI 62 (TEL) - WUVP 65 (UVN) - WFMZ 69 (Ind)

Local digital television channels

WMCN 44 (ShopNBC)

Past broadcast stations WKBS 48 (Ind)

Local cable television channels

CN8 - Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia - MCTV 26 (Mercer Co., NJ)

See also Broadcast television in the New York City, Scranton/Wilkes Barre and Susquehanna Valley markets