WTAE-TV
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| WTAE-TV | |
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| Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | |
| Branding | Channel 4 |
| Slogan | Where YOU Come First |
| Channels | Analog: 4 (VHF) |
| Affiliations | ABC The AccuWeather Channel (DT2) |
| Owner | Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc. (WTAE Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc.) |
| First air date | September 14, 1958 |
| Transmitter Power | 100 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 293 m (analog) 273 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 65681 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.thepittsburghchannel.com |
WTAE-TV, "Channel 4" is the ABC affiliate serving the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wheeling/Steubenville and Clarksburg/Weston, West Virginia market areas. Its transmitter is located in Buena Vista, Pennsylvania.
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[edit] Programming
[edit] Local
- Channel 4 Action Sports Sunday (Sundays at 11:30 P.M. - 12:00 A.M.)
- sports talk show hosted by Jon Burton or Guy Junker
- jennifer (Sundays at 11:00 - 11:30 A.M. ) - talk show hosted by Jennifer Antkowiak (former KDKA-TV personality)
- Steelers Primetime - extended Steelers coverage during NFL season
- Project Bundle-up Telethon, seasonal partnership with Salvation Army
[edit] Syndicated/first-run
Aside from local news and ABC lineup, WTAE's other offerings include Live With Regis And Kelly at 9 AM and Rachael Ray at 10 AM, Access Hollywood at 12:30 PM, The Oprah Winfrey Show at 4 PM, and Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight during the 7-to-8 PM hour.
[edit] On-air personnel
[edit] Anchors
[edit] Meteorologists (Weather Watch 4)
[edit] Traffic (Traffic Watch 4)
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[edit] Reporters
[edit] Sports (Action Sports)
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[edit] Honors
In March 2008, the station won a "Freedom of Information Award" and an IRE Medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors for "pushing open the front door" of the state-run student loan agency.[1]
In April 2008, that same effort resulted in a Peabody Award for the station, in recognition of "station`s relentless legal campaign to obtain public records of a state-run student loan program" which "netted evidence of financial misconduct and pushed the state to rewrite an antiquated right-to-know law."[2]
[edit] Ratings
Pittsburgh is a competitive market for local news, with the news station ratings often differing by one tenth of a ratings point.[citation needed] As of November 2007, WTAE has the highest audience for the newscasts at 5 and 6 A.M.[3]
[edit] History
Channel 4, originally allocated to Irwin, Pennsylvania (in Westmoreland County), was moved to Pittsburgh in the mid 1950s. This reportedly[who?] came because Pittsburgh mayor David L. Lawrence had petitioned the FCC relentlessly for a fourth VHF channel in the area. It is short-spaced to other channel 4 stations in Columbus, Ohio (WCMH-TV, which is NBC) and Buffalo, New York (WIVB-TV, which is CBS), with the tower located southeast of the city as a result.
WTAE-TV signed on the air on September 14, 1958 as Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate. From the beginning, it has been owned by the Hearst Corporation, which purchased the station's former sister radio station, WCAE/WTAE Radio, in 1931. (The radio station is now WEAE, and is owned by ABC/Disney as part of the ESPN Radio network.) WTAE is the only TV station affiliated with a major network in Pittsburgh to have not changed hands in ownership. The station itself is now run by Hearst's television unit Hearst-Argyle Television, of which it serves as one of the three flagship stations for the unit, alongside WBAL-TV in Baltimore and WCVB-TV in Boston.
In the early years, Channel 4 was best known in the market for its locally-originated entertainment programming, most notably the after-school children's shows:[citation needed]
- Ricki & Copper;
- Paul Shannon's Adventure Time; and
- Hank Stohl's Popeye 'n' Knish (Knish being a mop-shaped puppet with a light-bulb for a nose).
Like its NBC rival, WIIC-TV, Channel 4 was not a major player in terms of news coverage in those early years, as the Pittsburgh market was dominated by KDKA-TV and anchor Bill Burns. That changed, however, in 1969, when longtime KDKA radio-and-TV newscaster Paul Long was brought in, along with his KDKA meteorologist-sidekick Joe DeNardo. From then on the market was competitive[citation needed], and Long would continue to be Channel 4's lead news presence well into the 1980s before easing into a more "senior" role.
In June 1992, the station expanded its news production, adding a Saturday morning newscast from 8 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. (matching WPXI's Saturday morning newscast of the same length which began in 1990) and a three-hour Sunday morning newscast. The station also extended its weekday early evening newscast to begin at 5 P.M., and began to air a weekday morning newscast from 5 to 7 A.M. In 1997, the station expanded its Sunday morning newscast by an hour and began to air its Saturday morning newscast from 6 to 10 A.M. Today, WTAE offers four-and-a-half hours of live news each day.
At various times, WTAE has also served as the ABC affiliate for the Johnstown/Altoona, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Clarksburg/Weston, West Virginia television markets (all of which could receive WTAE as a grade B signal). With WTAE having long been one of ABC's strongest affiliates, both parties reportedly resisted efforts by other TV stations in those cities to obtain a full-time ABC affiliation, although one was eventually granted to Altoona's WOPC-38 (now WATM-23), while at the same time the other outlets in those market did add ABC as a secondary. WTAE is still available on cable in Johnstown, Altoona, and throughout northern West Virginia today. In addition to those areas, WTAE can also be seen on several out-of-market cable systems throughout northwestern and central Pennsylvania.
In 1986, WTAE partnered with the Salvation Army and started Project Bundle Up, an operation to make sure that children and seniors get warm clothing. WTAE has run the Project Bundle Up Auction which is an auction where local businesses donate products to be auctioned off, and the Project Bundle Up Telethon a traditional telethon where viewers call in to donate money, businesses donate money and all of the proceeds from the auction and telethon benefit the Salvation Army. In 2007, WTAE moved the auction to the internet.
Although it was the only ABC affiliate in the region when it signed on at the time, WTAE also preempted and/or delayed a handful of ABC programs, most notably its daytime lineup from the 1960s to the late 1990s (one show in particular, "One Life To Live," which they passed on until 1978). Today, WTAE runs nearly the entire ABC schedule. The station cut back its Saturday morning newscast to three hours, but it still runs a news-intensive schedule, alongside its top-rated syndicated first-run talk shows.
WTAE was also one of many ABC stations that pre-empted the special showing of Saving Private Ryan late in 2004 due to scares that the Federal Communications Commission would impose a fine on them if they had aired the World War II movie due to the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy earlier that year. It was later determined that the movie showing was not a violation of FCC regulations.
WTAE unveiled a new set designed by FX Group during the 5 P.M. newscast on Tuesday, September 4, 2007.
[edit] Past programming
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[edit] Former on-air personalities
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[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- In 1958, Shock Theatre premiered late at night on WTAE. The show was locally produced and hosted by Bob Drews who portrayed Sir Rodger (often misspelled as Sir Roger). Drews was a former Pittsburgh radio disc jockey who also wrote a satire magazine called Thimk. Shock Theatre featured monster movies such as The Invisible Man and Frankenstein. Drews interspersed comedic live-action skits within the movie and also was famous for his haircut, the Sir Rodger Clip. Little is known of what became of Drews after the show left the air in the early 1960's.
- In 1972, WTAE sportscaster Myron Cope coined the phrase "The Immaculate Reception" to describe Franco Harris' miraculous, running shoestring catch that gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a 13-7 playoff victory over the Oakland Raiders.
- WTAE's distinct channel 4 logo has been in use since 1973.
- WTAE and its channel 4 logo was immortalized in the 1979 basketball comedy film The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, whose fictional sportscaster "Murray Sports" (Played by Harry Shearer) was also patterned after Cope.
- On April 24, 1980, WTAE personality Nick Perry, who hosted Bowling for Dollars and also called the lottery drawings for the Pennsylvania Lottery, fixed the PA Lottery's Daily Number so that the drawing could come up as "666". Perry would eventually serve jail time, and the drawings were moved from WTAE to WHP-TV in Harrisburg a year later. This resulted in lotteries now being audited and monitored with "witnesses" from the government and/or accounting firms hired by them, and also inspired the movie Lucky Numbers. In addition, KDKA now airs the PA Lottery drawings in the Pittsburgh market instead of WTAE.
- WTAE was also known for the "legendary" news crew of Paul Long and Don Cannon starting in the late 1960's all the way into the 1990's. It is also said that Paul Long help entice Joe Denardo to the station.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ WTAE's PHEAA coverage honored, a March 2008 article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
- ^ 67th Annual Peabody Awards Winners Announced, from the Peabody Awards website at the University of Georgia
- ^ TV News Ratings: November 2007. post-gazette.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-07.
- ^ Look back at WTAE Channel 4's history.
[edit] External links
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008) |
- ThePittsburghChannel.com - WTAE Homepage
- Project Bundle Up Auction
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WTAE-TV
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WTAE-TV
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