| Portsmouth / Norfolk, Virginia | |
|---|---|
| Branding | WGNT (general) WGNT News Powered by NewsChannel 3 (newscast) |
| Slogan | It's On WGNT! |
| Channels | Digital: 50 (UHF) Virtual: 27 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 27.1 The CW 27.2 Antenna TV |
| Owner | Local TV (Local TV Virginia License, LLC) |
| First air date | December 6, 1953 (original incarnation) October 1, 1961 (current incarnation) |
| Call letters' meaning | Greater Norfolk Television |
| Sister station(s) | WTKR |
| Former callsigns | WTOV-TV (1953-1956) WYAH-TV (1961-1989) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 27 (UHF, 1953-2009) |
| Former affiliations | DuMont (1953-1956) Independent (1953-1956, 1961-1995) Silent (1956-1961) PTEN (1993-1995) UPN (1995-2006) |
| Transmitter power | 1,000 kW |
| Height | 306 m |
| Facility ID | 9762 |
| Website | wgnt.com |
WGNT, channel 27 (digital 50), is a television station licensed to Portsmouth, Virginia, USA. WGNT is the CW Television Network affiliate for the Hampton Roads (Portsmouth-Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News) television market and is owned by Local TV, which also operates WTKR (channel 3), Hampton Roads' CBS affiliate. WGNT's studios are co-located with WTKR in downtown Norfolk, and its transmitter is located in Suffolk, Virginia.
Contents |
WGNT began digital broadcasts on channel 50 on July 15, 2002. On June 12, 2009, WGNT's digital signal remained on channel 50 when the analog to digital conversion was completed.
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 27.1 | Main WGNT programming / The CW |
| 27.2 | Antenna TV |
The station became a charter affiliate of Tribune Broadcasting's new digital multicast channel Antenna TV on January 4, 2011, it is carried on digital subchannel 27.2.[1] Originally, the channel was planned to be on sister station WTKR. The network, whose programming consists of classic sitcoms from the 1950s to the 1990s during the afternoon and evening, and movies during the morning and late night hours, debuted on Local TV, LLC-owned stations in other markets as well as stations owned by Antenna TV's parent company Tribune Company on the same date. It is currently not available on cable in the area.
WGNT is one of the oldest surviving UHF licenses in the country. It first appeared on December 6, 1953 as WTOV-TV, a commercial independent owned by Commonwealth Broadcasting. It was the third television station in the Hampton Roads area, and the second on UHF (WVEC-TV signed on over channel 15 three months earlier). WTOV later became an affiliate of the DuMont network. Channel 27 was on the air for limited hours, and had very limited viewership because it was impossible at the time to watch UHF stations without buying a converter. Even with a converter, WTOV's picture wasn't very clear. As such, it was never a factor in the Hampton Roads market.
The death knell for channel 27 sounded in late 1955, when Tidewater Teleradio, owners of WAVY radio (1350 AM, now WGPL) won a construction permit for the area's second VHF station, WAVY-TV (channel 10). Combined with dwindling revenues and the impending loss of DuMont programming at the end of the 1955-56 season, WTOV went dark in 1956.
In 1961 M.G. "Pat" Robertson, son of Virginia United States Senator A. Willis Robertson and an attorney-turned-Southern Baptist minister, purchased the dormant channel 27 license. Under the ownership of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, the station returned to the air on October 1 as WYAH-TV, with "YAH" standing for "Yahweh" according to some sources (including Pat Robertson's autobiography, Shout it From the Housetops) and "You are Holy" according to others. Pat Robertson's first choice for call letters was WTFC ("Television For Christ"). Those call letters were announced by Robertson to local media, before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) informed him that they were unavailable.
WYAH initially broadcast from studios on Spratley Street in downtown Portsmouth. At first WYAH was on the air five hours a day, several of which were occupied by a locally produced program hosted by Robertson. The rest of the day was occupied by teaching programs produced by local churches and some syndicated TV evangelists' repeats of Sunday programs. The station almost went dark in 1963, and so it conducted a special telethon urging 700 people to donate $10 a month, continuing to hold such telethons bi-monthly. A few years later the locally-produced daily talk program would be named for the telethons, The 700 Club.
Beginning in 1966, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker hosted and produced a local children's program called "Come On Over" (later called "Jim and Tammy"). This consisted of puppet shows, skits, prayers, singalongs, games, stories and religious short films such as Davey and Goliath and JOT. The program was eventually seen in Canada, and achieved widespread syndication throughout the United States. Pat Robertson also appeared on-camera as well as host of additional Bible-teaching programs. Weekends consisted of televangelists such as Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, local church services. WYAH was one of the first Christian television stations in the United States and was a viewer-supported non-commercial station, though it sold blocks of time to other ministries. By 1964, the station was financially solvent.
In 1966, WYAH expanded its broadcast hours to 8 hours a day, signing on at 4:00 p.m., and begun construction of a new tower boosting its coverage area to, as far as the eastern portion of the Richmond market. The station also began color transmissions of shows produced in color. In mid-1967, WYAH began producing all its programs in color as well.
In September 1967, WYAH began commercial operation part-time about two hours a day. Initial syndicated fare consisted of reruns of westerns, sitcoms, low budget films and local productions. The station moved the Christian programming to earlier times, and gradually expanded its broadcast days on weekdays to accommodate more secular programming. Saturdays consisted of mostly old movies and westerns, and Sundays remained exclusively filled by Christian programs.
In June 1970, the newly completed transmitter boosted WYAH's effective radiated power to 2.25 million watts. By then the station was on the air 12 hours a day signing on at Noon. Robertson sent a newsletter to donors boasting that channel 27 was now the most powerful station in Virginia. In 1972, WYAH began airing for 15 hours a day, signing on at 10:00 a. m., with an expanded lineup of syndicated shows and religious programming, including airings of the 700 Club three times a day. Sundays were still devoted entirely to religious programs. In the Fall of 1973, WYAH expanded their broadcast day to 19 hours a day signing on before 7:00 a.m. About this time, the Bakkers left for the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network before going on their own in 1975. The Hampton Roads area had become one of the smallest markets in the U.S. with a commercial independent station.
While WYAH had evolved into a conventional independent station by this time, its programming policy was decidedly conservative, in keeping with Robertson's Baptist/charismatic religious views. For many years, it muted any dialogue containing profanity. In some cases, it opted to preempt whole episodes out of concern for their subject matter. For example, at least two episodes of Gilligan's Island never aired on the station, because of content centering (albeit in a comical fashion) around ghosts and vampires. However, WYAH offered a wide variety of programming and was a stronger independent than many secular-owned independent stations at that time. Still, Hampton Roads viewers got other choices once cable arrived in the area in the late 1960s, as WTTG and WDCA from Washington, D.C. became available on cable systems as well.
With WYAH's growth and profitability, CBN began expanding to other markets. In June 1971, CBN began WHAE-TV (now WGCL-TV) in Atlanta, followed with the January 1973 purchase of KBFI-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. CBN later changed the calls of that station to KXTX-TV and, in April 1973, merged it with KDTV (the current KXTX-TV). CBN's fourth station, WXNE-TV (now WFXT) in Boston was started in October 1977. These stations formed the Continental Broadcasting Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of CBN with WYAH as the flagship station.
In the late 1970s, WYAH continued to acquire off-network sitcoms and more movie packages. In 1980 WYAH, along with the rest of the Continental stations, began five to eight hours of general entertainment programming on Sunday afternoons, mostly extending the non-religious programming to syndicated theatrical shorts from Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount and weekly "theaters" dedicated to Shirley Temple, Abbott & Costello, and Blondie and Dagwood movies. However, channel 27 lost some ground locally to WTVZ (channel 33), which was launched in 1979 and aired programming that was too racy for Robertson's liking -- mostly uncensored off-network programming and syndicated fare. The station also moved the 700 Club to 10:00 p.m. and added a prime time movie at 8:00 p.m.
By the late 1980s, Continental Broadcasting had become too profitable to remain under the CBN banner without endangering CBN's nonprofit status. With this in mind, Robertson began selling off his over-the-air stations. In 1989 WYAH was sold to Centennial Broadcasting. The new owners renamed the station WGNT, which stands for Greater Norfolk Television.
After Centennial took control, WGNT initially ran shows inherited from the CBN days, but ended the station's decades-long practice of censoring the small amount of profanity from off-network syndicated programming. As the 1990s began, Centennial began mixing in racier programming than had previously aired on the station, leading to talk that its call letters actually stood for God's Not There. This included controversial talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, The Ricki Lake Show and The Jerry Springer Show and syndicated fare like the Universal Action Pack, PTEN and Baywatch. In 1991, it dropped the 11 pm repeat of The 700 Club. By 2003, the series was completely off the air on WGNT, removing the last link to its CBN days. However, it has aired on numerous outlets in the area in the years since (it currently airs on WTKR).
In 1995, WGNT became a charter UPN affiliate and branded itself as "UPN 27". In 1997, Paramount Stations Group bought WGNT, making it a UPN owned-and-operated station. Paramount Stations Group in 1997 paid Centennial $42.5 Million dollars to buy and own WGNT-TV.[2] Viacom, Paramount's owner, later bought CBS as well. When Viacom spun off its broadcasting properties into CBS Corporation at the end of 2005, WGNT and the other UPN O&Os became part of the new company. On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge into a new service, The CW Television Network, jointly owned by CBS and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. As part of the deal, the new network signed a 10-year affiliation deal with 11 of CBS' UPN stations, including WGNT. Channel 27 rebranded itself as "CW 27" in the summer of 2006 and officially became the Hampton Roads area's CW affiliate on September 18, 2006.
On June 14, 2010, CBS announced it was selling WGNT to Local TV, owner of CBS affiliate WTKR, pending FCC approval. Previously, WGNT had been the only network O&O station in the Hampton Roads market. Shortly after the announcement, Local TV took over WGNT's operations through a local marketing agreement as its first CW station.[3] Later that month, channel 27 moved out of its longtime studios in Portsmouth and was integrated into WTKR's facilities on Boush Street in Downtown Norfolk.
In 1995, WTKR began to produce NewsChannel 3 at 10 on UPN 27, the area's first prime time local broadcast.[4] The newscast was short-lived and canceled in late-1997. Since then, the time period has been used for off-network repeats. In July 2011, it was announced that local news would return to WGNT. A morning newscast airs from 7 to 9 a.m., featuring the anchor team from sister station WTKR's morning newscast.[5] Initially slated to launch on August 29, the newscast's debut was moved up to August 25 to allow for Hurricane Irene coverage.[6]
|
||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||