WPMT

WPMT virtual channel 43 (digital channel 47) is a Fox-affiliated television station serving Harrisburg and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, licensed to York, Pennsylvania. Owned by the Tribune Company, the station has studios in Spring Garden, Pennsylvania (although its mailing address is York) and its transmitter is located in Hallam, Pennsylvania. Syndicated programming on WPMT includes: Seinfeld, Family Guy, The Steve Wilkos Show and America's Funniest Home Videos.

Digital programming

The station's signal is multiplexed.

Beginning on January 1, 2011, WPMT digital subchannel 43.2 began running Antenna TV, a digital multicast network owned by Tribune Broadcasting, running classic television series from the libraries of Sony Pictures Television, NBCUniversal Television Distribution and DLT Entertainment and feature films from the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group library.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WPMT ended programming on its analog signal, on June 12, 2009, as part of the DTV transition in the United States,^[1][2] and remained on its current digital channel 47 ^[3] using PSIP to display their virtual channel as 43.

History

The station began broadcasting on December 21, 1952 as WSBA-TV. It was owned by Susquehanna Radio Corporation along with WSBA-AM 910. It was one of the first commercially-licensed UHF stations in the United States, hitting the airwaves just over three months after KPTV in Portland, Oregon. However, that station moved to VHF channel 12 a few years after taking to the air. This makes WPMT the second-oldest continuously broadcasting UHF station in the country only behind WSBT-TV in South Bend, Indiana (although WSBT moved from its original channel 34 to channel 22 in the late 1950s, making WPMT the oldest UHF station that broadcasts continuously on the same virtual channel number to this day).

WSBA was originally an ABC affiliate. However, in 1961, the station switched to CBS and joined the Keystone Network which comprised WHP-TV in Harrisburg and WLYH-TV in Lebanon. The three stations provided a strong combined signal with about 55% overlap. Initially, WHP-TV, WLYH and WSBA aired the same programming. By the late 1960s, while all three stations ran most of the CBS programming schedule, WHP-TV ran different local programming during non-network hours, while WLYH and WSBA continued to simulcast nearly all the broadcast day. WHP ran CBS shows that WSBA and WLYH preempted. These two stations ran programming that WHP preempted. All three ran most of the CBS lineup duplicating over 3/4 of the network's programs. In May 1983, Susquehanna sold WSBA-TV to Idaho-based Mohawk Broadcasting, who changed its calls to the current WPMT. The station signed off in August and returned to the air in September as an independent station--the first in the state outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It was a typical UHF independent airing cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas, sports, and westerns.

On October 6, 1986 after Mohawk sold the station to Renaissance Broadcasting, it became one of the charter affiliates of the newly-launched Fox network. In the mid-1990s, WPMT featured original kids programming hosted by the station's mascot, a clown named Pete McTee (a play on the station's call letters). In 1997, Renaissance merged with Tribune Broadcasting, WPMT's present owner.

The station's newscasts were seen in a fictional sense in the 2010 film Unstoppable, which is set in the station's market area.

News operation

Currently, WPMT broadcasts a total of 32 hours of local newscasts per week (with seven hours on weekdays and one hour on weekends).

As a CBS affiliate, WSBA-TV simulcast WLYH's local newscasts. This arrangement ended in 1983, when the station became WPMT. Local newscasts would not be found on the station until the debut of Fox 43 News at 10 in 1994. Eventually, this was joined by weekend evening news followed by the addition of a weekday morning show. The weeknight 10 o'clock broadcast competes with CW affiliate WLYH who airs a prime time newscast that is produced by CBS affiliate WHP. On September 4, 2009, WPMT began airing a local sports highlight program called High School Football Frenzy that airs Friday nights at 6:00 during the high school football season. On September 21, 2009, they began airing a weeknight newscast at 6:30 against the national news on the big three affiliates.^[4]

On October 26, 2009, WPMT launched a 24-hour cable news television channel, known as "Fox 43 News 24/7", available on Blue Ridge digital channel 126, Comcast digital channel 244, and on their second digital sub-channel. Programming consists of simulcasts and rebroadcasts of local news from the main channel.^[5][6] The station launched a weeknight 11 o'clock show on January 11, 2010.^[7]

On January 15, 2011, WPMT became the first station in Central Pennsylvania and the last Tribune-owned Fox-affiliated station to broadcast local news in high definition (in mid-December 2010, rival station, WGAL, had become the first station in the market to offer local newscasts in 16:9 enhanced definition widescreen. Although not truly high definition, the broadcasts were matched to the wider aspect ratio of HD television screens; WGAL switched to full HD on August 29, 2011).^[8] On January 9, 2012, WPMT will expand its early evening newscast to one hour with the addition of a half-hour at 6 p.m.^[9]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• Newswatch 43 (1973–1980)
• TeleJournal News (1980–1983)
• Fox 43 News (1994–present)^[10]

Station slogans

• "It's on Fox 43!" (1990–1992; localized version of Fox ad campaign)
• "The Early Advantage" (1994–1999)
• "At Ten It's News. At Eleven It's History." (1999–2007)
• "Central Pennsylvania's Fox Station" (2010–present)

News team^[11]

Anchors

• Evan Forrester - weeknights at 6:30, 10 and 11 p.m.; also assistant news director
• Jaime Garland - weekends at 10 p.m.; also weeknight reporter
• Kiersten Mathieu - weekday mornings (5-9 a.m.)
• Courtney Laydon - weekday mornings (5-9 a.m.)
• Heather Warner - weeknights at 6:30, 10 and 11 p.m.

Fox 43 Weather Team

• Jim Buchanan (NWA Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 6:30, 10 and 11 p.m.
• Jeff Robbins - meteorologist; weekday mornings (5-9 a.m.)
• MaryEllen Pann (member, NWA; associate member, AMS) - meteorologist; weekends at 10 p.m.
• Susan Schrack - weather anchor; fill-in (previously anchor and reporter from 1995–2004)

Sports team

• Todd Sadowski - sports director; weeknights at 10 and 11 p.m.
• Bill Toth - sports anchor; weekends at 10 p.m.

Reporters

• Melanie Gardner - general assignment reporter; also host of PA Marketplace
• Eric Gemmill - general assignment reporter
• Nava Ghalili - multimedia journalist
• Mike Gorsegner - general assignment reporter
• Ashley Palutis - multimedia journalist
• Ashley Singh - multimedia journalist

References

External links

• WPMT website
• WPMT mobile
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WPMT