WPSG
 | |
| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States | |
|---|---|
| Branding |
The CW Philly 57 (general) Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly (newscasts) |
| Slogan | TV Now |
| Channels |
Digital: 32 (UHF) Virtual: 57 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 57.1 The CW |
| Affiliations |
The CW CBS (secondary) |
| Owner |
CBS Corporation (Philadelphia Television Station WPSG, Inc.) |
| First air date | June 15, 1981 |
| Call letters' meaning |
Paramount Stations Group (former owner of WPSG, and predecessor of CBS Television Stations) |
| Sister station(s) | KYW, KYW-TV, WIP, WIP-FM, WOGL, WPHT |
| Former callsigns |
WWSG-TV (1981–1985) WGBS-TV (1985–1995) |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 57 (UHF, 1981-2009) |
| Former affiliations |
Independent (1981–1995) UPN (1995–2006) |
| Transmitter power | 250 kW |
| Height | 400 m |
| Facility ID | 12499 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°2′30″N 75°14′11″W / 40.04167°N 75.23639°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www.cwphilly.com |
WPSG, virtual channel 57 (UHF digital channel 32), is a CW owned-and-operated television station located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation, and is part of a duopoly with CBS owned-and-operated station KYW-TV (channel 3). The two stations share a studio and office facilities located north of Center City Philadelphia, WPSG's transmitter is located in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.
Through CBS's part ownership of The CW (which it jointly owns with Time Warner), WPSG is the network's largest owned-and-operated station by market size (The CW's stations in the three largest Nielsen media markets in the U.S. – New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago – are affiliates owned by Tribune Broadcasting, which does not maintain an ownership interest in the network).
History
WGLV-TV
The channel 57 frequency was originally assigned to Easton, Pennsylvania. In the 1950s, it was home to WGLV-TV, a dual ABC/DuMont affiliate owned by the Easton Express newspaper. Unfortunately, the station struggled to get an audience mainly because it was a UHF station at a time when television manufacturers were not required to offer UHF tuners. Its fate was sealed when the Federal Communications Commission collapsed the Lehigh Valley into the Philadelphia television market. The Philadelphia stations built tall towers in the city's hilly Roxborough neighborhood, adding Easton and the rest of the Lehigh Valley to their city-grade coverage. WGLV went dark soon afterward, and somewhere along the line the FCC reassigned the channel 57 allocation to Philadelphia.
Rebirth
Channel 57 as a Philadelphia station first signed on the air on June 15, 1981 as WWSG-TV, named for station founder William S. Gross. The station aired business news programming from the Financial News Network during the day and subscription television programming from SelecTV at night. The station ultimately dropped the FNN feed when it decided to switch to a full-time subscription format eighteen months later, picking up the now-defunct PRISM pay-cable service (a forerunner to Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia) in 1983.
In March 1985, Gross sold channel 57 to Milton Grant,[1] who immediately purchased an inventory of strong programming. Many of these shows were Viacom-syndicated programs that were formerly seen on WKBS-TV (channel 48) before that station ceased operations in August 1983. On October 20, 1985, Grant relaunched channel 57 as WGBS-TV, a general entertainment independent station with a typical mix of cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas and sports. Westerns also aired for several hours a day on weekends. Under Grant, WGBS adopted a very slick on-air look, even by major market independent standards. The station boldly branded itself as "Philly 57", and also used CGI graphics of near network-quality. The station's announcer, Kim Martin (then an announcer at WPEN radio, now WKDN), offered bold, brash and entertaining voice-overs. WGBS' then-sister stations, WBFS-TV in Miami and WGBO-TV in Chicago, adopted a similar look.
Early on, the new channel 57 competed with Vineland, New Jersey-based WSJT (channel 65, now WUVP-DT) to fill the void left by the earlier departure of WKBS. However, channel 65 suffered from a poor signal in the northern portion of the market. At the same time, channel 57 became the broadcast home of the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers, remaining the hockey team's broadcast television home until the 2008-09 season (except for a brief period from 1993 to 1998, when the Flyers aired on WPHL-TV, channel 17). Additionally, Wilmington, Delaware-based WTGI (channel 61, now WPPX-TV) signed on in the summer of 1986 as a general entertainment independent station, but its schedule was composed largely of low-budget programs. At the end of 1986, WSJT's owners, the Asbury Park Press, conceded and sold the station to the Home Shopping Network while other stations picked up some of WSJT's syndicated shows. WTGI, meanwhile, switched to a format featuring paid programming and religious programs in January 1987. By then, WGBS had clearly established itself as the third independent in Philadelphia.
WGBS prospered even in the midst of a battle for its survival – and that of its owner. Milton Grant had hoped to have his stations become regional or national superstations. In his bid to boost his stations' status, Grant wound up overpaying for programming. He soon became so badly overextended that Grant Broadcasting was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 1986.[2] Under the bankruptcy deal, WGBS cut back on the number of runs it had on each show causing programs to be seen at less duration. Still, in 1989, Grant Broadcasting was forced into receivership after the company failed to meet the terms of its bankruptcy agreement. Combined Broadcasting, a creditor-controlled holding company, took control of the former Grant stations. Combined put the stations up for sale in 1993, but it would be two years before Combined found a buyer, and only then in a roundabout way.
Joining UPN
In early 1994, Viacom's newly acquired subsidiary, Paramount Pictures, announced plans to form the United Paramount Network (or UPN), a broadcast network operated as a joint venture with Chris-Craft Industries (with Paramount holding only a programming partnership until Viacom/Paramount purchased 50% of the network in 1996). In Philadelphia, Viacom had owned Fox affiliate WTXF-TV (channel 29), and as such it was expected that WTXF would switch to UPN. Although there was no official word that WTXF would change networks, Fox received enough unofficial indications that it made a tentative deal with Combined to buy WGBS and move its programming there.
However, later that year, Westinghouse Broadcasting, owners of then-NBC affiliate KYW-TV, reached an agreement with CBS to switch channel 3 and two of Westinghouse's other stations to CBS. New World Communications had recently partnered with Fox in most of the markets where the company owned stations, and emerged as a candidate to purchase CBS' longtime owned-and-operated station WCAU-TV (channel 10). Fox then cancelled its preliminary deal with Combined to buy channel 57 and entered into the bidding for WCAU just in case New World's offer either fell through or in case New World chose to affiliate WCAU with NBC. However, NBC and CBS opted to make a complicated multi-market station swap which gave WCAU to NBC; Viacom then opted to sell WTXF to Fox. Using the cash received from Fox for channel 29, Viacom then bought WGBS and its Miami sister station, WBFS-TV. This deal effectively resulted in Viacom buying out its partners' stakes in Combined Broadcasting. As soon as the deal was announced, Viacom announced that both stations would join UPN. Ironically, of course, Viacom had been the owner of the majority of the programs seen on channel 57's schedule back in 1985, and in fact was one of Grant's former creditors and a part-owner of Combined. Grant had been under particularly strong pressure to repay his debt to Viacom prior to filing bankruptcy.
WGBS became Philadelphia's UPN station when the network launched on January 16, 1995. After UPN debuted, the station's image was changed to fit its new status as a network station. The on-air branding changed to "UPN Philly 57", and finally "UPN 57", the graphics got simpler, and Martin was replaced by the more staid Larry Van Nuys. The "UPN 57" branding was kept for the remainder of the network's run, with the exception of a short-lived branding change to simply "UPN" in September 2002, when the UPN network debuted a new logo and on-air identity. This lasted exactly one season, and by the fall of 2003, the station's branding reverted to "UPN 57".
Viacom officially became the sole owner of WGBS on August 25, 1995, the same day Fox closed on its purchase of WTXF. On December 11 of that year, Viacom changed the station's call letters to WPSG (for "Paramount Stations Group", the Viacom subsidiary that began operating the station at that time). Viacom bought CBS in 2000, creating a duopoly with KYW-TV; WPSG's operations later migrated into KYW-TV's studios at Independence Mall. That same year, Viacom also purchased Chris-Craft's 50% share of UPN for $5.5 billion,[3] this resulted in WPSG becoming UPN's largest owned-and-operated station (taking that distinction away from Secaucus, New Jersey-licensed New York City station WWOR-TV, it and Chris-Craft's other UPN stations were stripped of their statuses as O&Os due to the Viacom buyout and were eventually sold to Fox Television Stations, one of which was subsequently traded to Paramount).
In recent years, WPSG has tried to reposition itself as more of a local station, using the slogan So Philly, So You! (spelled as So Philly, So U! during the waning days of its UPN run). Weekend movie marathons, usually hosted by local personalities (or KYW/WPSG staff like Sean Murphy), have become commonplace, and during the late 2000s, the station broadcast the Philadelphia version of Gimme the Mike!, a competition for aspiring singers. In recent years, WPSG has become Philadelphia's leading sports station. Since the late 1990s, it has acquired over-the-air rights to MLB's Philadelphia Phillies and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers in addition to its long-standing coverage of the Flyers (although the majority of those teams' games are broadcast on Comcast SportsNet). Phillies games moved to WPHL in November 2008. When Viacom and CBS split in 2005, WPSG became part of the CBS Corporation, along with the rest of Viacom's broadcasting interests (the original Viacom was renamed CBS Corporation, while the company that split from CBS and acquired the company's film and most cable television assets, save for Showtime Networks, took the Viacom name).
The CW
On January 24, 2006, WPSG parent CBS Corporation and the Warner Bros. Television unit of Time Warner announced that the two companies would shut down UPN and The WB and merge some of their programs onto a new, jointly-owned network called The CW Television Network.[4][5] As part of the deal, the new network signed a 10-year affiliation contract with 11 of CBS' UPN stations, including WPSG. Channel 57 was the largest UPN owned-and-operated station to join the new network. However, it would not have been an upset had Philadelphia's WB station, WPHL (which joined another newly launched service called MyNetworkTV), been chosen instead; representatives for The CW were on record as preferring the "strongest" stations among The WB and UPN's affiliate body, and Philadelphia was one of the few markets where the UPN and WB stations were both relatively strong. Since WPHL's owners Tribune Broadcasting does not maintain an ownership stake in The CW, and CBS is the only stakeholder in the network that owns a television station group, WPSG is considered to be the network's official flagship station (although The CW's New York City affiliate WPIX is the network's largest station by market size).
WPSG continued to carry UPN programming until the network shut down on September 15, 2006; The CW commenced operations three days later on September 18. While the "Philly 57" branding was discontinued in 1995, it had been so effective that many continue call the station by that name today. It is probably for this reason that, in a surprising move, WPSG announced in the summer of 2006 that it would revive the "Philly 57" moniker as part of the station's new branding, "CW Philly 57", although on-air promotions refer to the station as "CW Philly". In addition, WPSG would continue to broadcast Phillies, Flyers and Sixers games, a move that had been uncertain after the station became a CW affiliate.
On April 2, 2007, WPSG and KYW-TV relocated their operations to new studios at 1555 Hamilton Street in Philadelphia, near the Community College of Philadelphia.
Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
| Channel | Video | Aspect | PSIP Short Name | Programming[6] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 57.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WPSG | Main WPSG programming / The CW |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WPSG shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 57, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32.[7][8] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 57, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.
Newscasts
In September 2002, KYW radio (1060 AM) and KYW-TV launched a weekday morning news program called KYW NewsRadio This Morning on WPSG. Originally anchored by KYW anchor Beth Trapani, the broadcast was essentially an embellished radio newscast with simple graphics and video borrowed from KYW-TV. Trapani was succeeded as anchor by Ed Abrams, who gave way in turn to Lesley Van Arsdall. The news program did surprisingly better than expected but the effort would eventually come to an end on May 30, 2005. The following day, a new program called WakeUPNews, produced by Traffic Pulse, premiered in the four-hour timeslot previously held by KYW NewsRadio This Morning. The newscast carried on into WPSG's affiliation with The CW, adopting new graphics on September 18, 2006 and de-emphasizing the spacing in the name which formed a reference to its former affiliation, becoming simply Wake Up News.
To compete with WPHL-TV's outsourced and WTXF-TV's in-house primetime newscasts, KYW-TV began to produce a 10:00 p.m. newscast for WPSG on February 2, 2009, titled Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly. This partnership would extend into the mornings on June 29, 2009, when Wake Up News was replaced with a two-hour extension of KYW-TV's Eyewitness News This Morning.[9]
Station presentation
Newscast titles
- KYW NewsRadio This Morning (2002–2005)
- WakeUPNews (2005–2009; stylized as Wake Up News from 2006–2009)
- Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly (2009–present)
- Eyewitness News This Morning (extension of KYW-TV morning newscast; 2009–present)
Station slogans
- "Philly's Own Super Station" (1985–1994)
- "So Philly, So You!" (1999–2002)
- "So Philly, So U!" (2002–2006)
- "TV to Talk About" (2009–2012; also CW network slogan)
- "TV Now" (2012–present; also CW network slogan)
This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.News staff
Current on-air staff
KYW-TV staff serving as primary news anchors for WPSG's newscasts are Natasha Brown (weekends at 10 p.m.), Jessica Dean (weeknights at 10 p.m.), Chris May (weeknights at 10 p.m.), Erika von Tiehl (weekday mornings on Eyewitness News This Morning from 7-9 a.m.) and Ukee Washington (weekday mornings on Eyewitness News This Morning from 7-9 a.m.).[10]
The Eyewitness Weather team includes chief meteorologist Kathy Orr (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and NWA Seals of Approval; weeknights at 10 p.m.); and meteorologists Katie Fehlinger (weekday mornings on Eyewitness News This Morning from 7-9 a.m.) and Justin Drabick (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval; weekends at 10 p.m.).[10]
The sports team includes sports director Beasley Reece (weeknights at 10 p.m.), sports anchor Lesley Van Arsdall (weekends at 10 p.m.) and freelance sports anchor Steve Bucci.[10]
KYW reporting staff appearing on the WPSG broadcasts are Nicole Brewer (morning contributor, "Morning Chatter" from 7-9 a.m.), Jim Donovan (consumer reporter), Jericka Duncan (general assignment reporter), Walt Hunter (investigative reporter), Elizabeth Hur (general assignment reporter), Bob Kelly (weekday morning traffic reporter on Eyewitness News This Morning from 7-9 a.m.), Todd Quinones (general assignment reporter), Robin Rieger (general assignment reporter) and Ben Simmoneau (general assignment reporter) and Stephanie Stahl (health and science reporter).[10]
Out-of-market coverage
Unlike WTXF and WPHL, WPSG is carried in fewer locations in central New Jersey. In early November 2012, at the request of Tribune Broadcasting's New York City CW affiliate WPIX, CW network programming seen on WPSG began to be blacked out in portions of New Jersey that are part of the New York City television market; the blackout request was lifted later that month on November 27, 2012. In Warren County, it is carried on cable in Phillipsburg. In Hunterdon and Somerset counties, WPSG is carried on Comcast (formerly Patriot Media) channel 17. WPSG, along with sister station KYW-TV and the other Philadelphia television stations, are also carried in Lambertville in Hunterdon County.
In Middlesex County, it was carried on Comcast (formerly Storer Cable) on analog channel 22 from 1985 to January 2007, when it was moved to digital cable channel 254 to "preserve bandwidth"; sister station KYW returned to the Comcast lineup on digital channel 256 after a 14-year absence in December 2007. In Monmouth and Ocean counties, WPSG is also carried on Comcast digital channel 254 in parts of Ocean County; Comcast added WPSG's HD feed to its Toms River and Long Beach Island lineups in Ocean County and southern Middlesex County as well as Roosevelt in Monmouth County and in Lambertville on August 22, 2012 on digital channel 911.[11]
The station is not available to Cablevision customers in Lakewood, Seaside Heights in Ocean County and southern Monmouth County, even though Cablevision carries other Philadelphia stations on these systems. Cablevision's Allentown system, in extreme western Monmouth County, carries WPSG (and other broadcast television stations from the Philadelphia and New York City markets). Comcast also carries WPSG on channel 11 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. DirecTV and Dish Network do not carry any Philadelphia stations in any area outside the Philadelphia market.
References
- ↑ "Changing Hands." Broadcasting, March 18, 1985, pg. 86
- ↑ "Grant Broadcasting goes into Chapter 11." Broadcasting, December 15, 1986, pp. 47-48.
- ↑ Hofmeister, Sallie (August 12, 2000). "News Corp. to Buy Chris-Craft Parent for $5.5 Billion, Outbidding Viacom". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
- ↑ 'Gilmore Girls' meet 'Smackdown'; CW Network to combine WB, UPN in CBS-Warner venture beginning in September, CNNMoney.com, January 24, 2006.
- ↑ UPN and WB to Combine, Forming New TV Network, The New York Times, January 24, 2006.
- ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for WPSG
- ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.
- ↑ CDBS Print
- ↑ http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2009/06/03/daily.8/
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 CBS 3
- ↑
External links
- Official website
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WPSG
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WPSG-TV
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