WQCW

WQCW

Portsmouth, Ohio Charleston/Huntington, WV
Branding	Tri-State's CW
Channels	Digital: 17 (UHF, PSIP 30)
Subchannels	30.1 The CW
Translators	WOCW-LP 21 Charleston WV
Affiliations	The CW
Owner	Lockwood Broadcast Group (Sale pending to Excalibur Broadcasting, to be operated by Gray Television thereafter) (Mountain TV, LLC)
First air date	October 1998
Call letters' meaning	Quality television The CW
Former callsigns	WHCP (1998-2006)
Former channel number(s)	30 (UHF analog, 1998-2009)
Former affiliations	Primary The WB (1998-2006) Secondary: UPN (2000-2006)
Transmitter power	1,000 kW (digital). Non-Directional
Height	396 m (digital)
Facility ID	65130
Transmitter coordinates	38°30′21″N 82°12′33″W / 38.50583°N 82.20917°W / 38.50583; -82.20917
Website	www.tristatescw.com

WQCW is the CW affiliate for the Huntington/Charleston, West Virginia television market. It is licensed to Portsmouth, Ohio and is the one of two commercial stations in the market licensed outside of West Virginia. Its transmitter is located in West Portsmouth, Ohio. The station operates a low-powered repeater: WOCW, channel 21 in Charleston.

History

Although a construction permit was issued for channel 30 in 1984 under the calls WUXA, no station signed on this channel until 1998, when WHCP signed on as an affiliate of The WB. It added UPN programming in 2000 after it was dropped from WVAH-TV, airing it off-pattern on weekends and after WB network time.

The station's analog transmitter, despite its over 2 million-watt ERP, was not strong enough to cover the entire Huntington-Charleston market, even though it identifies itself on-air as "Portsmouth-Charleston." The market, the largest geographic market east of the Mississippi River, covers 61 counties in central West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio. Most of this territory is a very rugged dissected plateau, making UHF reception difficult. WVAH faced similar problems when it originally signed on in 1982 on channel 23, forcing it to move to channel 11 in 1989. WHCP did not have that recourse, and could not increase their analog station's power due to probable interference with digital television stations in Roanoke, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee. Shortly after going on the air, it signed on two low-power satellites; WBWV, channel 69 in Huntington and WOWB channel 53 in Charleston. The station effectively depended on pay television reception for most of their viewership, especially in Eastern Kentucky. DirecTV added the station to their lineup on January 25, 2006, with Dish Network carrying it since they began providing the market local stations. The station began to be carried in high definition on DirecTV on November 9, 2010, with Dish following on March 7, 2012.

WHCP joined The CW when UPN and the WB shut down and merged to form the new network in 2006. On May 26, WOWB and WBWV became WOCW channel 21 and WVCW channel 45, respectively. WHCP followed suit on May 31, changing its calls to WQCW. It initially rebranded itself as "The Q," with a logo showing The CW's logo turning into a capital "Q", but eventually followed the network's generic regional branding style as "Tri-State's CW."

On January 20, 2007, longtime owner Commonwealth Broadcasting sold the station to Lockwood Broadcast Group. The deal closed on May 21, 2007. All of Lockwood's stations are either primary CW stations or have the CW on a digital subchannel.

The WVCW-LP license was surrendered to the FCC on June 1, 2012 as Lockwood did not intend to convert the station to digital.

On November 15, 2013, Lockwood announced that it would sell WQCW to Excalibur Broadcasting for $5.5 million. Upon the completion of the purchase, WQCW will begin a shared services agreement with Gray Television, owner of NBC affiliate WSAZ-TV. Excalibur's president Don Ray was a former general manager at WSAZ.^[1]

Digital television

Digital channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

WQCW shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, 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 17.^[3][4] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 30.

Attempt at news department and former local programming

The station's local programming efforts have been mostly high school sports and local professional wrestling promotions such as the Portsmouth-based promotion Revolutionary Championship Wrestling, but the station currently has had no local programming since Lockwood's purchase of the station.

The station attempted to launch a local news operation between November 7, 2005 and February 21, 2006, with longtime local anchor Tom McGee as the station's main anchor and news director for weeknight shows at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. The program was done with a low budget without any teleprompters, IFB system and a crude presentation style even for 2005. The station also did not subscribe to Associated Press newswires, and their effort never seriously competed with the major stations in the market at 6 p.m., nor WVAH's 10 p.m. show.

McGee was forced from the station on February 21, 2006 over claims the station refused to provide health insurance to his reporters, and because of low revenues allegedly paid some employees with discounted and/or free food from station advertisers, and a dispute over the addition of a news helicopter. The entire news staff was fired two days later on February 23 with the immediate termination of the news department.^[5]

References

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WQCW
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WOCW-LP
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WQCW-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WOCW-LP