KYW-TV

KYW-TV

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States
City of license	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Branding	CBS 3 (general) CBS 3 Eyewitness News (newscasts)
Slogan	CBS 3 Eyewitness News (general) Expect More (newscasts)
Channels	Digital: 26 (UHF) Virtual: 3 (PSIP)
Subchannels	3.1 CBS 3.2 Decades
Affiliations	CBS (O&O)
Owner	CBS Corporation (CBS Broadcasting, Inc.)
Founded	1932 (as experimental station W3XE)
First air date	September 1, 1941 (1941-09-01)
Call letters' meaning	Derived from sister station KYW radio[1]
Sister station(s)	KYW, WIP-FM, WOGL, WPHT, WPSG, WRDW-FM, WXTU
Former callsigns	WPTZ (1941–1956) WRCV-TV (1956–1965)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 3 (VHF, 1938–2009)
Former affiliations	NBC (1941–1995)
Transmitter power	790 kW
Height	375 m (1,230 ft)
Facility ID	25453
Transmitter coordinates	40°2′33″N 75°14′33″W / 40.04250°N 75.24250°W / 40.04250; -75.24250
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	philadelphia.cbslocal.com

KYW-TV, channel 3, is a CBS 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 the sister station to CW station WPSG (channel 57). The two stations share studios and office facilities located on Hamilton Street just north of Center City Philadelphia, KYW's transmitter is located in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.

History

As WPTZ

The channel 3 facility in Philadelphia is one of the world's oldest television stations. It began in 1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by the Philco Corporation, a local company known for manufacturing early radio and television sets. Philco engineers created much of the station's equipment, including cameras. When the station began operations as W3XE, it was based within Philco's production plant, at C and East Tioga streets in North Philadelphia, complete with a small studio and transmitter. In 1941, it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now WNBC-TV) in New York City, becoming NBC's second television affiliate, and creating a link between the station and the network that would last for 54 years.^[2]

On July 1, 1941, W3XE received a commercial license – the third in the United States, and the first outside of New York City – as WPTZ. The station signed on for the first time on September 1. Philco then moved WPTZ's studios to the penthouse suite of the Architect's Building, at 17th and Sansom streets in downtown Philadelphia, while retaining master control facilities at the Philco plant. The station originally broadcast from a tower in the Philadelphia suburb of Wyndmoor. It significantly cut back operations after the U.S. entered World War II, but returned to a full schedule in 1945. Channel 3 relocated its entire operation to the Wyndmoor transmitter facility during World War II, when the station aired little programming. It then became one of three stations (along with WNBT and Schenectady, New York's WRGB) that premiered NBC's regular television service in 1946. When full broadcasting was resumed, the station reactivated its studio in the Architect's Building, remaining there until 1947. WPTZ then moved into unused space at 1619 Walnut Street in Center City, where KYW radio was housed. What is now KYW-TV has been based in Center City ever since.^[3]

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owner of Philadelphia's NBC radio affiliate KYW (1060 AM), purchased WPTZ in 1953 for a then-record price of $8.5 million.^[4]

As an NBC-owned station

In June 1955, Westinghouse agreed to trade WPTZ and KYW radio to NBC in exchange for Cleveland's WNBK television and WTAM-AM-FM, and $3 million in cash compensation.^[5] NBC had long sought an owned-and-operated television station in Philadelphia, the largest market where it did not own a station. It had made several offers over the years for the Philadelphia stations, but Westinghouse declined each time. After being rebuffed by Westinghouse on several occasions, NBC threatened to drop its affiliation from WPTZ and Westinghouse's other NBC television affiliate, WBZ-TV in Boston, unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade. When NBC took over in February 1956, channel 3's call letters were changed to WRCV-TV (in reference to the RCA-Victor record label; KYW radio adopted the WRCV calls as well).^[6]

Shortly after NBC took control of channel 3, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collapsed the Lehigh Valley, most of northern Delaware and southern New Jersey (including Atlantic City) into the Philadelphia market. NBC realized WRCV-TV's existing tower was inadequate for this enlarged market. In 1957, channel 3 moved to a new 1,100-foot (340 m) tower in Roxborough. The tower was co-owned with WFIL-TV (channel 6, now WPVI-TV) and added much of Delaware, the Lehigh Valley and southern New Jersey to the station's city-grade coverage. The new transmitter enabled channel 3 to broadcast in color for the first time.

However, almost immediately after the trade was finalized, Westinghouse complained to the FCC and the United States Department of Justice about NBC's coercion and a lengthy investigation was launched. In August 1964, the FCC renewed the licenses for WRCV-AM-TV – but only on the condition that the 1956 station swap be reversed.^[7] Following nearly a year of appeals by NBC, Westinghouse regained control of WRCV-AM-TV on June 19, 1965. Westinghouse had moved the KYW call letters to Cleveland after the swap, and channel 3 became KYW-TV upon the company regaining control of the Philadelphia outlets.^[8] Group W, as Westinghouse's broadcasting division was known by this time, took over a transmitter facility far superior to the one it relinquished in 1956. To this day, KYW-TV insists that it "moved" to Cleveland in 1956 and "returned" to Philadelphia in 1965 – in fact, some staffers who worked at KYW-TV in Cleveland (talk show host Mike Douglas and news anchor Tom Snyder among them) moved to Philadelphia along with the call letters.^[9]

As KYW-TV

The former KYW Building on Independence Mall East, used by the station from 1972 to 2007. This building has since been demolished and replaced by the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Despite its status as NBC's largest affiliate, KYW-TV spent much of the next thirty years pre-empting many NBC programs, choosing to air local or syndicated programming instead. The production arm of Westinghouse Broadcasting was partially responsible for the pre-emptions, as channel 3 (along with its sister stations in the Group W chain) aired shows produced and syndicated by Group W, such as The Mike Douglas Show (whose production moved from Cleveland to the Walnut Street studio Philadelphia in 1965, and then taped at Independence Mall East until 1978), The David Frost Show and Evening Magazine (known as PM Magazine on stations that were not owned by Westinghouse). Pre-empted network programming was usually lower-rated daytime game shows, soap operas or reruns of primetime programs with an average of two hours per day. At one point, in the fall of 1980, KYW-TV preempted NBC's entire morning schedule after the Today show. Over the years, NBC contracted independent stations WPHL-TV, WTAF-TV/WTXF-TV, WKBS-TV and WGTW-TV to air programs preempted by channel 3. However at the time, NBC was far less tolerant of pre-emptions than the other networks and was rather perturbed at losing valuable advertising in the nation's fourth-largest market.

Like most affiliates that pre-empt poorer performing network programs, KYW-TV used the pre-emptions in order to gain an increase in local advertising rates which potentially come with ratings increases. This proved to be a very profitable decision at first, as KYW-TV was either first or second in the Philadelphia television ratings for most of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the station (and NBC) faltered in the late 1970s, and by 1980 KYW-TV was the lowest-rated network affiliate in Philadelphia. It stayed in the ratings basement even when NBC rebounded to become the nation's most-watched network by 1985. For the rest of its tenure as an NBC affiliate, KYW-TV was the network's lowest-rated major-market affiliate during a very prosperous period for NBC as a whole. It continued to heavily pre-empt NBC programming, much to the network's chagrin.

In 1994, Baltimore sister station WJZ-TV lost its affiliation with ABC after that network announced a deal with the E. W. Scripps Company to switch all but two of Scripps' television stations to ABC. One of the Scripps-owned stations joining ABC was Baltimore's NBC affiliate, WMAR-TV. This did not sit well with Westinghouse, who felt betrayed by ABC after nearly half a century of loyalty. As a safeguard, Group W began shopping for affiliation deals of its own. Group W eventually struck an agreement to switch KYW-TV, WBZ-TV and WJZ-TV to CBS (Westinghouse already had two CBS affiliates in its portfolio at the time, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and KPIX-TV in San Francisco). CBS was initially skeptical about including KYW-TV in the deal. While KYW-TV was a poor third, CBS-owned WCAU-TV (channel 10) was a solid runner-up to long-dominant ABC-owned WPVI-TV. However, after Westinghouse offered to sell CBS a minority stake in KYW-TV, CBS agreed to move its affiliation to channel 3 and put channel 10 up for sale.

As a CBS-owned station

Main article: 1994 United States broadcast TV realignment

KYW-TV ID, 2011.

While WJZ-TV and WBZ-TV switched to CBS in January 1995, the swap was delayed in Philadelphia when CBS discovered that an outright sale of channel 10 would have forced it to pay massive taxes on the proceeds from the deal.^[10] To solve this problem, CBS, NBC and Group W entered into a complex ownership/affiliation deal in late 1994. NBC traded KCNC-TV in Denver and required in a deal was KUTV in Salt Lake City (which NBC had acquired that station earlier that year) to CBS in return for WCAU, which for legal reasons would be an even trade. CBS then traded controlling interest in KCNC and KUTV to Group W in return for a minority stake in KYW-TV – that would resulted in 2 latter stations – displacing their respective longtime network affiliates, KMGH-TV and KSL-TV. As compensation for the loss of stations, NBC and CBS traded broadcasting facilities in Miami. The deal officially took effect at 12:30 a.m. on September 10, 1995.^[11] The final NBC program aired on KYW-TV was a rerun of Saturday Night Live, which began at 11:30 p.m. on September 9, 1995.

Under the terms of Westinghouse's deal with CBS, KYW-TV began carrying the entire CBS schedule in pattern with no pre-emptions except for extended breaking news coverage. Westinghouse bought CBS outright in early 1996, making KYW-TV a CBS owned-and-operated station.

In 2000, the combined company was purchased by Viacom. The deal brought KYW-TV under common ownership with Philadelphia's UPN station, WPSG, which relocated to the KYW-AM/TV facility on Independence Mall. When Viacom became CBS Corporation in 2006 (after spinning off today's Viacom), CBS retained all related terrestrial broadcasting interests, including KYW-TV/AM and WPSG.

On April 2, 2007, KYW-TV and WPSG moved to a new broadcast complex located at 1555 Hamilton Street near Center City Philadelphia, across from the Community College of Philadelphia^[12] and near Fairmount Park. The new building, which is wired for high definition newscasts, is the fourth studio in the station's 75-year history. Channel 3 had been broadcasting from Independence Mall East since July 1972.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

KYW-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, 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 26.^[14][15][16] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 3. KYW-TV was the only Philadelphia market station participating in the "Analog Nightlight" program, and did so through July 12, 2009.^[17] The analog-to-digital conversion began way back to a series of experimental patterns starting with the B&W wheel followed by Jackie Johnson announcing "You're watching KYW-TV. The switch to digital is happening now." Then the next pattern is a man holding a Zappos.com ad, then back to the first one for about 90 seconds. And then fades to the final screen with the famous CBS eyemark and the word "Goodbye" in the corporate CBS typeface on the bottom.^[15]

On October 21, 2014, CBS and Weigel Broadcasting announced the launch of a new digital subchannel service called Decades, scheduled to launch on all CBS-owned stations in 2015, including on KYW-TV on channel 3.2. The channel will be co-owned by CBS and Weigel (owner of CBS affiliate WDJT-TV in Milwaukee), with Weigel being responsible for distribution to non-CBS-owned stations. It will air programs from the extensive library of CBS Television Distribution, including archival footage from CBS News.^[18] On January 16, 2015 Decades started after eight minutes of a test pattern that occurred first with the CBS Philly Plus ticker and then one minute later with a test pattern without the CBS Philly Plus ticker.

Logos

CBS Philadelphia van in the Wildwoods of New Jersey

From 1965 to 2003, KYW-TV's logo was a distinct "Stylized 3" in the font made famous by Group W. It was the longest continuously-used logo in Philadelphia television history until 2006, when WPVI-TV's simple "6" logo passed it. The only major change came in February 1998, when the CBS Eye was placed in front of the "3". The logo was finally retired after KYW-TV rebranded under the CBS Mandate as CBS 3.

News operation

News open seen nightly at 11.

KYW-TV presently broadcasts 29½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 4½ hours on weekdays, three hours on Saturdays and four hours on Sundays). The format they use is the Eyewitness News format. KYW-TV cooperates with sister station WCBS-TV in the production and broadcast of statewide New Jersey political debates. When the two stations broadcast a statewide office debate, such as Governor or U.S. Senate, they will pool resources and have anchors or reporters from both stations participate in the debate. Additionally, the two stations cooperate in the gathering of news in New Jersey where their markets overlap; sharing reporters, live trucks, and helicopters. Like other CBS-owned stations, KYW-TV offers a web only newscast called "CBS 3 At Your Desk", shown daily.

Shortly after Westinghouse regained control of KYW-TV in 1965, news director Al Primo popularized the Eyewitness News format and branding. This format has the reporters actually presenting their stories instead of having an anchor read them.^[19] Primo used the cue "007" from the film From Russia with Love as the theme. Within a few years, Group W's other television stations had adopted the format. Around this same time, sister station KYW radio became one of the first all-news radio stations in the country. Channel 3's newscasts, anchored by Vince Leonard starting in 1958 (during its stint as NBC-owned WRCV-TV), had long been second behind WCAU-TV, but the new format catapulted KYW-TV to first place. Also seen on the air during that time were future talk show host Tom Snyder and Marciarose Shestack. Primo took the concept with him to New York City's WABC-TV in 1968, albeit an improved version which introduced the concept of chatter among the anchors ("happy talk"). It was this modified format that was emulated throughout the United States.

Channel 3 dominated the ratings for the rest of the 1960s, but faced a new challenger after WFIL-TV introduced Action News to Philadelphia. For most of the 1970s, KYW-TV traded first place with WFIL/WPVI. In 1972, KYW-TV hired Philadelphia-area native Jessica Savitch as a reporter, and later co-anchor alongside Leonard. Mort Crim also joined as an anchor during that period, forming what native Philadelphians called the "Camelot of television news". However, in 1977, WPVI beat KYW-TV in most timeslots by a wide margin during a sweeps period. In a case of especially bad timing, Savitch left for NBC News later that year. Crim left for WDIV in Detroit in 1978. Channel 3's ratings went into rapid decline. The station tried to stop the decline by adopting a new format called "Direct Connection", with reporters assigned to "beats" such as medical, consumer, entertainment and gossip, among others. While this concept was at least a decade ahead of its time, it was not enough to stop the ratings slide. By the time Leonard left for KPNX in Phoenix in 1980, Eyewitness News had crashed into last place. For most of the next 20 years, KYW-TV was a very distant third behind WPVI-TV and WCAU-TV. Despite the presence of personalities such as Maria Shriver and Maury Povich (who anchored briefly in the early 1980s), Eyewitness News stayed in the ratings basement. At this point, the station also produced news updates for USA Network, titled USA Updates; but during the shakeups later in 1991, production was moved over to Hubbard Broadcasting's All News Channel, where they were produced until 2000.

In 1991, KYW-TV rebranded itself as KYW 3 after being known on-air as simply "channel 3" for most of its history (except for the Direct Connection era, when it was known as 3 For All). It also abandoned the longstanding Eyewitness News name after 26 years and experimented with giving each newscast a different name. The morning and noon news became Newsday, the 6 p.m. news as Newsbeat, and the 11 p.m. news as The News Tonight. It also started using a theme based on the five-note musical sounder of its radio sister, one of the top all-news stations in the country and the highest-rated radio station in Philadelphia for most of the last 40 years. Group W hoped to gain the trust of viewers who already associated KYW radio with high-quality news. However, neither of these fixes worked (mainly because of unknown anchors, Bruce Hamilton (who had previously anchored in Orlando at WESH and WCPX, and after his stint here, returned to Florida at Jacksonville's WJXX and WJXT) and Jennifer Ward (previously of Toronto's CFTO-9) now at the helm of the evening newscasts, while the more familiar personalities were relegated to weekends and mornings), and channel 3 stayed in the ratings basement. The experiment with different newscast names ended in 1994, just before it became a CBS station, when the station began calling its newscasts KYW News 3, with familiar Philadelphia anchors Larry Kane and Stephanie Stahl coming on board; Kane anchored the 11PM broadcast solo, while Stahl anchored the 6PM report, first with Bruce Hamilton, then with Pittsburgh's Don Cannon (though to due to potential confusion with a local radio DJ also named Don Cannon, he went under his birth name of Don Clark while at KYW; he left in 1998 for sister KDKA). The Eyewitness News name was restored in early 1998.

KYW-TV used music packages based on KYW radio's musical signature until 2003 (before the 1991 rebrand it had used Frank Gari's "Turn To" package; ironically that package had been commissioned for WKYC in Cleveland). That year, it adopted "News in Focus" by composer John Hegner as its theme song. This package, like the majority of themes for CBS' owned-and-operated stations, is based on "Channel 2 News", written in 1975 for WBBM-TV in Chicago (ironically, WCAU-TV used music based on this theme for its last decade as a CBS-owned station). Channel 3 used an updated version written in 2003 for New York City sister station WCBS-TV. The change to "News In Focus" came just after KYW began calling itself "CBS 3". In 2005, KYW-TV ditched "News In Focus" in favor of another "Channel 2 News"-based tune, "The Enforcer" by Frank Gari.

Also in 2003, KYW-TV became a factor in the Philadelphia news race for the first time in over 20 years. The previous summer, it persuaded WPVI-TV's longtime 5 p.m. anchor, Marc Howard, to jump ship to anchor its 11 p.m. news. Kathy Orr, weekend weathercaster at WCAU, also moved to channel 3. Then, in September 2003, the station lured Larry Mendte away from WCAU. Mendte had been the lead anchor at that station when it defeated WPVI in the ratings for the first time in 30 years. Alycia Lane, a weekend anchor at Miami's WTVJ, was added to compliment Mendte, and they became the station's new top anchor team, anchoring KYW's 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts.

The 5 p.m. news was moved to 4 p.m. and Howard moved off the 11 p.m. newscast to anchor with Denise Saunders. The change proved successful, as KYW moved ahead of WCAU at 11 p.m. and came within a point of knocking off WPVI in the time slot. Saunders left the station in 2004 and was replaced by Angela Russell. Russell left the station on December 26, 2008. The 4 p.m. newscast has since moved back to the 5 p.m. timeslot with the Oprah Winfrey Show ending in 2011. For the last decade, KYW-TV has waged a spirited battle with WCAU for second place behind WPVI. It is currently second in most timeslots, while WPVI continues to dominate with its newscasts despite having its digital signal on interference-prone channel 6.

In April 2007, KYW-TV became the third Philadelphia television station to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high-definition; the switch coincided with the station's move from its former Independence Mall studios to its new facility on Hamilton Street. On February 2, 2009, KYW began to produce a nightly primetime newscast at 10 p.m. for sister station WPSG. In the fall of 2009, KYW dropped its noon newscast in favor of launching a local talk show called TalkPhilly, which left only WPVI as the only station in the market to run noon newscast (WCAU airs an 11 a.m. newscast).^[20]

Controversy

In January 2008, former 6 and 11 p.m. news anchor Alycia Lane was fired after she was arrested in New York City for hitting a female police officer and calling her a "dyke".^[21] In June that same year, former 6 and 11 p.m. news anchor Larry Mendte was fired after police raided his home and seized his computers. He was accused of secretly reading thousands of Lane's emails and passing them on to gossip columnists. In a public statement, Mendte said that his actions were rooted in a feud that started after he ended a "flirtatious and improper" relationship with Lane.^[22] Mendte pleaded guilty.^[23] In September 2008, Lane filed a lawsuit against Mendte and KYW-TV. That lawsuit is on hold while a judge decides if Lane purposely destroyed evidence in the case.^[24]

CBS 3 also made headlines in June 2013 when video surfaced on YouTube of anchor Nicole Brewer and meteorologist Carol Erickson appearing to exchange on-air jibes at each other during their weekend morning newscasts. Station management said the edited video was taken out of context and the personalities have a mutual respect for one another.^[25]

Notable current on-air staff

• Nicole Brewer – weekend morning anchor; also weekday reporter
• Natasha Brown – weekend evening anchor
• Pat Ciarrocchi – Talk Philly co-host
• Ukee Washington – weekday morning anchor; also Talk Philly co-host
• Kathy Orr (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and NWA Seals of Approval) – chief meteorologist; weeknight meteorologist
• Beasley Reece – weeknight sports anchor
• Jim Donovan – consumer reporter
• Walt Hunter – investigative reporter
• Stephanie Stahl – health and science reporter

Notable former on-air staff

Cable, telco, and satellite carriage

KYW-TV has been carried on Comcast in southern Middlesex and Monmouth Counties in New Jersey since December 2007 on digital cable channel 256 in the Middlesex County municipalities of Plainsboro, South Brunswick, Monroe, Cranbury, Jamesburg, Helmetta, Spotswood, and East Brunswick as well as the Monmouth County borough of Roosevelt. Comcast's Central New Jersey systems that service portions of the New York market, including the aforementioned Middlesex County municipalities as well as Roosevelt, that were then part of Storer Cable had previously carried KYW-TV during its NBC affiliation on channel 3 before moving to it channel 37 in the late 1980s where it remained until 1993. This came to an end when NBC O&O WNBC requested that Storer Cable's southern Middlesex County system stop carrying a second NBC affiliate in the New York market. KYW was removed from Storer systems in Middlesex County on September 1, 1993.

Interestingly, after the affiliation and ownership swap on September 10, 1995, WNBC did not object to their now NBC co-owned sister station WCAU continuing to be carried in southern Middlesex County on Comcast (then Channel 39), though Comcast did not restore the now CBS-owned KYW to the system for another twelve years. KYW is also available to Comcast cable customers in Ocean County on channel 256, having being moved there from channel 3 in early 2008. Comcast added KYW's HD feed to its lineups in Ocean and southern Middlesex counties, as well as the borough of Roosevelt, and its Lambertville area system in Hunterdon County on August 22, 2012 on Channel 903.^[35]

It is not available to Cablevision customers in Lakewood, Seaside Heights and southern Monmouth County, even though Cablevision carries other Philadelphia stations on these systems. Cablevision (previously Harte-Hanks Cable and Monmouth Cablevision) in the Asbury Park area of Monmouth County carried KYW-TV until September 10, 1995, when WCAU replaced KYW on that system after the network switch. Verizon FiOS carries KYW in Upper Freehold Township, while the rest of the county gets only New York City area stations on FiOS, except for portions of southern Howell Township, which get WPVI from the Ocean County feed. DirecTV and Dish Network do not carry any Philadelphia stations in any area outside the Philadelphia market.

In New Jersey, KYW (and the majority of Philadelphia stations) were carried in more places in central and northern New Jersey during the CATV era of the 1970s and 1980s. Northern and portions of central Middlesex County, with the exception of South Plainfield never received any other Philadelphia station except WPHL and WTAF (now WTXF), which have been removed since the late 1980s. Northeast Monmouth County Comcast subscribers (Eatontown) once had KYW and the other Philadelphia stations on cable, as well.^[36]

In Maryland, KYW is carried in Cecil County and portions of the upper Eastern Shore along the US 301 corridor. During the CATV era of the 1970s and into the 1980s, KYW was carried as far south into Ocean Pines, Worcester County. ^[37]

References

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KYW-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KYW-TV
• Program Information for KYW at TitanTV.com