WTTG

WTTG
Washington, D.C.
United States
Branding Fox 5 (general)
Fox 5 Local News (newscasts)
NewsEdge (6pm and 11pm newscasts)
Slogan We Are Fox 5 (general)
Channels Digital: 36 (UHF)
Virtual: 5 (PSIP)
Subchannels 5.1 Fox
5.2 Buzzr
Affiliations Fox (O&O)
Owner Fox Television Stations
(Fox Television Stations, Inc.)
Founded May 19, 1945
(as experimental station W3XWT)
First air date January 3, 1947 (1947-01-03)
Call letters' meaning Thomas Toliver Goldsmith
(chief engineer of founding company DuMont)
Sister station(s) WDCA
Former channel number(s) Analog:
5 (VHF, 1947–2009)
Former affiliations DuMont (1947–1956)
Independent (1956–1986)
Transmitter power 1000 kW
Height 227 m (745 ft)
Facility ID 22207
Transmitter coordinates 38°57′22″N 77°4′59″W / 38.95611°N 77.08306°W / 38.95611; -77.08306
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website www.fox5dc.com

WTTG, channel 5, is a Fox owned-and-operated television station located in the American capital city of Washington, D.C.. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, and is part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WDCA (channel 20). The station's studios/office and transmitter facilities are co-located on Wisconsin Avenue in the Friendship Heights neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of Washington.[1]

The station's signal is rebroadcast on a low-powered translator station, W46BR-D, in Moorefield, West Virginia[2] (which is owned by Valley TV Cooperative, Inc.).

History

Early years

The station traces its history to May 19, 1945, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W3XWT, the second experimental station in the nation's capital (after NBC's W3XNB, forerunner to WRC-TV). Later in 1945, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between W3XWT and its other television station, WABD (channel 5, later WNEW-TV and now WNYW) in New York City. These hookups were the beginning of the DuMont Television Network, the world's first licensed commercial television network. DuMont began regular network service in 1946. Almost a year later on January 3, 1947, W3XWT received a commercial license – the first in the nation's capital – as WTTG. The station was named for Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr., the DuMont network's chief engineer and a close friend of Dr. DuMont.

Like its New York City sister station, WTTG was far more successful than the network as a whole. In 1956, after DuMont shut down network operations, WTTG and WABD became independent stations and were spun off from DuMont Laboratories as the DuMont Broadcasting Corporation. It later changed its name to Metropolitan Broadcasting in order to distance itself from its former parent company.

As an independent station

In 1958, Washington investor John Kluge bought controlling interest in Metropolitan Broadcasting from Paramount Pictures and installed himself as its chairman. He changed the company's name to Metromedia in 1961. Goldsmith sat on Metromedia's board for over a quarter-century. Channel 5 gained a sister station on radio when Metromedia purchased WASH (97.1 FM) in 1968. At first, WTTG ran on a low budget. However, in the late 1960s, it benefited from Metromedia's aggressiveness in acquiring top syndicated programming, giving it a significant leg up on WDCA, which signed on in 1966.

By the 1970s, WTTG was one of the leading independent stations in the country, running a broad lineup of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, first-run syndicated shows, older movies, local newscasts and locally produced programs. During this time period, and well into the early 1990s, WTTG was the flagship station for the Georgetown University men's basketball team. Its main claim to fame was Panorama, an afternoon talk show hosted by John Willis, and later Maury Povich.

When cable television began in the 1970s, WTTG became a regional superstation. At one point, it appeared on every cable provider in Maryland and Virginia, as well as most of Delaware and in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Transition to Fox

WTTG's station logo from 1997 to 2006.

Metromedia owned the station until 1986 when Rupert Murdoch, after buying 20th Century Fox, purchased the Metromedia television stations to form the nucleus of the Fox network. WTTG became one of Fox's six original owned-and-operated stations when the network launched on October 9, 1986, all the while retaining consistently high ratings, a rarity for a Fox station at the time. Being the only independent station on the VHF dial in D.C. also played a part in its ratings and leading ahead of WDCA (channel 20) and WQSR (channel 50, now WDCW) before taking on the new network. Initially, its programming was similar to what it had run as a true independent station, since Fox only programmed for a few hours on weekends.

As channel 5 transitioned to an O&O and more independent stations signed on, it lost much of its cable audience. Though not distributed as widely as it once was, it is still available on several cable providers in Maryland and Virginia outside the D.C. metro area. For instance, it is still carried on cable in Charlottesville, Virginia, even though the city has had its own Fox affiliate, WAHU-CD, since 2005; both stations are carried on basic cable in the Charlottesville area. It also served as the default Fox affiliate for Salisbury, Maryland until the debut of new default Fox affiliate, "Fox21 Delmarva", a subchannel of WBOC-TV, on August 21, 2006.

During the 1990s, the station added more syndicated talk shows and reality shows. It continued to air afternoon cartoons from Fox Kids until the fall of 2001, when the block moved to WDCA (only to be reduced to just Saturdays nationwide in 2002); WTTG brought back Fox children's programming later on in 2003, under the banner 4Kids TV. On October 29, 2001, Fox bought WDCA from Viacom's Paramount Stations Group, creating a duopoly with WTTG. The station continued to run top rated off-network sitcoms in the evenings.

WTTG has been the primary station for the Washington Redskins since 1994, when Fox obtained the rights to air NFL games in which a team from the National Football Conference (the NFL division that the Redskins are in) played a road game. All Redskins home games since 1965 have sold out (though the Redskins have had to deal with numerous no-shows), allowing them to be televised on WTTG (along with the Redskins' entire slate of road games) provided they are against an NFC team, are not being played at night, or, beginning in 2014, have not been moved to WUSA; under such instances the game may be aired on WRC-TV for Sunday Night Football, ESPN (WDCA locally) for Monday Night Football, or WUSA when a team from the American Football Conference is the visiting team, or in one case in the 2014 season, a Thursday Night Football game as part of CBS/NFL Network's TNF deal. This relationship is limited to network coverage of regular season and postseason games, since WRC-TV and Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic are the official broadcast partners for the team, including coach's shows and other programming. Prior to 1994, WTTG aired the Redskins preseason games and training camp scrimmages during the majority of the 1980s into the early 1990s.

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[3]
5.1 720p 16:9 WTTG DT Main WTTG programming / Fox
5.2 480i 4:3 BUZZR Buzzr

Analog-to-digital conversion

On June 12, 2009, WTTG terminated its analog signal on VHF channel 5 as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[4] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 36. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WTTG's virtual channel as 5.

Programming

WTTG delays the Saturday night Animation Domination High-Def block by a half-hour due to the station's 11:00 p.m. newscast.

Criticism

In 2004, the inner operations of WTTG during the station's first years under News Corporation's ownership were scrutinized in Robert Greenwald's documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. The documentary, through a panel of former WTTG journalists and staffers, claimed that following News Corporation's acquisition, WTTG's news reporting became biased and sensationalist, much in the style of the Fox News Channel, which News Corporation also owns and which the film primarily criticizes. Former WTTG employees claimed that:

News operation

WTTG presently broadcasts 56½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 9½ hours on weekdays and 4½ hours on weekends); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the largest local newscast output among the Washington D.C. market's broadcast television stations. In addition, WTTG airs a 15-minute sports highlight program Sports Extra which is aired after the Fox 5 News Edge @ 11 broadcast at 11:15 PM.

WTTG has carried local news programming since shortly after the station launched; for many years, the only news program on the station was a nightly primetime broadcast. Then on June 25, 1990, channel 5 became the second Fox-owned station and the fourth or fifth Fox affiliate with a weekday morning news program, with the debut of the two-hour Fox (5) Morning News, which replaced a block of cartoons that previously aired during the program's timeslot. In the late 1990s, a noon newscast was added to the schedule.

On September 4, 2006, WTTG began simulcasting its weekday morning and nightly 10 p.m. newscasts on then-Baltimore sister station WUTB (now owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group partner company Deerfield Media), under the banner of My 24 News. Management at both stations cited the decision to simulcast as a by-product of cross-regional news interests and increasing overlap between the Baltimore and Washington media markets.[5] In October 2006, while WTTG aired Fox Sports' coverage of the 2006 Major League Baseball postseason, the first half-hour of the 10:00 p.m. newscast was broadcast by sister station WDCA under the title Fox 5 News at Ten: Special Edition; this also occurred in 2007, with the WDCA broadcast of the program being titled My 20 News at 10.

On July 2, 2007, WTTG discontinued its noon newscast and replaced it with an hour-long newscast at 11:00 a.m., titled Fox 5 News Midday. On September 10, 2007, the station reformatted its 6:00 p.m. newscast into an early evening edition of NewsEdge; the addition of NewsEdge at 6:00 p.m. was due in part to the success of its current 11:00 p.m. counterpart. On January 14, 2009, WTTG and WRC-TV entered into a Local News Service agreement in which the two stations pool video and share news helicopter footage.[6]

On January 30, 2009, starting with its 6:00 p.m. newscast, WTTG became the third television station in the Washington, D.C. market (behind CBS affiliate WUSA and ABC affiliate WJLA-TV) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. On September 14, 2009, WTTG expanded its weekday morning newscast to five hours by adding another hour at 9:00 a.m.; in turn, its hour-long 11:00 a.m. midday newscast was discontinued. In early 2010, WTTG became the second station in the market (behind WUSA) to expand its weekday morning newscast to 4:30 a.m.

In late August 2013, WTTG began using the AFD #10 broadcast flag to present their newscasts in letterboxed widescreen for viewers watching on cable television through 4:3 television sets; with the move, it became the second station in the Washington, D.C. market (behind WUSA) to broadcast to utilize the AFD #10 flag.

On June 16, 2014, WTTG expanded its weekday morning newscasts with the addition of an hour-long block at 10:00 a.m. This was followed on July 13 by the addition of a two-hour Saturday morning newscast from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and the July 14 expansion of its existing Sunday morning newscast to two hours from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.[7][8]

On-air staff

Current on-air staff

Notable former on-air staff

References

  1. ↑ "Digital Signal Sources". The Washington Post. 2008-05-20.
  2. ↑ "RabbitEars.Info". RabbitEars.Info. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  3. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for WTTG
  4. ↑ List of Digital Full-Power Stations
  5. ↑ Farhi, Paul (August 11, 2006). "WTTG to Span Two Beltways With Washimore Newscast". The Washington Post.
  6. ↑ "Fox And NBC To Share In DC". Retrieved 2009-01-14.
  7. ↑ WTTG Expands in the Morning, Adds Saturday Show
  8. ↑ Fox Stations Beef Up Local News In 9 Markets, TVNewsCheck, June 25, 2014.
  9. ↑ Fox 5 People

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, January 31, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.