WPLG

WPLG

Miami–Fort Lauderdale, Florida United States
City	Miami, Florida
Branding	Local 10 (general) Local 10 News (newscasts)
Slogan	The One and Only
Channels	Digital: 10 (VHF) Virtual: 10 (PSIP)
Translators	W47AC Big Pine Key
Affiliations	1: ABC 2: MeTV 3: Movies!
Owner	BH Media (WPLG, LLC)
First air date	August 2, 1957 (1957-08-02) (current license dates from November 20, 1961)
Call letters' meaning	Phillip Leslie Graham (in memory of the former Washington Post publisher)
Former callsigns	WPST-TV (1957–1961) WLBW-TV (1961–1970)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 10 (VHF, 1961–2009) Digital: 9 (VHF, 1999–2009)
Transmitter power	127.7 kW
Height	309 m (1,014 ft)
Facility ID	53113
Transmitter coordinates	25°58′0″N 80°12′43″W / 25.96667°N 80.21194°W / 25.96667; -80.21194Coordinates: 25°58′0″N 80°12′43″W / 25.96667°N 80.21194°W / 25.96667; -80.21194
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.local10.com

WPLG, virtual and VHF digital channel 10, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Miami, Florida, United States and also serving Fort Lauderdale. WPLG's studios are located on West Hallandale Beach Boulevard (SR 858) in Pembroke Park, and its transmitter is located in Miami Gardens.

From 1969 through 2014, WPLG was owned by Post-Newsweek Stations; in March 2014, the station was sold to Berkshire Hathaway in exchange for cash and its shares in Post-Newsweek's parent company Graham Holdings.

History

WPST-TV

The station first signed on the air on August 2, 1957 as WPST-TV, as the second ABC affiliate in the Miami market; it was originally owned by Public Service Television, Inc., the broadcasting subsidiary of National Airlines. The station took ABC programming from WITV (channel 17, later occupied by PBS member station WLRN-TV), which ceased operations shortly after losing the ABC affiliation.

A Congressional investigation of former FCC commissioner Richard A. Mack in 1958 revealed that a Miami attorney named Thurman A. Whiteside, working on behalf of National Airlines, had bribed the former commissioner to obtain the WPST broadcast license.^[1] As a result, National Airlines was stripped of its license to operate WPST-TV.

A new channel 10

After the FCC revoked National Airlines' license, a group headed by Cincinnati-area broadcaster L. B. Wilson was awarded a construction permit to build a new television station on channel 10. As part of an FCC-supervised deal, National Airlines sold WPST's assets to Wilson's group. WPST signed off for the last time on November 19, 1961. The next day on November 20, channel 10 returned to the air as WLBW-TV (named after the owner's initials). Although it operates under a separate license, what is now WPLG claimed the National Airlines station's history as its own.^[2]

The new station branded itself as "Sunny Channel 10". It was also the first station in Miami to feature a weather girl, Virginia Booker. WLBW, while able to carry all of ABC's color programming, began local color from film and tape in 1964. In 1967, WLBW's operations were moved to a new studio facility located on Biscayne Boulevard, originally known as "Broadcast House". With this move, channel 10 had full local color capability, and began broadcasting their local newscasts, as well as "Saturday Hop", in color. The station became known as "Colorvision 10". In 1969, WLBW and Cincinnati sister station WCKY radio were purchased by the Washington Post Company and became part of its broadcasting subsidiary, Post-Newsweek Stations.^[3] On March 16, 1970, the station's call letters were changed to WPLG—the calls were chosen in honor of Philip L. Graham, husband of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, who committed suicide in 1963. WPLG adopted its current "10" logo, which features four stripes of differing colors within the "0" that represent a sunset, in 1982.

WPLG logo, used from 1998 to 2004.

On January 1, 1989, the Miami–Fort Lauderdale market underwent a three-way network affiliation swap that saw longtime CBS affiliate WTVJ (channel 4) becoming an NBC owned-and-operated station; longtime independent station and charter Fox affiliate, WCIX (channel 6) becoming a CBS owned-and-operated station; and longtime NBC affiliate WSVN (channel 7) taking the Fox affiliation from WCIX. WTVJ and WCIX later swapped channel positions on September 10, 1995, with WCIX moving to channel 4 as WFOR-TV and WTVJ moving to channel 6. Neither transaction affected WPLG, which retained its ABC affiliation as well as its channel 10 allocation. As a result, it is the only television station in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale market that has retained the same network affiliation throughout its history. Possibly because of this consistency, WPLG remains one of the highest-rated stations in South Florida. In 2004, WPLG began branding itself as "Local 10" under the branding standardization adopted by Post-Newsweek for its stations.

From April 2007 to May 2009, WPLG was South Florida's most-watched English-language television station according to Nielsen; this can partially be attributed to its availability on Comcast's West Palm Beach system, which in turn had a potentially negative effect on the ratings for that market's ABC affiliate, WPBF. However, Comcast dropped WPLG from its West Palm Beach area systems on April 13, 2011. After the May 2009 ratings period, the station switched to a single anchor format for its evening newscasts; WPLG's total-day viewership fell behind CBS-owned WFOR, which took the #1 position among the market's English-language stations. However, WPLG remains at a strong second place, in a tie with WSVN.

On July 18, 2008, Post-Newsweek Stations announced that it would purchase WTVJ for $205 million. The purchase would have created a duopoly between WTVJ and WPLG—duopolies involving two "Big Three" stations ordinarily would be prohibited under the FCC's media ownership rules, which do not allow duopolies involving two of a market's four highest-rated stations in terms of audience share; however during the May 2008 Nielsen ratings period, WPLG ranked in first place and WTVJ ranked sixth in total-day viewership, allowing the possibility of a purchase. Under the proposal, WTVJ would have merged its operations with WPLG at the studio facility (which was under construction at the time) on Hallandale Beach Boulevard in Pembroke Park.^[4] However, the sale was cancelled on December 23, 2008, with NBCUniversal and The Washington Post Company citing poor economic conditions and the lack of approval by the FCC.^[5]

On March 28, 2009, WPLG relocated its studio facilities from 3900 Biscayne Boulevard to the new Pembroke Park facility. As a result of this relocation, all of the South Florida market's "Big Three" network stations are based outside of the Miami city limits.^[6][7]

Sale to Berkshire Hathaway

On March 12, 2014, Graham Holdings announced that it would sell WPLG to the BH Media subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway in a cash and stock deal. Berkshire Hathaway and its chairman, Warren Buffett, had been longtime stockholders in Graham Holdings; the sale of WPLG included a large majority of Berkshire Hathaway's shares in Graham Holdings.^[8] To maintain continuity following the consummation of the purchase, BH Media entered into transitional agreements with Post-Newsweek Stations (renamed Graham Media Group in July 2014) to continue providing the station with access to its centralized digital media, design, and traffic services after the sale's completion.^[9] The sale was finalized on June 30.^[10][11]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

WPLG previously carried LATV on its second digital subchannel; the Spanish language network was replaced by MeTV on April 24, 2012.^[13] On January 24, 2013, Post-Newsweek Stations entered into an affiliation agreement to carry the Live Well Network on digital subchannels of WPLG and Orlando sister station WKMG-TV; both stations added the network in April 2013.^[14]

Analog-to-digital conversion

WPLG ended programming on its analog signal, on VHF channel 10, 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 relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 9 to channel 10 for post-transition operations.^[15][16] Three other local stations (WSVN, WPXM-TV and WLTV-DT) also moved their digital signals to their former analog channel allocation, requiring viewers to rescan their digital tuners. WPLG and WSVN are the only Miami stations that continue to broadcast on the VHF band.

Programming

Syndicated programming seen on WPLG includes Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Live with Kelly and Ryan, Rachael Ray, and Right This Minute.^[17]

Tape-delayed programming

WPLG carries the entire ABC programming schedule, including the ABC station-exclusive Saturday morning syndicated block Litton's Weekend Adventure. However, until the network dropped the program on August 28, 2010 (following Saban Entertainment's repurchase of the franchise from ABC's corporate parent The Walt Disney Company), the station ran the ABC Kids airings of Power Rangers on a week-delayed basis, airing it on Saturdays from 5:00 to 6:00 a.m. due to the station's three-hour weekend morning newscast (which at the time had aired from 7:00 to 10:00 a.m.). Around the same time, it also aired the 9:00-10:00 a.m. hour of the ABC Kids block from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. (then ABC's recommended timeslot to air Power Rangers). The latter scheduling continues in use even after the network replaced ABC Kids with Litton's Weekend Adventure in September 2011.

Dr. Phil on WPLG

In 2004, WPLG announced it had won a bidding war to air Dr. Phil and Judge Judy starting in 2006.^[18] However, the station had a contractual stipulation not to air Dr. Phil in direct competition with The Oprah Winfrey Show, also produced by Harpo Productions. WPLG's only option was to cancel its 5 p.m. newscast, forgoing its time slot to Dr. Phil, preceded by Judge Judy at 4 p.m. This became the station's final decision.

Initially slow out of the gate, the change ended up being successful as WPLG ranked No. 1 in the 5 p.m. time slot, beating out its competitors' 5 p.m. newscasts, and was able to lure viewers into its 6 p.m. newscast.^[19] This change was so successful that other local stations in the Miami and West Palm Beach markets started airing syndicated programming in place of local newscasts, such as WPTV, WTVJ, and WPBF. But by 2011, Dr. Phil's ratings had slipped and WPLG announced that the show would move back to WFOR, replacing Oprah which had just ended its 25-year run.^[20]

News operation

WPLG presently broadcasts 37½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays and five hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). In addition, the station produces the hour-long political discussion program This Week in South Florida, which debuted in 1990; airing Sunday mornings at 11:30 a.m., the program is hosted by senior political reporter Michael Putney.

In 1979, WPLG deployed the first helicopter in the Miami market used for newsgathering, known as "Sky 10". The station became well known from 1976 to 1982 for its popular anchor team of Glenn Rinker, Ann Bishop, sports anchor Chuck Dowdle and meteorologist Walter Cronise. In 1982, the station adopted the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts, which was used until its news branding was changed to the generic Channel 10 News in 2001; that year, Rinker left for another position in Orlando and was replaced as evening co-anchor by Mike Schneider. Schneider and Bishop remained paired as the station's lead anchor team until 1986, when Schneider left to become the 5:30 and 11:00 p.m. co-anchor at CBS owned-and-operated station WCBS-TV in New York City and was replaced by general assignment reporter Dwight Lauderdale (who had been working at WPLG since 1976); Lauderdale's appointment as anchor made him the first African-American to anchor a nightly newscast in the South Florida market, and he remained the station's primary evening co-anchor until his retirement in 2008.

By 1985, WPLG had surpassed rival WTVJ (channel 4, now on channel 6) in the ratings and would dominate the ratings for over ten years. Ann Bishop would continue to serve as co-anchor for the station's evening newscasts until 1995, when she moved to a part-time position at the station until she died from colon cancer in 1997. Don Noe joined WPLG in 1979 and was one of Miami's most popular chief meteorologists (Walter Cronise having moved to the morning newscasts) up until his retirement in 2007; Chuck Dowdle, meanwhile, had left by 1986 for fellow ABC station WSB-TV in Atlanta; his slot was filled by Khambrel Marshall, who later moved to WFOR and then to WPLG's ex-sister station in Houston, KPRC. Since 1993, WPLG has used several versions of Gari Media Group's "The One and Only" news music package, which took its name from a longtime slogan originally used by the station from 1978 to 1997 and was revived in 2014.

On March 28, 2009, in conjunction with the station's relocation to its Pembroke Park studios, WPLG became the third Miami station to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. On August 22, 2011, WPLG debuted an hour-long newscast at 5:00 p.m., which replaced Dr. Phil after it moved back to WFOR-TV; the station had produced an early evening newscast in that timeslot previously until it was replaced by Dr. Phil in 2004.^[21][22] On January 13, 2014, WPLG added an hour-long newscast at 4:00 p.m. weekdays, which competes against an existing hour-long newscast in that slot on WSVN.^[23] On April 27, 2014, WPLG expanded This Week in South Florida to one hour, retaining its 11:30 a.m. timeslot on Sundays.^[24]

Notable current on-air staff

• Calvin Hughes – anchor
• Max Mayfield – Hurricane Specialist
• Will Manso – Sports Director; also heard during coverage of University of Miami football on WQAM (560 AM)
• Michael Putney – Senior Political Reporter; also host of This Week in South Florida

Notable former on-air staff

References

External links

• Official website
• MeTVMiami.com - MeTV Miami official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WPLG
  • Query the FCC's TV station database for W47AC
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WPLG-TV