WGNT
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WGNT | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Portsmouth - Norfolk - Newport News, Virginia |
|
| Branding | CW 27 |
| Channels | Analog: 27 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | CW |
| Owner | CBS Corporation (The CW Television Stations, Inc.) |
| First air date | October 1, 1961 |
| Call letters’ meaning | Greater Norfolk Televsion, as in Hampton Roads |
| Former callsigns | WYAH-TV (1961-1989) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1961-1995) UPN (1995-2006) |
| Transmitter Power | 2340 kW (analog) 800 kW (digital) |
| Height | 296 m (analog) 264 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 9762 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.cw27.com |
WGNT, channel 27, is a CW Television Network-owned and operated station licensed to Portsmouth, Virginia, and serving the Portsmouth-Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia (known collectively as Hampton Roads) television market. WGNT is owned by the CBS Corporation, which also owns a 50-percent share of the CW. The station's studios are located in Portsmouth, and its transmitter is located in Suffolk, Virginia.
Contents |
[edit] History
WGNT is one of the oldest surviving UHF licenses in the country. It first appeared on December 6, 1953 as WTOV-TV, a commercial independent owned by Commonwealth Broadcasting. It was the third television station in the Hampton Roads area, and the second on UHF (WVEC-TV signed on over channel 15 three months earlier). WTOV later became an affiliate of the DuMont network. Channel 27 was on the air for limited hours, and had very limited viewership because it was impossible at the time to watch UHF stations without buying an expensive converter. Even with a converter, WTOV's picture wasn't very clear. With low viewership, poor advertising revenues, and the impending loss of DuMont programming, WTOV went dark in 1956.
[edit] The CBN Years
In 1961, M.G. "Pat" Robertson, an attorney and Southern Baptist minister (though with a strong pentecostal tinge) purchased the license for channel 27. Under the ownership of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, the station returned to the air as WYAH-TV in October, with "YAH" standing for "Yahweh" according to some sources and "You are Holy" according to others. At first it was on the air eight hours a day with televangelists such as Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, local church services, and a locally produced program which was the ancestor of what would become The 700 Club, with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker as hosts. The Bakkers also hosted produced and hosted a children's program. Pat Robertson appeared on-camera as well as host of Bible-teaching programs. One of the first Christian television stations in the United States, WYAH-TV was a viewer-supported commercial station, though it sold blocks of time to other ministries.
In September 1967 WYAH expanded its broadcast day and went commercial with old westerns, public domain movies, and classic cartoons except on Sundays. By the early 1970s WYAH had expanded its broadcast day to 19 hours and was a traditional independent station running cartoons, off-network sitcoms, and religious programming, including thrice-daily airings of the 700 Club. Sundays were devoted entirely to religious programs. About this time, the Bakkers left for the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network before going on their own in 1975. Hampton Roads was one of the smallest markets with a commercial independent station. While keeping with Robertson's evangelical views, its programming policy was only somewhat conservative. WYAH indeed offered a wide variety of programming and was a stronger independent than many secular owned stations at that time (As late as 1976 many independent stations did not even sign on until 10 AM). Still, Hampton Roads viewers with Cable TV had other choices, though, as WTTG and WDCA-TV from Washington, D.C. were available on cable systems as well.
In June 1971, CBN signed on WHAE-TV (now WGCL-TV) in Atlanta, followed with the January 1973 purchase of KBFI-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. CBN later changed the calls of that station to KXTX-TV and, in April 1973, merged it with KDTV (the current KXTX-TV). CBN's fourth station, WXNE-TV (now WFXT) in Boston was signed-on in October 1977. These stations formed the Continental Broadcasting Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of Christian Broadcasting Network, and of which WYAH was the flagship station.
In the late 1970's, WYAH continued to acquire off network sitcoms and more movie packages. In 1980 WYAH, along with the rest of the Continental stations, began eight hours of general entertainment programming on Sundays, mostly extending the non-religious programming to syndicated theatrical shorts from Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount and weekly "theaters" dedicated to Shirley Temple, Abbott & Costello, and Blondie and Dagwood movies. Because of CBN's evangelical bent, profanity that was permitted on broadcast television was often muted for family viewing. However, it lost some ground to WTVZ (channel 33), which signed on in 1979 and aired programming that was too racy for Robertson's liking -- mostly uncensored off-network programming and syndicated fare.
In the late 1980s, Robertson began selling off the over-the-air stations that he owned. In 1989 WYAH was sold to Centennial Broadcasting. The new owners renamed the station WGNT, which calls stand for Greater Norfolk Television.
[edit] After CBN: WGNT Today
WGNT began showing far racier programming after Centennial purchased the station, leading to talk that its call letters stood for God's Not There. It also ended its decades-long practice of censoring profanity from off-network syndicated programming. As the 1990s began, WGNT began showing controversial talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, The Ricki Lake Show and The Jerry Springer Show and syndicated fare like the Universal Action Pack , PTEN and Baywatch, and dropped the 11 p.m. repeat of the 700 Club in 1991. By 2003, the series was completely off the air on WGNT, though it aired on numerous outlets in the area in the years since. (The 700 Club currently airs on two stations in the area: NBC affiliate WAVY-TV and TBN affiliate WHRE.)
In 1995, WGNT became a charter UPN affiliate and branded itself as "UPN 27". In 1997, Paramount Stations Group bought WGNT, making it a UPN owned-and-operated station. Viacom, Paramount's owner, later bought CBS as well. When Viacom spun off its broadcasting properties into CBS Corporation at the end of 2005, WGNT and the other UPN O&Os became part of the new company.
On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge into a new service, the CW Television Network, jointly owned by CBS and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. WGNT became the Hampton Roads area's CW affiliate on September 18, 2006.
On January 1, 2007, WGNT began hosting the master control operations of sister stations WTOG in St. Petersburg, Florida and WUPA in Atlanta, Georgia.
[edit] Local programming
In 1995, WTKR produced "NewsChannel 3 News at 10 on UPN 27," the area's first 10 PM newscast [1]. The newscast was short-lived and cancelled in late 1997. Since then, the time period has been used for off-network repeats such as Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, Becker, and The Cosby Show, among others.
Currently WGNT airs the syndicated weekday morning program, The Daily Buzz. The station also produces a public affairs program, called Here and Now on The CW, airs every week on Sunday at 7 AM. Kafi Rouse, the program's host, is also the marketing and public affairs director for the channel 27. The program covers topics including community affairs, politics, government, social issues, and business that affects the Hampton Roads area.
[edit] Trivia
 |
This article or section appears to contradict itself. Please help fix this problem. |
- The WTOV call letters are now used by the NBC affiliate in Steubenville, Ohio on channel 9.
- During WGNT's first years on air as WTOV, future ABC anchorman Max Robinson was hired as a newsreader. Relegated to reading from behind a slide with the station's ID and logo, a frustrated Robinson, who was African-American, removed the slide one night and read the news while appearing on camera; he was promptly fired the next morning after the station received complaints from dissatisfied white viewers.[citation needed]
- The WYAH call letters are now currently used by a Christian music radio station based in Winchester, Kentucky. [2]
[edit] External links
- WGNT Website
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WGNT
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WGNT-TV
|
|||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||
