WTXF-TV
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| WTXF-TV | |
|---|---|
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| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | |
| Branding | Fox 29 |
| Channels | Analog: 29 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Fox |
| Owner | Fox Television Stations (Fox Television Stations of Philadelphia, Inc.) |
| First air date | May 1965[1] |
| Call letters’ meaning | TVX and TaFt - former owners, partially through former callsign WTAF-TV |
| Former callsigns | WIBF-TV (1965-1969) WTAF-TV (1969-1988) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1965-1986) |
| Transmitter Power | 5000 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 347 m (analog) 280.7 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 51568 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.myfoxphilly.com |
WTXF-TV, channel 29, is an owned-and-operated station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From studios in downtown Philadelphia and transmitter located in the Roxborough section of the city, the station's signal covers the Delaware Valley area (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware).
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[edit] History
The station signed on the air on May 16, 1965 as independent station WIBF-TV, owned by brothers William, Irwin, and Benjamin Fox. The Fox brothers had already been operating WIBF-FM (103.9 MHz., now WPPZ) for several years. Channel 29's original studio was located in the Fox family's Benson East apartment building on Old York Road in the suburb of Jenkintown, north of Philadelphia. WIBF-TV was the first commercial UHF station in Philadelphia, and the first of three UHF independents in the Philadelphia market to sign-on during 1965, with WPHL-TV (channel 17) and WKBS-TV (channel 48) both arriving in September.
WIBF-TV struggled at first, in part because it signed on only a year after the Federal Communications Commission required television manufacturers to include UHF tuning capability. In 1969, the Fox brothers sold the station to the Cincinnati-based Taft Television and Radio Company. Taft already owned WNEP-TV (channel 16) in Scranton, a station whose signal overlapped with channel 29 in the Lehigh Valley area north of Philadelphia. Taft sought a waiver to keep both stations, since the FCC at that time normally did not allow common ownership of two stations with overlapping coverage areas, even if they were in different markets. The FCC initially granted the waiver [1], but later reversed itself and forced Taft to sell WNEP as a condition of buying WIBF-TV.
Taft assumed control of channel 29 in mid-1969 and changed the calls to WTAF-TV (for TAFt). Under Taft's ownership, WTAF soon established itself as a local powerhouse. By the start of the 1980s, WTAF had passed WKBS as Philadelphia's leading independent station. When WKBS left the air in the late summer of 1983, the station placed advertisements in TV Guide and local papers reminding Philadelphia viewers that channel 29 was still around and that channel 48's former audience was welcome to sample channel 29. But interestingly, the station passed on picking up any of channel 48's shows, most of which went to WPHL-TV.
WTAF-TV also became a strong sports station. At various times, it owned the broadcast rights to Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies (Taft also owned a small portion of the team for much of the 1980s), the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers, and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers. In the 1980s, the station also aired network shows that NBC's then-affiliate KYW-TV and ABC station WPVI-TV preempted in favor of local programming. In the fall of 1986, WTAF-TV became a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox network.
As part of a group deal, all of Taft's independent and Fox-affiliated stations, including WTAF, were sold to the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group in February 1987. In 1988, the new owners changed the station's call letters to the current WTXF-TV. The Taft purchase created a large debt load for TVX, and as a result the company sold a number of its smaller stations. Paramount Pictures purchased a minority stake in TVX in 1989. A year later, after calling itself TV-29 for many years, the station changed its on-air branding to Fox 29.
In 1991, Paramount acquired the remainder of TVX which it did not own, and the company's name was changed to Paramount Stations Group, with WTXF as its largest-market station. Viacom gained control of the stations as part of its purchase of Paramount Pictures in 1993. In 1994 Viacom announced plans to create a new network service, the United Paramount Network, which it co-owned with Chris-Craft Industries. The initial affiliation plans called for WTXF dropping Fox and becoming the Philadelphia outlet for the new network, which launched in January 1995. Though Fox received no official notification from Viacom that the affiliation would be cancelled, Fox made a preliminary deal to buy rival station WGBS-TV (channel 57, now WPSG). Signs of the planned switch began showing up at the start of the 1994-95 season, when WTXF began calling itself simply "29".
The planned move coincided with the biggest affiliation shuffle in Philadelphia television history. In the spring of 1994, CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting, owners of KYW-TV, had entered into a long-term affiliation agreement, which resulted in KYW-TV dropping NBC in favor of CBS. CBS would then sell its longtime owned-and-operated station, WCAU-TV. Several months earlier, Fox entered into a multi-station, multi-year partnership with New World Communications. New World and NBC emerged as the leading bidders for WCAU, with New World intending to switch WCAU to Fox if it emerged victorious. Fox later cancelled its preliminary deal to purchase WGBS and joined the bidding for WCAU, which was eventually sold to NBC. During this time, Viacom/Paramount changed its Philadelphia plans and decided to sell WTXF to Fox. Almost simultaneously, Viacom bought WGBS and made it the market's UPN station. Both transactions involving Viacom and Fox closed on the same day -- August 25, 1995.
As a Fox owned-and-operated station, WTXF immediately added more first run talk and reality shows to the schedule. Throughout the mid-to-late 1990s, WTXF was available nationally on satellite as the east coast Fox feed, most notably on PrimeStar.
The station's branding tagline was changed to Fox Philadelphia in 1995, but in 2003 it reverted back to Fox 29 because of confusion with the Fox News Channel. WTXF also underwent a major overhaul of its building and studios in Old City Philadelphia, with a "Window on the World" type studio making its debut on June 6, 2005. The "Window of the World" studio was originally intended for Good Day Philadelphia.. On October 1, 2006 the station became the second station in Philadelphia to broadcast its local news programs in high definition.
[edit] Digital television
Digital channels
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 29.1 / 42.1 | main WTXF-TV/Fox programming |
[edit] Post-analog shutdown
After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on February 17, 2009[2], WTXF-TV will will remain on its current pre-transition channel number, 42. [3] However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display WTXF's virtual channel as 29.
[edit] News Operation
In the spring of 1986, Taft Broadcasting opened WTAF-TV's news department with a nightly 10:00 p.m. newscast. It was the second attempt at a primetime newscast in the market, after WKBS-TV ran a short-lived program in the late 1970s. Channel 29's effort has been longest-running, and the most successful. In 1996, shortly after channel 29 became a Fox-owned station, morning cartoons were dropped in favor of a weekday morning newscast, Good Day Philadelphia.
In areas of central New Jersey where the Philadelphia and New York City markets overlap, WTXF shares resources with New York sister stations WNYW and WWOR-TV. The stations share reporters for stories occurring in New Jersey. On January 22, 2007, WTXF-TV overhauled its on-air look, adopting a logo and graphics similar to that of the Fox News Channel. Many other Fox-owned stations have made similar imaging changes . Channel 29 also expanded its facilities to include a new studio for its newscasts,and started to broadcast their local newscast in High-definition.
With the new imaging, WTXF-TV has also expanded its news coverage. On October 9, 2006, WTXF added a half-hour newscast at 11:00 a.m. On January 22, 2007, a new hour-long program at 5:00 p.m. debuted, and this new newscast has enabled channel 29 to go head-to-head with two of the three other network-owned stations. On October 6, 2007, WTXF launched hourlong 6:00 p.m. newscasts on Saturday and Sunday evenings. ([2])
[edit] Current personalities
- Anchors
- John Anderson - Good Day Philadelphia
- John Atwater - weekend co-anchor (also reporter)
- Joyce Evans - weekends co-anchor
- Kerri-Lee Halkett - weeknights 5:00 p.m.
- Dave Huddleston - weeknights 10:00 p.m.
- Sheinelle Jones - Good Day Philadelphia
- Dawn Stensland - weeknights 10:00 p.m.
- Reporters
- Dr. Mike Cirigliano (medical contributor)
- Jeff Cole (investigative)
- Sharon Crowley
- Claudia Gomez
- Bruce Gordon
- Nefertiti Jaquez
- Steve Keeley
- Gerald Kolpan
- Dorothy Krysiuk (traffic)
- Dr. Brian McDonough (health and science)
- Craig Mitnick (legal analyst)
- Dave Schratwieser
- Robin Taylor
- Michelle Williams
- Shawnette Wilson
- Weather
- David Aldrich - weekends
- John Bolaris - Chief meteorologist/weeknights
- Sue Serio - Good Day Philadelphia
- Sports
- Don Tollefson - sports director/weeknight anchor
- Bill Vargus - weekend anchor
[edit] Notable alumni
- Lee McCarthy
- Donya Archer
- Jacqueline Boulden
- Frank Cariello
- Linda Carson
- Jill Chernekoff
- Chris Cimino
- Scott Engler
- Howard Eskin
- Christian Farr
- Rob Guarino
- Mike Jerrick
- Tina Kim
- George Mallet
- Jim Nichols
- Rich Noonan
- Dave Price
- Nick Smith
- Rachel Wulff
[edit] Trivia
Philadelphia is the largest television market where My Network TV was not awarded to a Fox owned-and-operated station, as the affiliation is with WPHL-TV. As a result, WTXF does not have a secondary affiliation with the network. Along these lines, WTXF is the largest Fox affiliate/station not part of any duopoly.
[edit] External links
- WTXF-TV Website
- Photos of WTXF's studio
- report of WTXF's studio
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WTXF-TV
- Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia
[edit] References
- ^ The Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook says May 18, while the Television and Cable Factbook says May 16.
- ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
- ^ CDBS Print
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