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WTAE-TV
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Branding	Channel 4 (general) Channel 4 Action News (newscasts)
Slogan	Where the News Comes First
Channels	Analog: 4 (VHF) Digital: 51 (UHF)
Affiliations	ABC The AccuWeather Channel (DT2)
Owner	Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc. (WTAE Hearst-Argyle Television, Inc.)
First air date	September 14, 1958
Transmitter Power	100 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital)
Height	293 m (analog) 273 m (digital)
Facility ID	65681
Transmitter Coordinates	40°16′48.7″N 79°48′10.1″W / 40.280194, -79.802806
Website	www.thepittsburghchannel.com

WTAE-TV is the ABC affiliate serving the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and serving as a secondary ABC affiliate for the Wheeling/Steubenville and Clarksburg/Weston, West Virginia market areas. Its transmitter is located in Buena Vista, Pennsylvania and its studios are located in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.

History

The first WTAE-TV station identification from 1958.

Channel 4, originally allocated to Irwin, Pennsylvania (in Westmoreland County), was moved to Pittsburgh in the mid 1950s. This came about because Pittsburgh mayor David L. Lawrence had petitioned the FCC relentlessly for a fourth VHF channel in the area. It is short-spaced to other channel 4 stations in Columbus, Ohio (WCMH-TV, which is NBC) and Buffalo, New York (WIVB-TV, which is CBS), with the tower located southeast of the city as a result.

WTAE-TV signed on the air on September 14, 1958 as Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate. From the beginning, it has been owned by the Hearst Corporation, which purchased the station's former sister radio station, WCAE/WTAE Radio, in 1931. (The radio station is now WEAE, and is owned by ABC/Disney as part of the ESPN Radio network; ESPN is a partnership of Disney and Hearst.) WTAE is the only TV station affiliated with a major network in Pittsburgh to have not changed hands in ownership. The station itself is now run by Hearst's television unit Hearst-Argyle Television, of which it serves as one of the three flagship stations for the unit, alongside WBAL-TV in Baltimore and WCVB-TV in Boston.

In the early years, Channel 4 was best known in the market for its locally-originated entertainment programming, most notably the after-school children's shows:^{[citation needed]}

• Ricki & Copper;
• Paul Shannon's Adventure Time; and
• Hank Stohl's Popeye 'n' Knish (Knish being a mop-shaped puppet with a light-bulb for a nose).

Like its NBC rival, WIIC-TV, Channel 4 was not a major player in terms of news coverage in those early years, as the Pittsburgh market was dominated by KDKA-TV and anchor Bill Burns. That changed, however, in 1969, when longtime KDKA radio-and-TV newscaster Paul Long was brought in, along with his KDKA meteorologist-sidekick Joe DeNardo. From then on the market was competitive^{[citation needed]}, and Long would continue to be Channel 4's lead news presence well into the 1980s before easing into a more "senior" role.

In June 1992, the station expanded its news production, adding a Saturday morning newscast from 8 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. (matching WPXI's Saturday morning newscast of the same length which began in 1990) and a three-hour Sunday morning newscast. The station also extended its weekday early evening newscast to begin at 5 P.M., and began to air a weekday morning newscast from 5 to 7 A.M. In 1997, the station expanded its Sunday morning newscast by an hour and began to air its Saturday morning newscast from 6 to 10 A.M. Today, WTAE offers four-and-a-half hours of live news each day.

At various times, WTAE has also served as the ABC affiliate for the Johnstown/Altoona, Wheeling, West Virginia/Steubenville, Ohio, and Clarksburg/Weston, West Virginia television markets (all of which could receive WTAE as a grade B signal). With WTAE having long been one of ABC's strongest affiliates, both parties reportedly resisted efforts by other TV stations in those cities to obtain a full-time ABC affiliation. Since then, one station was eventually granted affiliation in Altoona (WATM-TV), while WBOY-TV in Clarksburg and WTRF-TV in Wheeling (Both owned by West Virginia Media Holdings, the former briefly being a sister station to WTAE in 2001.) launched ABC stations on one of their digital subchannels in August 2008^[1] on Your ABC and ABC Ohio Valley, respectively. WTAE is still available on cable in all of those markets today. In addition to those areas, WTAE can also be seen on several out-of-market cable systems throughout northwestern and central Pennsylvania.

In 1986, WTAE partnered with the Salvation Army and started Project Bundle Up, an operation to make sure that children and seniors get warm clothing. WTAE has run the Project Bundle Up Auction which is an auction where local businesses donate products to be auctioned off, and the Project Bundle Up Telethon a traditional telethon where viewers call in to donate money, businesses donate money and all of the proceeds from the auction and telethon benefit the Salvation Army. In 2007, WTAE moved the auction to the Internet.

Although it was the only ABC affiliate in the region when it signed on at the time, WTAE also pre-empted and/or delayed a handful of ABC programs, most notably its daytime lineup from the 1960s to the late 1990s (one show in particular, "One Life to Live," which they passed on from its 1968 debut up until 1978, when the serial went to an hour-long format), and those that did not air on channel 4 would end up on either WPGH-TV or WPTT. Today, WTAE runs nearly the entire ABC schedule. The station cut back its Saturday morning newscast to three hours, but it still runs a news-intensive schedule, alongside its top-rated syndicated first-run talk shows.

WTAE was also one of many ABC stations that pre-empted the special showing of Saving Private Ryan late in 2004 due to scares that the Federal Communications Commission would impose a fine on them if they had aired the World War II movie due to the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy earlier that year. It was later determined that the movie showing was not a violation of FCC regulations.

WTAE unveiled a new set designed by FX Group during the 5 P.M. newscast on Tuesday, September 4, 2007.

Also in 2007, WTAE started their own channel on YouTube. You can search them as WTAE-TV.

On Monday September 15, 2008 WTAE became the second station (behind WPXI) to launch local news and weather in High Definition.

Digital TV

The station's digital channel is muliplexed. After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on February 17, 2009, WTAE-TV will continue digital broadcasts on its current pre-transition channel number, 51. However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display the station's virtual channel as 4.

Ratings

Over the past decade, Pittsburgh has been a perennially competitive market for local news, with news ratings usually differing by less than a full ratings point. More recently, KDKA-TV has expanded its lead in most dayparts. WTAE had the largest audiences at 5 and 6 A.M. during the May 2008 Nielsen ratings period, was in second place to KDKA at noon, 5, and 6 P.M., and trailed both competitors at 11 P.M.^[2][3]

Honors

In March 2008, the station won a "Freedom of Information Award" and an IRE Medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors for "pushing open the front door" of the state-run student loan agency.^[4]

In April 2008, that same effort resulted in a Peabody Award for the station, in recognition of "station`s relentless legal campaign to obtain public records of a state-run student loan program" which "netted evidence of financial misconduct and pushed the state to rewrite an antiquated right-to-know law."^[5]

On-air personnel

Former on-air personalities

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Programming

Local

• Channel 4 Action Sports Sunday (Sundays at 11:30 P.M. - 12:00 A.M.)
  • sports talk show hosted by Jon Burton or Guy Junker
• jennifer (Sundays at 11:00–11:30 A.M. ) - talk show hosted by Jennifer Antkowiak (former KDKA-TV personality)
• Steelers Primetime - extended Steelers coverage during NFL season
• Project Bundle-up Telethon, seasonal partnership with Salvation Army

Syndicated/first-run

Aside from local news and ABC lineup, WTAE's other offerings include Live With Regis And Kelly at 9 AM and Rachael Ray at 10 AM, Access Hollywood at 12:30 PM, The Oprah Winfrey Show at 4 PM, and Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight during the 7-to-8 PM hour.

News / Station presentation

Newscast titles

• 4 Star News (1958–1970s)
• Action News (1970s-1989)
• WTAE 4 News (1989–1995)
• Channel 4 Action News (1995–present)

Past programming

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (February 2008)

• In 1958, Shock Theatre premiered late at night on WTAE. The show was locally produced and hosted by Bob Drews who portrayed Sir Rodger (often misspelled as Sir Roger). Drews was a former Pittsburgh radio disc jockey who also wrote a satire magazine called Thimk. Shock Theatre featured monster movies such as The Invisible Man and Frankenstein. Drews interspersed comedic live-action skits within the movie and also was famous for his haircut, the Sir Rodger Clip. Little is known of what became of Drews after the show left the air in the early 1960s.
• In 1972, WTAE sportscaster Myron Cope coined the phrase "The Immaculate Reception" to describe Franco Harris' miraculous, running shoestring catch that gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a 13-7 playoff victory over the Oakland Raiders.
• WTAE's distinct channel 4 logo has been in use since 1973.
• WTAE and its channel 4 logo was immortalized in the 1979 basketball comedy film The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, whose fictional sportscaster "Murray Sports" (Played by Harry Shearer) was also patterned after Cope.
• On April 24, 1980, WTAE personality Nick Perry, who hosted Bowling for Dollars and also called the lottery drawings for the Pennsylvania Lottery, fixed the PA Lottery's Daily Number so that the drawing could come up as "666". Perry would eventually serve jail time, and the drawings were moved from WTAE to WHP-TV in Harrisburg a year later. This resulted in lotteries now being audited and monitored with "witnesses" from the government and/or accounting firms hired by them, and also inspired the movie Lucky Numbers. In addition, KDKA now airs the PA Lottery drawings in the Pittsburgh market instead of WTAE.
• WTAE was also known for the "legendary" news crew of Paul Long and Don Cannon starting in the late 1960s all the way into the 1990s. It is also said that Paul Long help entice Joe DeNardo to the station.^[6]
• WTAE also serves as the default ABC affiliate for the Clarksburg-Weston, and also the Wheeling-Steubenville, TV markets, both of which lack ABC stations of their own.
• In 2002, Jean Connelly became the first woman from Western PA to be inducted into the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Hall of Fame. In doing so, she joined ranks with Paul Long, David Crantz, and Fred Young.
• WTAE has carried Live with Regis and Kelly (and Kathie Lee) since its national debut in 1988 and Entertainment Tonight since 1989.

Station Slogans

• 1982–83: Come on Along with Channel 4 (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1984–85: We're with You on Channel 4 (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1985–86: You'll Love It! On Channel 4! (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1988–90: Something's Happening on WTAE! (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1990–91: Pittsburgh is Watching WTAE! (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1991–92: Pittsburgh's Watching WTAE! (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1992–93: It Must Be WTAE (Customized version of ABC-TV slogan)
• 1993–95: Joe Said it Would
• 1995–01: Action News is Everywhere
• 2001–04: Taking Action for You
• 2004–06 and 08–present: Where the News Comes First
• 2006–08: Where YOU Come First

References

External links

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

• ThePittsburghChannel.com - WTAE Homepage
• Project Bundle Up Auction
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WTAE-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WTAE-TV
• Program Information for WTAE at TitanTV.com

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