WPCW

Encyclopedia : W : WP : WPC : WPCW

WPCW is a UPN owned and operated station that serves the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania DMA. Known on-air as UPN Pittsburgh, the station is owned by the CBS Corporation and is a sister station of KDKA-TV. It is licensed to Jeannette, a Pittsburgh suburb, but its operations are housed at KDKA-TV's studios in downtown Pittsburgh. WPCW offers off-network sitcoms, first-run talk shows, reality shows, court shows, UPN programming, and news. WPCW's transmitter is located in Jennerstown, Pennsylvania.

History

About 1970, the station changed its call letters to WJNL, in reference to its new owner, Jonelle Construction Company of Johnstown. It also moved to channel 19 and dropped ABC programming. The TV studio also located to a cinder-block building next to its broadcast tower atop Benshoff Hill in suburban Johnstown, although it produced virtually no local programming by this time. WJNL-TV's facilities were below the standards expected for a network affiliate. The station was also plagued by a weak signal--in fact, Johnstown viewers got a better signal from WFBG-TV in Altoona and KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. In 1973, WFBG-TV changed its calls to WTAJ-TV in part to acknowledge its Johnstown viewership (its call letters stand for We're Television in Altoona and Johnstown).

The TV station's sister radio stations, WJNL-AM/FM (now Clear Channel-owned WNTJ-AM and WMTZ-FM, respectively), joined WJNL-TV at the Benshoff Hill location after the Johnstown Flood of 1977 destroyed their studios in downtown Johnstown. WJNL-TV only stayed afloat because of the tremendous success of its FM sister, an adult contemporary powerhouse.

In 1982, the Johnstown and Altoona-State College markets were collapsed into a single market. CBS gave its affiliation in the newly enlarged market to Altoona's WTAJ, which, as mentioned above, already had a large viewership in Johnstown. In contrast, WJNL's signal was marginal at best in the rest of the eastern part of the enlarged market. WJNL became an independent station. It was sold a year later and renamed WFAT-TV. It was unable to afford programming for an additional 15 hours a day and failed to grow in the ratings. Also, the major Pittsburgh independents were available on cable. It changed its calls to WPTJ in 1988, but saw no change in its fortunes. The station finally went off the air in 1991.

Over in Pittsburgh, WBPA-LP channel 29 signed on in 1994 as a low power TV station owned by Venture Technologies. It ran some ABC and NBC shows that WTAE-TV and WPXI pre-empted, along with infomercials, religious and shop-at-home programming. It added WB programming in 1995 and a few syndicated shows in the fall of that year.

Also in 1995, Venture Technologies bought the dormant channel 19 license in Johnstown. The station returned to the air in early 1997 as WTWB, a full-powered satellite of WBPA-LP. However, cable systems in Johnstown wouldn't carry it.

In 1985 VHF channel 8 was dropped in by the FCC as a Pittsburgh license, but the operators of the new license made a case that the channel 8 allocation was needed in Johnstown more than it was in Pittsburgh (although another reason could have been to avoid interfence with WJW in Cleveland and an additional reason would be programming prices would be cheaper in Johnstown than in Pittsburgh). The FCC approved channel 8's move to Johnstown, and 10 years later allowed WTWB to move its license to Jeannette (about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh) in 1997. This qualified it for "must-carry" status on Pittsburgh cable systems. In the wake of the move, WTWB began to acquire more off-network sitcoms and first-run syndicated shows, alongside cartoons from Kids WB and prime time programming from the WB.

When WPTT acquired the WB affiliation and changed its call letters to WCWB in 1998, the UPN affiliation in the market became available. As such, channel 19 took the affiliation and changed call letters to WNPA.

Viacom bought the station in 1998. It became a sister station to KDKA after Viacom merged with CBS in 2000. The station is still licensed to Jeannette, but the studios were consolidated into KDKA's studio's in Gateway Center by 2001. In August 2001, the station began to carry a 10pm newscast produced by KDKA and anchored by Ken Rice. After seriously lagging WPGH and rumors of it being cut, the newscast is finally catching up to WPGH's 10pm news, actually winning the July 2005 sweeps period.

The station began to identify on air as "UPN Pittsburgh" in late 2003 as different cable systems carry it on different channels.

In 2005, the station launched a new morning newscast from 7-9am. Just like its 10pm newscast, it is produced by KDKA. Sonni Abatta and John Cater are the anchors, AMS meteorologist Rebecca Hower delivers the exclusive AccuWeather forecasts (she is on maternity leave, KDKA's Weather Forecaster Jon Burnett has been filling-in), and Jim Lokay gives the RealTime Traffic reports.

In early 2006, channel 19 became part of the CBS Corporation after the split of Viacom into 2 compaines, the other retaining the Viacom name.

WNPA future CW logo.

On January 24, 2006 it was announced that channel 19 would become an affiliate of the CW Network, which is a merger of both UPN and The WB. The changeover would start in the Fall of 2006. To go with this change the station changed its call sign to WPCW on April 3, 2006 [link] According to an ad on the website, the station will adopt the on-air name Pittsburgh CW when the CW launches.

To this day, its transmitter is still located on Laurel Mountain, which is 35 miles southeast of Jeannette. On paper, this violates FCC regulations requiring that a station's transmitter cannot be located more than 15 miles from its city of license unless it is in the same market. However, any move closer to Pittsburgh would persumably be hampered by the need to protect WOIO in Cleveland. As a result, it only provides a grade B ("rimshot") signal to Pittsburgh, and its over-the-air signal is marginal at best in most of the Pittsburgh suburbs. However, it still provides city-grade coverage to Johnstown. According to an application for its digital signal, WPCW plans to move its transmitter to the east side of Pittsburgh, with grade B coverage to Johnstown. It is not known as of yet whether WPCW will build a translator in Johnstown to make up for the loss in coverage. Then again, digital coverage is much stronger than analog coverage.

WPCW one of three former CBS affiliates that have since became UPN stations owned by CBS, along with WTVX in West Palm Beach and KSTW in Seattle, incidentally, both of the latter stations will also become CW stations.

External links

• [Official site]
• [Query the FCC's TV station database for WPCW]

Terrestrial television>Broadcast television in the Johnstown / Altoona market  [(Nielsen DMA #98)]
WPSU 3 (PBS) - WJAC 6 (NBC) - WWCP 8 (FOX/UPN) - WTAJ 10 (CBS) - WPCW 19 (UPN/The CW)1 - WATM 23 (ABC) - W36BE / W39BE (ABC) - WKBS 47 (CSTV)  1 Technically a Pittsburgh market station. See article.
Out-of-market stations available on cable
Pittsburgh: KDKA 2 (CBS) -  WTAE 4 (ABC) -  WPXI 11 (NBC) -  WPMY 22 (The WB/My Network TV) -  WPGH 53 (Fox) Scranton/Wilkes-Barre: WNEP 16 (ABC) -  WSWB 38 (The WB/UPN/The CW) New York City: WPIX 11 (The WB/The CW) Harrisburg: WLYH 15 (UPN/The CW) Note: Not all stations are available in all areas.
Local cable television channels
WIUP 20 (Ind., The WB on digital subchannel, to become MNTV in September 2006)

.54 billion USD (2005) | Employees: Unknown at this time. | Stock Symbol: NYSE: [CBS] | Website: [www.cbscorporation.com]

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