WICZ-TV
Encyclopedia
WICZ-TV is the Fox
-affiliated television station
for Upstate
New York's Eastern Southern Tier
. Licensed to Binghamton
, it broadcasts a high definition
digital signal on VHF channel 8 (virtual channel
40.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable
channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 702. Owned by the Stainless Broadcasting Company
, WICZ is sister to low-powered MyNetworkTV
affiliate WBPN-LP
and the two share studios on Vestal Parkway East in Vestal
. Syndicated
programming on this station includes Cash Cab
, Two and a Half Men
, Swift Justice with Nancy Grace
, and The People's Court
among others.
.
affiliate owned by the Gannett Company
(which purchased the television station just before its sign-on) along with WINR
-AM 680 and the Binghamton Press
. Current owner Stainless Broadcasting acquired the television station in 1971 and changed its call letters to WICZ-TV (named for company owner Henry Guzewicz). In Fall 1995, WICZ announced it would be dropping its NBC affiliation and switch to Fox.
The official affiliation switchover took place April 4, 1996 after its NBC affiliation contract ran out. At the time, WICZ began preempting much of that network's programming (especially its daytime soap operas) in favor of Fox Kids
shows. The NBC affiliation moved Class A
station WBGH-CA
. On April 16, 2009, WICZ left UHF channel 40 and moved to VHF channel 8 when the analog to digital conversion was completed.
. More or less, WIVT has been a non-factor in the local news race for almost forty years. It spent most of its history as the third station in what was at one point essentially a two-station market. WIVT reaped virtually no benefit when WICZ made its network change.
On Memorial Day
in 2009 in order to increase its presence against WBNG, WICZ added a thirty minute newscast weeknights at 6. The broadcast joined an existing nightly prime time show at 10 which is 32 minutes in length on weeknights and 28 minutes on weekends. This is repeated every morning at 5. The weeknight broadcast at 10 competes with another show seen on CW affiliate WBNG-DT2.
News team
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
-affiliated television station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
for Upstate
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
New York's Eastern Southern Tier
Southern Tier
The Southern Tier is a geographical term that refers to the counties of New York State west of the Catskill Mountains along the northern border of Pennsylvania. It is a loosely defined term that generally includes the counties that border Pennsylvania west of Delaware County inclusive...
. Licensed to Binghamton
Binghamton, New York
Binghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers...
, it broadcasts a high definition
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
digital signal on VHF channel 8 (virtual channel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
40.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 702. Owned by the Stainless Broadcasting Company
Stainless Broadcasting Company
Stainless Broadcasting Company is a television broadcasting company based in Okemos, Michigan, a suburb of Lansing. The company also goes by the name Northwest Broadcasting, Inc....
, WICZ is sister to low-powered MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation...
affiliate WBPN-LP
WBPN-LP
WBPN-LP is the My Network TV affiliate for Binghamton, New York, licensed to nearby Morris. The station operates on VHF channel 10, with a digital signal on WICZ-DT 8's digital channel 40.2 -- however, it brands itself as My 8, originally representing its cable channel number, but now also...
and the two share studios on Vestal Parkway East in Vestal
Vestal, New York
Vestal is a town within Broome County in the Southern Tier of New York, and lies between the Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania border. As of the 2000 census, the population was 26,535, estimated to have grown to 27,369 in 2009....
. Syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
programming on this station includes Cash Cab
Cash Cab (U.S. game show)
Cash Cab is an American game show that began airing on the Discovery Channel on December 5, 2005. The program is hosted by stand-up comedian Ben Bailey. While Bailey's show takes place in New York City, some episodes of Season 6 take place in Las Vegas...
, Two and a Half Men
Two and a Half Men
Two and a Half Men is an American television sitcom that premiered on CBS on September 22, 2003. Starring Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer, and Angus T. Jones, the show was originally about a hedonistic jingle writer, Charlie Harper; his uptight brother, Alan; and Alan's growing son, Jake...
, Swift Justice with Nancy Grace
Swift Justice With Nancy Grace
Swift Justice with Jackie Glass is a syndicated court program hosted by Judge Jackie Glass....
, and The People's Court
The People's Court
The People's Court is a US television court show in which small claims court cases are heard, though what is shown is actually a binding arbitration....
among others.
Digital programming
Sister station WBPN is simulcasted in standard definition on WICZ's second digital subchannelDigital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a means to transmit more than one independent program at the same time from the same digital radio or digital television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compression techniques to reduce the size of each individual...
.
| Channels (virtual/physical) | Video Display resolution The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection... |
Aspect Aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,... |
Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8.1/40.1 | 720p 720p 720p is the shorthand name for 1280x720, a category of High-definition television video modes having a resolution of 1080 or 720p and a progressive scan... |
16:9 16:9 16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ... |
main WICZ programming/Fox (HD) |
| 8.2/40.2 | 480i 480i 480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC... |
4:3 | WBPN-LP "My 8" (SD) |
History
The station signed-on November 1, 1957 as WINR-TV airing an analog signal on UHF channel 40. It was an NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
affiliate owned by the Gannett Company
Gannett Company
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly-traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, near McLean. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend...
(which purchased the television station just before its sign-on) along with WINR
WINR
WINR is a radio station broadcasting an Adult Standards/MOR format. Licensed to Binghamton, New York, USA, the station serves the Binghamton area...
-AM 680 and the Binghamton Press
Press & Sun-Bulletin
The Press & Sun-Bulletin is a daily newspaper serving the area around Binghamton, New York. It was formed by the 1985 merger of The Evening Press and The Sun-Bulletin. It is owned by the Gannett Company, who purchased The Binghamton Press in 1943 and The Sun-Bulletin in 1971.-External links:**...
. Current owner Stainless Broadcasting acquired the television station in 1971 and changed its call letters to WICZ-TV (named for company owner Henry Guzewicz). In Fall 1995, WICZ announced it would be dropping its NBC affiliation and switch to Fox.
The official affiliation switchover took place April 4, 1996 after its NBC affiliation contract ran out. At the time, WICZ began preempting much of that network's programming (especially its daytime soap operas) in favor of Fox Kids
Fox Kids
Fox Kids was the Fox Broadcasting Company's American children's programming division and brand name from September 8, 1990 until September 7, 2002. It was owned by Fox Television Entertainment airing programming on Monday–Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.Depending on the show, the...
shows. The NBC affiliation moved Class A
Class A television service
The class A television service is a system for regulating some low-power television stations in the United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign suffix "-CA" or "-CD" , although very many analog -CA stations have a digital companion channel that was assigned the -LD...
station WBGH-CA
WBGH-CA
WBGH-CA is the Class A NBC-affiliated television station for New York's Eastern Southern Tier licensed to Binghamton. It broadcasts a low-powered analog signal on UHF channel 20 from a transmitter at its studios on Ingraham Hill Road. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable channel 5 and...
. On April 16, 2009, WICZ left UHF channel 40 and moved to VHF channel 8 when the analog to digital conversion was completed.
Newscast titles
- Newswatch (1976-?)
- TV-40 News (1980s)
- NewsTeam 40 (1980s-1996)
- FOX 40 News (1996-present)
Newscasts
Since making the switch to Fox in 1996, WICZ has consistently had lower ratings than WBNG and is currently a distant second place behind that station. WBNG continues its longtime dominance as the most watched outlet in Binghamton according to Nielsen ratingsNielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
. More or less, WIVT has been a non-factor in the local news race for almost forty years. It spent most of its history as the third station in what was at one point essentially a two-station market. WIVT reaped virtually no benefit when WICZ made its network change.
On Memorial Day
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...
in 2009 in order to increase its presence against WBNG, WICZ added a thirty minute newscast weeknights at 6. The broadcast joined an existing nightly prime time show at 10 which is 32 minutes in length on weeknights and 28 minutes on weekends. This is repeated every morning at 5. The weeknight broadcast at 10 competes with another show seen on CW affiliate WBNG-DT2.
News team
- Larry Sparano - weeknight news anchor
- Suzanne Goldklang - weeknight news anchor
- Mick Dwyer - weeknight weather anchor and "Mick's Half Off Deals" segment producer
- Erik Columbia - Sports DirectorSports DirectorA sports director is an individual at a television or radio station who is in charge of the sports department. In local news, the sports director is typically the station's primary sportscaster, and often anchors the primetime newscasts on weekdays. They are in charge of sports programming and...
seen weeknights - Steve Craig - weekend news anchor and news reporter
- Kate Thorton - weekend weather anchor and news reporter
- Chris Whalen - weekend sports anchor and news reporter
- Mike Battisti - weekend photographer
- Amanda Kenney - news reporter
- Steven Perlin - photographer
- Greg Schuter - photographer