WLKY-TV
Encyclopedia
WLKY-TV is a 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...

 located in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

 USA, and serves the Louisville area and southeastern Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

. The station is owned by the Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...

, and is an affiliate of the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 television network. WLKY's transmitter is located north of Louisville in Floyds Knobs, Indiana
Floyds Knobs, Indiana
Floyds Knobs is a small unincorporated town in Lafayette Township, Floyd County, Indiana. Historically a farming community on the outskirts of New Albany, it has since become a bedroom community for Louisville, Kentucky, containing subdivisions, farms, small shopping centers and churches, and...

.

History

The station signed on September 16, 1961 as a full-time ABC affiliate. Previously, the ABC affiliation in Louisville was shared between NBC
NBC
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 WAVE-TV
WAVE (TV)
WAVE aka "WAVE 3" is the NBC television station in Louisville, Kentucky. Owned by Raycom Media, the station broadcasts from its main studio in downtown Louisville...

 and then-CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 affiliate WHAS-TV
WHAS-TV
WHAS-TV channel 11 is the ABC affiliated television station in Louisville, Kentucky. Owned by Belo Corporation, the station's transmitter is located in Floyd County, Indiana, near the community of Floyds Knobs...

. Although Louisville had been big enough since the early 1950s to support three full affiliates, it had a fairly long wait for full network service. The Louisville market is a fairly large market geographically, and also includes some rugged terrain. The nearest VHF allocations, channels 7 and 13, had been allocated to Evansville and Bowling Green
Bowling Green, Kentucky
Bowling Green is the third-most populous city in the state of Kentucky after Louisville and Lexington, with a population of 58,067 as of the 2010 Census. It is the county seat of Warren County and the principal city of the Bowling Green, Kentucky Metropolitan Statistical Area with an estimated 2009...

, respectively. These factors made perspective owners skittish about setting up shop on one of the available UHF allocations in the area.

WLKY was founded by a local group, Kentuckiana Television, who in 1967 sold it to Sonderling Broadcasting (which would acquire several medium-market radio and television stations such as WAST in Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

 (now WNYT) until that company merged with Viacom in 1979). In 1973, Sonderling sold the station to Combined Communications. In 1979, Combined Communications merged with 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...

.

In the spring of 1983, Gannett sold WLKY and WPTA
WPTA
WPTA is the ABC-affiliated television station for Northeastern Indiana licensed to Fort Wayne. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 24 from a transmitter at its studios on Butler Road. The station can also be seen on Comcast and Frontier FiOS channel 7...

 in Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne is a city in the US state of Indiana and the county seat of Allen County. The population was 253,691 at the 2010 Census making it the 74th largest city in the United States and the second largest in Indiana...

 (the two smallest stations in Gannett's television station portfolio at the time) to Pulitzer Publishing
Pulitzer, Inc.
Founded by Joseph Pulitzer , Pulitzer Inc., owned 14 daily newspapers across the United States, and one weekly chain. Its papers included the St...

 after it purchased WLVI-TV
WLVI-TV
WLVI, digital channel 41, is a television station licensed to Cambridge, Massachusetts which serves as the CW affiliate for the Boston, Massachusetts television market. WLVI is owned by Sunbeam Television, and is a sister station to WHDH, Boston's NBC affiliate. The two stations share studios at...

 in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 (currently owned by Sunbeam Television
Sunbeam Television
Sunbeam Television Corporation is a broadcasting company based in Miami, Florida, and owns three television stations in the United States.-History:...

) from Field Communications
Field Communications
Field Communications was a division of Field Enterprises, which owned the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News. The company owned independent television stations in the United States, with WFLD-TV in Chicago as its largest-market station....

 and WTCN-TV (now KARE
KARE
KARE, digital channel 11, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota and portions of western Wisconsin. It also operates KARE WX NOW, formerly known as NBC Weather Plus on its second digital subchannel...

) in Minneapolis from Metromedia
Metromedia
Metromedia was a media company that owned radio and television stations in the United States from 1956 to 1986 and owned Orion Pictures from 1986-1997.- Overview :...

. This was because the WLVI and WTCN purchases left Gannett with two television stations over the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

's seven-station limit in effect at the time. Pulitzer kept WLKY but sold WPTA to Granite Broadcasting in 1989.

In September 1990, just over seven years after Pulitzer completed its purchase of the station, WLKY swapped network affiliations with WHAS (by then owned by the Providence Journal Company, now owned by Belo
Belo
Belo Corp. is a Dallas-based media company that owns 20 commercial broadcasting television stations and two regional 24-hour cable news television channels. The company was previously known as A.H. Belo Corp. after one of the early owners of the company, Alfred Horatio Belo, now the name of the...

), with WLKY taking the CBS affiliation and WHAS becoming the ABC affiliate—much to that station's chagrin. This came after then-second-place ABC became dissatisfied with the viewership ratings at some of its affiliates (while CBS was in distant third at this midpoint of the Laurence Tisch
Laurence Tisch
Laurence Alan "Larry" Tisch was an American businessman, Wall Street investor and self-made billionaire. He was the CEO of CBS television network from 1986 to 1995...

 era of the network's history), and ABC wanted a stronger affiliation. WLKY had long been one of ABC's weaker affiliates, while WHAS had been the dominant station in Louisville for almost 20 years at the time.

However due to the varying terrain of the Kentuckiana area, cable television is almost a requirement for effective viewing, and with the combination of a low universal cable channel number (Channel 5 on both Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

 and Insight
Insight Communications
Insight Communications is the 13th largest multiple system operator in the United States with approximately 692,000 customers in the three contiguous states of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio...

), Hearst's aggressive station marketing efforts, and the digital transition leaving only WHAS and WBNA on the VHF band after the June 12, 2009 deadline, WLKY's former weakness of being a UHF station has been almost completely nullified.

Pulitzer sold its entire broadcasting division, including WLKY, to what was then Hearst-Argyle Television in 1999. From 1977 to 1986, WLKY was known as "32 Alive." At the time, Combined Communications used the "Alive" moniker on four of its stations-- WLKY, KOCO-TV
KOCO-TV
KOCO-TV, virtual channel 5 , is the ABC affiliate in the Oklahoma City television market. The station is owned by Hearst Television, Inc., but uses "Ohio/Oklahoma Hearst Television, Inc." as their end tag during their newscasts, the same licensing purpose corporation as sister Cincinnati, Ohio...

 in Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...

, WXIA-TV
WXIA-TV
WXIA-TV, virtual channel 11.1 , is the NBC-affiliated television station in Atlanta, Georgia. Popularly known by its 11 Alive moniker, WXIA is owned by the Gannett Company in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL...

 in Atlanta and WPTA
WPTA
WPTA is the ABC-affiliated television station for Northeastern Indiana licensed to Fort Wayne. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 24 from a transmitter at its studios on Butler Road. The station can also be seen on Comcast and Frontier FiOS channel 7...

 in Fort Wayne. Gannett-owned WXIA still uses the "Alive" moniker, as does WPTA, although that station is no longer owned by Gannett.

On September 1, 2011, WLKY added subchannel 32.2 with classic television programming from Me-TV.

Digital television

Channel Programming
32.1 Main WLKY-TV programming / CBS
32.2 MeTV
MeTV
Me-TV is a television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that airs classic television sitcoms, dramas and classic commercials from the 1950s through the 1980s. The network is a sister network to This TV...


Analog-to-digital conversion

WLKY-TV shut down analog transmissions on June 12, 2009. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 26. Through the use of PSIP
Program and System Information Protocol
The Program and System Information Protocol is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch...

, digital television receivers display WLKY-TV's 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....

 as 32.

Programming

WLKY is one of the few CBS affiliates to show The Young and the Restless 4-5 p.m., leading into the 5 p.m. local news. In 1993, after losing Oprah
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....

to WHAS, WLKY tried The Bertice Berry Show (which was cancelled nationally after one season) in the timeslot, which was a disaster and eventually moved The Young and the Restless to 4pm where it remains today. Other CBS affiliates WAFB
WAFB
WAFB is the CBS-affiliated television station for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 9 from a transmitter southwest of Arlington. Owned by Raycom Media, WAFB is sister to Class A MyNetworkTV affiliate WBXH-CA. The two share studios on Government...

 in Baton Rouge, WRAL-TV
WRAL-TV
WRAL-TV, virtual channel 5 , is a television station in Raleigh, North Carolina. WRAL-TV has been the flagship station of Capitol Broadcasting Company since its inception, and is currently the CBS affiliate for the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill/Fayetteville area, known collectively as the Triangle...

 in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...

 and KMOV
KMOV
KMOV, virtual channel 4, is the CBS-affiliated television station in St. Louis, Missouri. KMOV is owned by the Dallas-based Belo Corporation, with its studio and office facilities in St...

 in St. Louis also run The Young and the Restless in the 4pm timeslot. The game show duo of Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...

and Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...

have also aired on channel 32 in national syndication for many years.

News operation

In 2008, WLKY changed its branding from WLKY NewsChannel 32 to WLKY News. NewsChopper 32 was renamed "WLKY NewsChopper". A new graphics package debuted as well.

In February 2010, WLKY became the third station in the Louisville market to begin airing its newscasts in widescreen—and the second to air them in upconverted widescreen standard definition rather than true 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...

.

Ratings

For most of its tenure as an ABC affiliate, WLKY was one of that network's weaker stations in terms of local viewership, usually ranking third in the Nielsen ratings
Nielsen 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...

 (and at times second ahead of then-runner-up WAVE). However, since the affiliation switch to CBS and rise of cable and satellite penetration, WLKY has been far more successful in the Nielsen ratings. Even with the affiliate "downgrade" from VHF
Very high frequency
Very high frequency is the radio frequency range from 30 MHz to 300 MHz. Frequencies immediately below VHF are denoted High frequency , and the next higher frequencies are known as Ultra high frequency...

 to UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...

, CBS' network ratings in the Louisville market during the early to mid 1990s remained strong at a time when its ratings in many other markets stagnated or declined, with WLKY leading in the recent May 2011 sweeps from sign-on to sign-off, including newscasts , and has been among the network's strongest affiliates for the last decade, although Louisville is one of the few Nielsen markets where all four network stations have about equal ratings and strong news operations.

Newscast titles

  • WLKY-TV News (1961-1963)
  • Metro Report (1963-1967)
  • Complete Information News (1967-1969)
  • 32 Eyewitness News
    Eyewitness News
    Eyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting used by local television stations in different markets across the United States. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video...

    (1969-1977)
  • 32 Alive Newsroom (1977-1984)
  • 32 Alive News (1984-1986)
  • Channel 32 News (1986-1998)
  • NewsChannel 32 (1998-2008)
  • WLKY News (2008-present)

Station slogans

  • Keep Your Eye on 32 Eyewitness News (early 1970s)
  • It's All Right Here on 32 Alive (late 1970s)
  • Looking Better All the Time (early 1980s)
  • Turn to the Channel 32 News (late 1980s)
  • If It Matters to You, It Matters to Us (late 1980s)
  • Louisville's 24-Hour News Source
    24 Hour News Source
    The 24 Hour News Source brand was a common name used by American television stations starting in the early 1990s for brief hourly news updates, usually running 30 seconds to a minute in length. At its peak, dozens of stations across the U.S. were producing these brief news updates...

    / 32 for You (early 1990s-1995)
  • Where the News Comes First (1995-2005)
  • Live. Local. Latebreaking. (1998-present; also used by sister station KOCO in Oklahoma City since the same period)


Current on-air staff

Anchors
  • Steve Burgin - weekends at 6:30 and 11 p.m.; also investigative reporter
  • Natasha Collins - weekday mornings WLKY News This Morning
  • Vicki Dortch - weeknights at 5, 5:30, 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Monica Hardin - weekday mornings WLKY News This Morning
  • Rick Van Hoose - weeknights at 5, 5:30 and 11 p.m.
  • Karen Roby - weekend mornings WLKY News This Morning; also weekday reporter


WLKY Weather
  • Jay Cardosi (AMS
    American Meteorological Society
    The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...

     Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weeknights at 5, 5:30, 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Jared Heil (AMS
    American Meteorological Society
    The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...

     member) - weather forecaster; Saturdays at 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Susanne Horgan (AMS
    American Meteorological Society
    The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...

     Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekend mornings, and Sundays at 6:30 and 11 p.m.
  • Matt Milosevich - (AMS
    American Meteorological Society
    The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...

     Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekday mornings and noon


Sports team
  • Fred Cowgill - sports director; weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Keith Farmer - sports anchor; weekends at 6:30 and 11 p.m.


Reporters
  • Andy Alcock - City Hall reporter/general assignment
  • Marissa Alter - general assignment reporter
  • Ann Bowdan - general assignment reporter
  • Liz Everman - "Wednesday's Child" feature reporter
  • Eric King - general assignment reporter
  • Duane Pohlman - investigative reporter
  • Maxine Rouben - "Real Deal" consumer reporter
  • Lexy Scheen - traffic reporter
  • Steve Tellier - general assignment reporter
  • Daniel Kemp - general assignment reporter


Hearst Television Washington Bureau
  • Sally Kidd - Washington bureau reporter
  • Nikole Killion - Washington bureau reporter
  • Kate Amara - Washington bureau reporter

  • Laurie Kinney - Washington bureau reporter

Notable former staff

  • Mark Giangreco
    Mark Giangreco
    Mark Giangreco is the sports director and lead sports anchor for WLS-TV in Chicago, Illinois. Giangreco currently anchors the sports segment on ABC7 during the 5pm and 10pm newscasts. -Education and career:...

     - sports anchor (later at WLS-TV Chicago)
  • Dan Lewis
    Dan Lewis (newsreader)
    Dan Lewis is a long-time news presenter and reporter for KOMO-TV, in Seattle, Washington.He came to KOMO-TV in 1987 after working at television station WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., replacing retiring news anchor Jim Harriott. Before that, he had worked at WISN-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...

     - anchor (Currently evening anchor for KOMO-TV
    KOMO-TV
    KOMO-TV, virtual channel 4, is a television station in Seattle, Washington. It is an affiliate of ABC and broadcasts on digital channel 38. KOMO-TV is the flagship station of Fisher Communications, and its studios and offices are co-located with sister radio stations KOMO , KVI , and KPLZ-FM ...

     in Seattle)
  • Tom Mintier
    Tom Mintier
    Tom Mintier is a correspondent for CNN who has covered a number of historic events. , Atlanta Journal ConstitutionIn 1986, Mintier was the only TV broadcaster live on-air when the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred.Sharbutt, Jay...

     - reporter (moved to CNN)
  • Diane Sawyer
    Diane Sawyer
    Lila Diane Sawyer is the current anchor of ABC News' flagship program, ABC World News. Previously, Sawyer had been co-anchor of ABC Newss morning news program, Good Morning America ....

     - got her start at the station (1967-1970; now anchor of ABC
    American Broadcasting Company
    The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

    's World News)


External links

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