WPSG
Encyclopedia
WPSG, channel 57, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. WPSG is owned by the CBS Corporation
CBS Corporation
CBS Corporation is an American media conglomerate focused on commercial broadcasting, publishing, billboards and television production, with most of its operations in the United States. The President and CEO of the company is Leslie Moonves. Sumner Redstone, owner of National Amusements, is CBS's...

 and is the east coast flagship station for the CW Television Network, which is owned jointly by CBS and Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

. WPSG shares a studio and office facility with sister station KYW-TV
KYW-TV
KYW-TV, virtual channel 3, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. KYW-TV shares a studio facility with its sister station, CW flagship WPSG just north of Center City Philadelphia...

 (channel 3) in Center City Philadelphia, and WPSG's transmitter is located in the Roxborough
Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Roxborough is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of the United States city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to...

 section of Philadelphia. By market size, WPSG is the largest CW owned-station(since CBS is part owner of The CW network).

Subscription TV

The channel 57 frequency was originally assigned to Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Northampton County....

. In the 1950s it was home to WGLV-TV, a dual 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...

-DuMont
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...

 affiliate owned by the Easton Express newspaper. Unfortunately, the station struggled to get an audience mainly because it was a UHF station at a time when television manufacturers were not required to offer UHF tuners. Its fate was sealed when 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...

 collapsed the Lehigh Valley
Lehigh Valley
The Lehigh Valley, known officially by the United States Census Bureau as the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ metropolitan area and referred to locally as The Valley and A-B-E, is a metropolitan region consisting of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, and Carbon counties in eastern Pennsylvania and...

 into the Philadelphia market. The Philadelphia stations built tall towers in Philadelphia's hilly Roxborough
Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Roxborough is a neighborhood in the Northwest Philadelphia section of the United States city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is bordered to the southwest, along the Schuylkill River, by the neighborhood of Manayunk, along the northeast by the Wissahickon Creek section of Fairmount Park, and to...

 neighborhood, adding Easton and the rest of the Lehigh Valley to their city-grade coverage. WGLV went dark soon afterward, and somewhere along the line the FCC reassigned channel 57 to Philadelphia.

Channel 57 first signed on the air as a Philadelphia station on June 15, 1981 as WWSG-TV, named for station founder William S. Gross. The station aired Financial News Network
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

 programming during the day and SelecTV
SelecTV USA
SelecTV was a subscription television service formed in 1976, and first broadcasting in 1978 The service focused entirely on televising movies, and ended in 1991...

 subscription television at night. The station ultimately dropped the FNN feed when it decided to switch to a full-time subscription format eighteen months later, picking up the now-defunct PRISM pay-cable service (a forerunner to Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia
Comcast SportsNet
Comcast SportsNet is a group of regional sports networks in the United States primarily owned by the Comcast cable television company....

) in 1983.

Independent station

In April 1985, Gross sold channel 57 to Milton Grant
Grant Broadcasting System II
Based in Roanoke, Virginia, Grant Broadcasting System II is an owner of various television stations in the United States....

, who immediately purchased an inventory of strong programming. Many of these shows were Viacom-syndicated programs that were formerly on WKBS-TV
WKBS-TV (Philadelphia)
WKBS-TV was an independent television station licensed to Burlington, New Jersey, which served the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area from 1965 to 1983. WKBS-TV had studio facilities located in South Philadelphia, and transmitter at the Roxborough tower farm in Philadelphia.-History:WKBS-TV began...

 (channel 48) before that station went off the air in August 1983. On October 13, 1985, Grant relaunched the station as WGBS-TV, a general-entertainment station with a typical mix of cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas, and sports. Westerns also aired several hours a day on weekends.

Under Grant, WGBS adopted a very slick on-air look, even by major-market independent standards. The station boldly branded itself as Philly 57, and also used CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...

 graphics of near network-quality. The station's announcer, Kim Martin (then an announcer at WPEN
WPEN (AM)
WPEN is an AM radio station broadcast on 950 kHz. The station is licensed to Philadelphia and serves that market. WPEN is owned and operated by Greater Media and offers a Sports Talk format. The station is known as "950 ESPN"-The Early Years:...

 radio), offered bold, brash, and entertaining voice-overs. WGBS' sister stations, WBFS-TV
WBFS-TV
WBFS-TV is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station for South Florida that is licensed to Miami. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 32 from a transmitter in Miramar. Owned by the CBS Corporation, the station is sister to CBS affiliate WFOR-TV and the two share...

 in Miami and WGBO-TV
WGBO-TV
WGBO-DT, channel 66, is the Univision owned and operated station licensed to Joliet, Illinois, United States. Its studios are in Chicago. WGBO offers a Spanish programming format featuring news, talk shows, dramas, movies, and other Spanish-language programming.-History:Channel 66 signed on in...

 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, adopted a similar look.

Early on, the new channel 57 competed with WRBV-TV/WSJT (channel 65, now WUVP) in Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 60,724...

 to fill the void left by WKBS's departure two years earlier. However, channel 65 suffered from a poor signal in the northern portion of the market. At the same time, channel 57 became the broadcast home of the NHL
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...

's Philadelphia Flyers
Philadelphia Flyers
The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional ice hockey team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...

, remaining the hockey team's broadcast TV home until the 2008-09 season (except for a brief period from 1993 to 1998, when the Flyers aired on WPHL-TV
WPHL-TV
WPHL-TV, channel 17, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned by the Tribune Company and currently affiliated with the News Corporation-owned MyNetworkTV television network. This makes it the largest non-O&O station of the network...

). Additionally, Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...

-based WTGI (channel 61, now WPPX
WPPX
WPPX-TV is the Ion Television network affiliate for the Philadelphia area, broadcasting on digital channel 31. It is owned and operated by ION Media Networks, formerly Paxson Communications...

) signed on in the summer of 1986 as a general entertainment station, but its schedule was composed largely of low-budget programs. At the end of 1986, WSJT's owners, the Asbury Park Press
Asbury Park Press
The Asbury Park Press is a daily newspaper in Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey and has the third largest circulation in the state...

,
conceded and sold the station to the Home Shopping Network
Home Shopping Network
Home Shopping Network or HSN began in 1977 as a 24-hour/7 day a week home shopping television network televised via cable, satellite, and some terrestrial channels in the Philippines. HSN can also be shopped online at hsn.com...

 while other stations picked up some of WSJT's syndicated shows. Also, WTGI switched to a format featuring paid programming and religious shows in January 1987. By then, WGBS had clearly established itself as the third independent in Philadelphia.

WGBS prospered even in the midst of a battle for its survival—and that of its owner. Grant had hoped to have his stations become regional or national superstation
Superstation
Superstation in United States television can have several meanings. In its most precise meaning, a superstation is defined by the Federal Communications Commission as "A television broadcast station, other than a network station, licensed by the FCC that is secondarily transmitted by a satellite...

s. In his bid to boost his stations' status, Grant wound up overpaying for programming. He soon became so badly overextended that he filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 1986. Under the bankruptcy deal, WGBS cut back on the number of runs they had on each show causing shows to be seen less. Still, in 1989, Grant Broadcasting was forced into receivership after the company failed to meet the terms of its bankruptcy agreement. Combined Broadcasting, a creditor-controlled holding company, took control of the former Grant stations. Combined put the stations up for sale in 1993, but it would be two years before Combined found a buyer, and only then in a roundabout way.

UPN

In early 1994, Viacom's newly-acquired subsidiary, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

, announced plans to form the United Paramount Network
UPN
United Paramount Network was a television network that was broadcast in over 200 markets in the United States from 1995 to 2006. UPN was originally owned by Viacom/Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries, the former of which, through the Paramount Television Group, produced most of the network's...

, a joint venture with Chris-Craft Industries
Chris-Craft Industries
Chris-Craft Industries, Inc., formerly National Automotive Fibers, Inc., was a publicly-held American corporation traded on the New York and Pacific Stock Exchanges. It later took on the name of one of its acquisitions, Chris-Craft Boats...

. In Philadelphia, Viacom owned Fox
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...

 affiliate WTXF-TV
WTXF-TV
WTXF-TV, virtual channel 29 , is an owned-and-operated station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

. Channel 29 was the biggest station in the Paramount Stations Group
Paramount Stations Group
Paramount Stations Group was a television broadcasting company that was renamed from the TVX Broadcast Group in 1991 after Paramount Pictures gained full ownership of the group. At the time, it owned several Fox affiliates and independent stations...

, and as such it was a foregone conclusion that the station would switch to UPN. Although there was no official word that WTXF was about to change networks, Fox received enough unofficial indications that it made a tentative deal with Combined to buy WGBS and move its programming there.

However, later that year, Westinghouse Broadcasting
Westinghouse Broadcasting
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndication....

, owners of 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...

-affiliated KYW-TV, cut a deal with CBS to switch channel 3 and two of Westinghouse's other stations to CBS. New World Communications
New World Communications
New World Pictures was an independent motion picture and television production company, and later television station owner in the United States from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s...

 had recently partnered with Fox in most markets, and emerged as a candidate to purchase CBS' longtime owned-and-operated WCAU-TV (channel 10). Fox then canceled its preliminary deal with Combined to buy channel 57 and entered into the WCAU bidding just in case New World's offer either fell through or in case New World chose to affiliate WCAU with NBC. However, NBC and CBS opted to make a complicated multi-market station swap which gave WCAU to NBC. Viacom then opted to sell WTXF to Fox. Using the cash received from Fox for channel 29, Viacom then bought WGBS and its Miami sister station, WBFS-TV. This deal effectively resulted in Viacom buying out its partners' stakes in Combined Broadcasting. As soon as the deal was announced, Viacom announced both stations would join UPN. Ironically, of course, Viacom had been the owner of the majority of channel 57's schedule back in 1985, and in fact was one of Grant's former creditors and a part-owner of Combined. Grant had been under particularly strong pressure to repay his debt to Viacom prior to filing bankruptcy.

WGBS became Philadelphia's UPN station on January 16, 1995; the day the network was launched. After UPN launched, the station's image changed to fit its new status as an O&O. The on-air name changed to UPN Philly 57, and finally UPN 57, the graphics got simpler, and Martin was replaced by the more staid Larry Van Nuys. The UPN 57 branding was kept for the remainder of the network's run, save for one exception: when UPN launched its new logo and identity in 2002, WPSG's on-air branding was changed to simply UPN. This lasted exactly one season, and by fall of 2003 it was back to UPN 57.

Viacom officially became sole owner of WGBS on August 25, 1995, the same day Fox closed on its purchase of WTXF. On December 11 of that year, Viacom changed the call letters to WPSG, for "Paramount Stations Group." The station very slowly began phasing out the old sitcoms, such as I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

, The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners
The Honeymooners is an American situation comedy television show, based on a recurring 1951–'55 sketch of the same name. It originally aired on the DuMont network's Cavalcade of Stars and subsequently on the CBS network's The Jackie Gleason Show hosted by Jackie Gleason, and filmed before a live...

, Archie Bunker's Place
Archie Bunker's Place
Archie Bunker's Place is an American sitcom originally broadcast on the CBS network, conceived in 1979 as a spin-off and continuation of All in the Family. While not as popular as its predecessor, the show maintained a large enough audience to last for four seasons, until its cancellation in 1983...

, All in the Family
All in the Family
All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, a new show, Archie Bunker's Place, picked up where All in the Family had ended...

, Grace Under Fire
Grace Under Fire
Grace Under Fire is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from September 1993 to February 1998. The show starred Brett Butler, and was the highest rated new comedy of the 1993–1994 season.- Premise of show :...

, Charles in Charge
Charles in Charge
Charles in Charge is an American sitcom series which starred Scott Baio as Charles, a 19-year-old student at the fictional Copeland College in New Jersey, who worked as a live-in babysitter in exchange for room and board...

, California Dreams
California Dreams
California Dreams is an American teen-oriented sitcom that aired from 1992 to 1996 on Saturday mornings during NBC's TNBC programming block. It was created by writers Brett Dewey and Ronald B. Solomon and executive produced by Peter Engel, all known for their work on Saved by the...

, Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell is an American television sitcom that aired between 1989 and 1993. The series is a retooled version of the 1988 series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which was itself later folded into the history of Saved by the Bell...

, Step by Step, Full House
Full House
Full House is an American sitcom television series. Set in San Francisco, the show chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner, who, after the death of his wife, enlists his best friend Joey Gladstone and his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis to help raise his three daughters, D.J., Stephanie, and...

, Sister, Sister
Sister, Sister
Sister, Sister may refer to:* Sister, Sister , a TV movie starring Diahann Carroll* Sister, Sister , a thriller starring Eric Stoltz* Sister, Sister , by Andrew Neiderman...

, Martin
Martin (TV series)
Martin is an American sitcom produced by HBO Independent Productions that aired for five seasons, from August 27, 1992 to May 1, 1997 on Fox...

, Living Single
Living Single
Living Single is an American television sitcom which aired for five seasons on the Fox network from August 29, 1993 to January 1, 1998. The show centered on the lives of six friends who share personal and professional experiences while living in a Brooklyn brownstone.Throughout its run, Living...

, Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son is an American sitcom, based on the BBC's Steptoe and Son, that ran on the NBC television network from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977....

, Good Times
Good Times
Good Times is an American sitcom that originally aired from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979, on the CBS television network. It was created by Eric Monte and Michael Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer...

, The Nanny
The Nanny
Nanny may refer to:* Nanny, a child's caregiver* A grandmother * A Cajun word for godmother * A female goat* Nanny , a 1981–83 British drama series starring Wendy Craig* Nanny of the Maroons...

, The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...

, and cartoons, such as Pokémon
Pokémon (anime)
, abbreviated from , is a children's TV anime series, which has since been adapted for the North and South American, Australian and European television markets...

, The Wacky World of Tex Avery
The Wacky World of Tex Avery
The Wacky World of Tex Avery is a cartoon television show produced by DiC Entertainment in 1997 and 1998.-Production:The series was named after Tex Avery, a cartoonist who is most famous for his work at Warner Bros. and MGM...

, and Sailor Moon in favor of first run syndicated talk/reality/court shows, such as Forgive or Forget
Forgive or Forget
Forgive or Forget is an American talk show aired in national syndication from June 1998 to May 2000. The original host of the show was Mother Love, but she was replaced with former Head of the Class actress Robin Givens for the series' third and last season.The premise of the show involved people...

, The Jenny Jones Show
The Jenny Jones Show
The Jenny Jones Show is an American syndicated daytime tabloid talk show that was hosted by comedian/actress/singer Jenny Jones. It was produced by Telepictures and was distributed by Warner Bros. Television Distribution...

, and Judge Mathis
Judge Mathis
Judge Mathis is a syndicated television legal reality show produced originally by Black Pearl Productions. In 2008, it entered its tenth season produced by AND Syndicated Productions and Telepictures. It is taped at NBC Tower in Chicago, but includes cases and litigants from other U.S....

. Viacom bought CBS in 2000, and WPSG later moved into KYW-TV's studios on Independence Mall
Independence National Historical Park
Independence National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in Philadelphia that preserves several sites associated with the American Revolution and the nation's founding history. Administered by the National Park Service, the park comprises much of the downtown historic...

. In the same year Viacom also purchased Chris-Craft's 50-percent share of UPN, making WPSG UPN's largest owned-and-operated station.

In recent years, WPSG has tried to reposition itself as more of a local station, using the slogan So Philly, So You! (spelled as So Philly, So U! during the waning days of its UPN run). Weekend movie marathons, usually hosted by local personalities (or KYW/WPSG staff like Sean Murphy), have become normal, and the station recently broadcast the Philadelphia version of "Gimme the Mike!", a competition for aspiring singers. In recent years, WPSG has become Philadelphia's leading sports station. Since the late 1990s, it has acquired over-the-air rights to MLB
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...

's Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...

 and the NBA
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...

's Philadelphia 76ers
Philadelphia 76ers
The Philadelphia 76ers are a professional basketball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association . Originally known as the Syracuse Nationals, they are one of the oldest franchises in the NBA...

 in addition to its long-standing coverage of the Flyers (although the majority of those teams' games are on Comcast SportsNet). However, in November 2008, Phillies games moved to WPHL.

When Viacom and CBS Corporation split in 2005, WPSG became part of the latter company, along with the rest of Viacom's broadcasting interests.

The CW

On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB
The WB Television Network
The WB Television Network is a former television network in the United States that was launched on January 11, 1995 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros...

 networks announced they would merge into a single network called CW Television Network, to be owned jointly by CBS and the Warner Bros. Television
Warner Bros. Television
Warner Bros. Television is the television production arm of Warner Bros. Entertainment, itself part of Time Warner. Alongside CBS Television Studios, it serves as a television production arm of The CW Television Network , though it also produces shows for other networks, such as Shameless on...

 unit of Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

. As part of the deal, the new network signed a 10-year affiliation contract with 11 of CBS' UPN stations, including WPSG. Channel 57 was the largest UPN station to join the new network. However, it would not have been an upset had WPHL, Philadelphia's WB station, been chosen instead. The new network's officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations, and Philadelphia was one of the few markets where the UPN and WB stations were both relatively strong. Since Tribune has no ownership stake in the CW, WPSG is reckoned as the network's East Coast flagship.

WPSG continued to carry UPN programming until September 15, 2006. The CW commenced operations on September 18, 2006.

While the Philly 57 branding was removed in 1995, it had been so effective that many still call the station by that name today. It is probably for this reason that, in a surprising move, WPSG announced in the summer of 2006 that it would revive the old Philly 57 moniker as part of the station's new branding, CW Philly 57, although on-air promotions refer to the station as CW Philly. In addition, WPSG would continue to broadcast Phillies, Flyers and Sixers games, a move that had been uncertain after the station became a CW affiliate.

On April 2, 2007, WPSG and sister station KYW-TV relocated to new studios at 1555 Hamilton Street in Philadelphia, near the Community College of Philadelphia
Community College of Philadelphia
The Community College of Philadelphia is a community college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The main campus is located at 1700 Spring Garden Street in a building that was the former Philadelphia Mint...

.

Digital television

As part of the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, WPSG shut down its analog transmitter on June 12, 2009, and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel 32. However, 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 WPSG'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 57.

News operation

In September 2002, KYW radio
KYW (AM)
KYW is a class A AM radio station on 1060 kHz licensed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. KYW is owned by the CBS Radio unit of CBS Corporation, and has broadcasted an all-news format since 1965. The station's studios are located on Market Street in Center City Philadelphia, and it transmitters...

 and KYW-TV launched a weekday morning news program called KYW NewsRadio This Morning on WPSG. Originally anchored by KYW anchor Beth Trapani, the broadcast was essentially an embellished radio newscast with simple graphics and video borrowed from KYW-TV. Trapani was succeeded by Ed Abrams who gave way in turn to Lesley Van Arsdall. The news did surprisingly better than expected but the effort would be short-lived. The show aired its final broadcast on May 30, 2005. The following day, a new program called WakeUPNews, produced by Traffic Pulse, premiered in the four-hour time slot previously held by KYW NewsRadio This Morning. The newscast carried on into WSPG's affiliation with The CW, adopting new graphics on September 18, 2006 and de-emphasizing the spacing in the name which formed a reference to its former affiliation, becoming simply Wake Up News.

To compete with WPHL-TV and WTXF-TV, KYW-TV began to produce a 10:00 P.M. newscast for WPSG on February 2, 2009, Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly. This partnership would extend into the mornings, as on June 29, 2009, Wake Up News was canceled and replaced with a two-hour extension of KYW-TV's Eyewitness News This Morning.

Newscasts

Eyewitness News This Morning (weekday mornings 7-9 a.m.)
  • Anchors:
    • Ukee Washington
    • Erika Von Tiehl
  • Weather:
    • Kate Bilo
  • Traffic:
    • Bob Kelly
  • "Morning Chatter":
    • Nicole Brewer


Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly (10-10:30 p.m.)
  • Anchors:
    • Susan Barnett
    • Dave Huddleston
  • Weather:
    • Kathy Orr
  • Sports:
    • Beasley Reece
      Beasley Reece
      Beasley Young Reece, Jr. was an American football defensive back with a nine year NFL career from 1976 to 1984...



Weekends
  • Anchor:
    • Natasha Brown
  • Weather:
    • Justin Drabick
  • Sports:
    • Lesley Van Arsdall

(WPSG features additional news personnel from KYW-TV
KYW-TV
KYW-TV, virtual channel 3, is an owned and operated television station of the CBS Television Network, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. KYW-TV shares a studio facility with its sister station, CW flagship WPSG just north of Center City Philadelphia...

.)

Newscast titles

  • KYW NewsRadio This Morning (2002–2005)
  • WakeUPNews (2005–2009; stylized as Wake Up News from 2006–2009)
  • Eyewitness News at 10 on The CW Philly (2009–present)
  • Eyewitness News This Morning (extension of KYW-TV morning newscast; 2009–present)

Station slogans

  • Philly's Own Super Station (1985–1994)
  • So Philly, So You! (1999–2002)
  • So Philly, So U! (2002–2006)
  • TV to Talk About (2009–present; localized version of CW network slogan)


Out of market coverage

Unlike WTXF and WPHL, WPSG is carried in fewer places in central New Jersey.

In Warren County, it is carried in Phillipsburg.

In Hunterdon and Somerset counties, WPSG is on Comcast (formerly Patriot Media) analog channel 17. It's also carried in Lambertville and Frenchtown on a different Comcast provider. This also includes KYW and the other Philadelphia locals.

In Middlesex County, it was carried on Comcast (formerly Storer) of Central New Jersey's analog channel 22. After its launch as WGBS "Philly 57" in 1985 until January 2007, it was moved to digital cable channel 254 to preserve bandwidth. KYW returned to the Comcast of Central New Jersey line up on digital channel 256 after a 14 year absence in December 2007.

In Monmouth and Ocean Counties, WPSG is carried on Comcast Cable on channel 254 in Ocean County. It is not available to Cablevision customers in Lakewood, Seaside Heights in Ocean County and southern Monmouth County, even though Cablevision carries other Philadelphia stations on these systems. Allentown in extreme western Monmouth County carries WPSG (and all Philadelphia/New York locals) on Cablevision that's based out of Hamilton, Mercer County.

DirecTV and Dish Network do not carry any Philadelphia stations in any area outside the Philadelphia market.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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