KYW-TV

As W3XE (1932–1941)

The channel 3 facility in Philadelphia is Pennsylvania's oldest television station. It began in 1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philadelphia's Philco Corporation, at the time and for some decades to come one of the world's largest manufacturers of radio and television sets. Philco engineers created much of the station's equipment, including cameras. When the station began operations as W3XE, it was based within Philco's production plant, at C and East Tioga streets in North Philadelphia, complete with a small studio and transmitter. In 1941, it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now WNBC) in New York City, becoming NBC's second television affiliate, and creating a link between the station and the network that would last for 54 years.[1]

As WPTZ (1941–1955)

On July 1, 1941, W3XE received a commercial license—the third in the United States, the first outside of New York City, and the first not owned and operated by a network—as WPTZ. The station signed on for the first time on September 1, becoming the first licensed television station in Pennsylvania. Philco then moved WPTZ's studios to the penthouse suite of the Architect's Building, at 17th and Sansom streets in downtown Philadelphia, while retaining master control facilities at the Philco plant. The station originally broadcast from a tower in the Philadelphia suburb of Wyndmoor. It significantly cut back operations after the U.S. entered World War II, but returned to a full schedule in 1945. Channel 3 relocated its entire operation to the Wyndmoor transmitter facility during World War II, when the station aired little programming. It then became one of three stations (along with WNBT and Schenectady, New York's WRGB, now a fellow CBS affiliate) that premiered NBC's regular television service in 1946, although all three stations did share occasional programs just before and during the war. When full broadcasting was resumed, the station reactivated its studio in the Architect's Building, remaining there until 1947. WPTZ then moved into unused space at 1619 Walnut Street in Center City, where KYW radio was housed. What is now KYW-TV has been based in Center City ever since.[2]

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owner of Philadelphia's longtime NBC Radio affiliate KYW, purchased WPTZ in 1953 for a then-record price of $8.5 million.

As an NBC-owned station and change from WPTZ to WRCV-TV (1955–1965)

In May 1955, Westinghouse agreed to trade WPTZ and KYW radio to NBC in exchange for WNBK television and WTAM AM-FM in Cleveland, and $3 million in cash compensation.[4] NBC had long sought an owned-and-operated television station in Philadelphia, the largest market where it did not own a station. It had made several offers over the years for the Philadelphia stations, but Westinghouse declined each time. After being rebuffed by Westinghouse on several occasions, NBC threatened to drop its affiliation from WPTZ and Westinghouse's other NBC television affiliate, WBZ-TV in Boston, unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade.[5] NBC took over operation of WPTZ and KYW in late January 1956;[6] on February 13, 1956, channel 3's call letters were changed to WRCV-TV (in reference to the RCA-Victor record label; KYW radio adopted the WRCV calls as well).[7]

As a Westinghouse station (1965–1995)

On June 16, 1994, Baltimore sister station WJZ-TV lost its affiliation with ABC after that network announced a deal with the E. W. Scripps Company to switch three of Scripps' television stations to ABC; one of the Scripps-owned stations joining ABC was Baltimore's NBC affiliate, WMAR-TV.[19] This deal, which was spurred by an affiliation agreement between Fox and New World Communications, did not sit well with Westinghouse, who felt betrayed by ABC after nearly half a century of loyalty. As a safeguard, Group W intensified a search (which had begun prior to WJZ's affiliation loss) for affiliation deals of its own. Group W eventually struck an agreement to switch KYW-TV, WBZ-TV, and WJZ-TV to CBS (Westinghouse already had two CBS affiliates in its portfolio at the time, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and KPIX-TV in San Francisco). CBS was initially skeptical about including KYW-TV in the deal. While KYW-TV was a poor third, CBS-owned WCAU-TV (channel 10) was a solid runner-up to long-dominant ABC-owned WPVI-TV. However, after Westinghouse offered to sell CBS a minority stake in KYW-TV, CBS agreed to move its affiliation to channel 3 and put channel 10 up for sale.[20]

As a CBS-owned station (1995–present)

NBC wanted to reclaim ownership of KYW-TV, but the affiliation agreement between CBS and Westinghouse took it away from them and forced NBC to own WCAU. Bob Wright, president and CEO of NBC, had the network's ownership of Philadelphia—and specifically KYW—part of the network owning stations in the largest markets as part of the strategic plan to keep NBC as the highest-rated network during the early to mid-1990s.[22][23]

While WJZ-TV and WBZ-TV switched to CBS in January 1995, the swap was delayed in Philadelphia when CBS discovered that an outright sale of channel 10 would have forced it to pay massive taxes on the proceeds from the deal.[24] To solve this problem, CBS, NBC and Group W entered into a complex ownership/affiliation deal in late 1994. NBC traded KCNC-TV in Denver and KUTV in Salt Lake City (which NBC had acquired earlier that year) to CBS in return for WCAU, which for legal reasons would be an even trade. CBS then traded controlling interest in KCNC and KUTV to Group W in return for a minority stake in KYW-TV. As compensation for the loss of stations, NBC

Past program preemptions and deferrals

Despite its status as NBC's largest affiliate, KYW-TV spent much of the thirty years that followed the 1965 trade reversal preempting many NBC programs, choosing to air local or syndicated programming instead. The production arm of Westinghouse Broadcasting was partially responsible for the preemptions, as channel 3 (along with its sister stations in the Group W chain) aired shows produced and syndicated by Group W, such as The Mike Douglas Show (whose production moved from Cleveland to the Walnut Street studio in Philadelphia in 1965, and then taped at Independence Mall East until 1978), The David Frost Show and the Westinghouse franchise Evening Magazine (which was broadcast on non-Westinghouse owned stations airing their own versions of the latter show as PM Magazine). The network programs affected by the preemptions were usually lower-rated daytime game shows, soap operas, or reruns of prime time programs with an average of two hours per day. At one point, in the fall of 1980, KYW-TV preempted NBC's entire morning schedule after the Today show. Over the years, NBC contracted independent stations WPHL-TV, WTAF-TV/WTXF-TV, WKBS-TV, and WGTW-TV to air programs preempted by channel 3; most of the preempted programs aired on WMGM-TV, which served as the NBC affiliate for Atlantic City until 2014.

2008 Lane and Mendte firings

In January 2008, 6 and 11 p.m. news anchor Alycia Lane was fired weeks after she was arrested in New York City the month prior for hitting a female police officer and calling her a "dyke".[69] The firing came as a result of the arrest being the second incident that Lane was involved in within a year. A previous incident in May 2007 saw Lane be penalized after it was learned that she had sent a photo of herself in a bikini via the station's email to her friend, NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen. The email only came to light due to the revelation that the account it was sent to was one Eisen shares with his wife Suzy Shuster.[70]

In June 2008, 6 and 11 p.m. news anchor Larry Mendte, who was Alycia Lane's co-anchor until her firing five months earlier, was himself fired from the station after police conducted a raid of his home and seized his computers due to an investigation by both law enforcement authorities and CBS 3. The investigation revealed that he had hacked Lane's email account at the station and had not only been secretly reading thousands of Lane's emails from her account during and after her employment at the station on multiple occasions, but also passing them on to gossip columnists.

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed: {{legend|#DFEBF6|Broadcast on behalf of another station}}

Digital subchannel 3.2, branded as CBS Philly Plus, was launched in November 2011 as a 24-hour news channel drawing upon the resources of KYW-TV, KYW radio (1060 AM), WPHT (1210 AM), and WIP (610 AM and 94.1 FM). The Plus service was eventually planned to be rolled out to CBS' other owned-and-operated stations, but only KYW-TV and WCBS-TV in New York City added Plus channel services.[88]

On October 21, 2014, CBS and Weigel Broadcasting announced the launch of a new digital subchannel service called Decades, scheduled to launch on all CBS-owned stations in 2015, including on KYW-TV on channel 3.2.[89] On January 16, 2015, Decades started after eight minutes of a test pattern that occurred first with the CBS Philly Plus ticker and then one minute later with a test pattern without the CBS Philly Plus ticker. On September 3, 2018, Decades was replaced by Start TV.