WCAU

As a CBS station (1946–January 1995)

In 1946, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin secured a construction permit for channel 10,[1] naming its proposed station WPEN-TV after the newspaper's WPEN radio stations (950 AM), now WKDN, and 98.1 FM, later WCAU-FM and now WOGL. The picture changed dramatically in 1947, when The Philadelphia Record folded.

The Bulletin inherited the Record's "goodwill", along with the rights to buy the radio station WCAU (1210 AM, now WPHT) and the original WCAU-FM (102.9 FM, now WMGK) from their longtime owners, brothers Isaac and Leon Levy. The Bulletin sold the less-powerful WPEN and WCAU-FM, with the latter being renamed WPEN-FM; it is now WMGK. The Bulletin kept its FM station, renaming it WCAU-FM to match its new AM sister. The newspaper also kept its construction permit for channel 10, renaming it WCAU-TV.

WCAU-TV went on the air March 1, 1948, as Philadelphia's third television station with an initial test pattern on Channel 10. It carried its first CBS network show on a "sneak preview" basis on March 3,[2] but the official opening of the station was not until May 23, 1948.[3] It secured an affiliation with CBS through the influence of the Levy brothers, who continued to work for the newspaper as consultants. WCAU radio had been one of CBS' original 16 affiliates when the network launched in 1927. A year later, the Levy brothers persuaded their brother-in-law, William S. Paley, to buy the struggling network. The Levy brothers were shareholders and directors at CBS for many years. Due to this long relationship, channel 10 signed on as CBS's third television affiliate.

In the late 1950s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collapsed northern Delaware, South Jersey, and the Lehigh Valley into the Philadelphia market. The Bulletin realized that channel 10's original tower, atop the PSFS Building in Center City, was not nearly strong enough to serve this larger viewing area. In 1957, WCAU-TV moved to a new 1200 ft tower in Roxborough, which added most of Delaware, the Jersey Shore and the Lehigh Valley to its city-grade coverage.

Also in 1957, the Bulletin formed a limited partnership with the Megargee family, owner of CBS affiliate WGBI-TV (channel 22) in Scranton. As part of the deal, channel 22's call letters were changed to WDAU-TV (WDAU's call letters were changed again to WYOU in 1986). Soon afterward, the FCC ruled that the Bulletin could not keep both stations due to a large signal overlap in the Lehigh Valley. Although the Bulletin had only bought a minority stake in channel 22, the FCC ruled that this stake was so large that the two stations were effectively a duopoly. The Bulletin could not afford to get a waiver to keep both stations, so it opted to keep its stake in WDAU-TV and sell the WCAU stations to CBS. CBS had to seek a waiver to buy the WCAU stations, as the signals of WCAU's AM and television stations overlapped with those of WCBS radio and WCBS-TV in New York City (in the case of the AM outlets, both were clear-channel stations; the FCC at the time usually did not allow common ownership of clear-channel stations with overlapping nighttime coverage areas). However, in its application for a waiver, CBS cited NBC's then-ownership of WRCV-TV in Philadelphia (channel 3, now KYW-TV) and WRCA-TV in New York City (now WNBC). The FCC readily granted the waiver, and CBS took control in 1958.

Switch from CBS to NBC (1994–January 1995)

In July 1994, CBS entered into a long-term affiliation agreement with Westinghouse (Group W) Broadcasting, owners of Philadelphia's longtime NBC affiliate, KYW-TV, and its sister stations in Baltimore (WJZ-TV) and Boston (WBZ-TV). Westinghouse converted all three of those stations into CBS affiliates. CBS was reluctant to include KYW-TV in the deal since it had been a very distant third in the Philadelphia ratings for more than a decade. In contrast, WCAU was a solid runner-up to ABC-owned station WPVI-TV (channel 6). Ultimately, CBS decided to affiliate with channel 3 and sell channel 10, ending a 47-year relationship (including 37 years of ownership) with the station.

NBC and New World Communications then emerged as the leading bidders for WCAU.[4] NBC had wanted to own a station in Philadelphia for many years; for most of the broadcasting era, Philadelphia was the largest market where NBC did not own a station. It briefly succeeded in 1956, when it extorted Westinghouse into exchanging channel 3 (then called WPTZ-TV) and KYW radio for NBC's Cleveland stations, WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television

As an NBC-owned station (January 1995–present)

While KYW-TV's sister stations in Boston and Baltimore 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 capital gains taxes on the proceeds from the deal.[11] To solve this problem, CBS, NBC and Group W entered into a complex ownership and affiliation deal in November 1994. To make the deal for WCAU an even trade, NBC transferred KCNC-TV in Denver and KUTV in Salt Lake City (a station that NBC had only acquired earlier that year) to CBS in exchange; additionally, the NBC and CBS stations in Miami traded broadcasting facilities, with CBS moving to the stronger of the two signals. CBS then traded controlling interest in KCNC and KUTV to Group W in return for a minority stake in KYW-TV. The deal officially took effect on September 10, 1995. Group W's parent, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, purchased CBS two months later, making CBS' Philadelphia radio stations sisters to WCAU-AM/WPHT's longtime rival, KYW radio. The last CBS network program to air on channel 10 was a repeat of Walker, Texas Ranger

Wawa Welcome America

In July 2016, Comcast announced that they would take over as presenting sponsor of the Wawa Welcome America 4th of July festivities, particularly the Philly July 4 Jam and Grand Finale Fireworks; WCAU and WWSI assumed the local broadcast duties beginning in 2016, thus ending 32 years of broadcast rights with ABC owned-and-operated WPVI, while the Philly July 4 Jam concert was also broadcast nationally on VH1. By airing the event, the station preempts the live national NBC telecast of the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks from New York City, though it carries the condensed replay immediately after both ceremonies end.

Sports programming

Analog-to-digital conversion

WCAU signed on its digital signal on December 4, 1998. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 10, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal moved from its pre-transition UHF channel 67 to channel 34 for post-transition digital operations, because ABC affiliate WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, continued broadcasting on channel 10 after ceasing channel 27 analog transmission that day.[54]

Bibliography