WKTV

History[edit]

The station launched on December 1, 1949, as Utica's first television station, operating on very high frequency (VHF) channel 13. It was the 93rd television station in the United States to sign on. This made Utica one of the smallest cities in the nation with a television station. It was owned by Copper City Broadcasting Corporation,^[2] controlled by Myron Kallet, along with WKAL (1450 AM).^[3] As the only station in its area, it was affiliated with all four major networks at the time: NBC,^[4] DuMont,^[5] ABC,^[2] and CBS, with NBC being its primary affiliation. It lost DuMont in 1956 following the network's closure, and lost CBS soon afterward following a dispute with the network; after that, WHEN-TV/WTVH in Syracuse served as the default CBS affiliate for the Utica area until 2015.


The station was a major beneficiary of a quirk in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s plan for allocating stations. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available and 69 UHF channels (later reduced to 55 in 1983). The VHF bands were more desirable because they carried longer distances and many television receivers lacked optional UHF tuners. Since there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced.


After the FCC's Sixth Report and Order ended the license freeze and opened the UHF band in 1952, it devised a plan for allocating VHF licenses. Under this plan, almost all of the country would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one noncommercial channel. Most of the rest of the country ("1/2") would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas would be designated as "UHF islands" since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" represented non-commercial educational stations, and "1/2" became ABC (which was the weakest network usually winding up with the UHF allocation where no VHF was available).


However, Utica was sandwiched between Albany, New York (channels 4 (later 6) and 10, later joined by 13) to the east, Syracuse (channels 3, 5, and 9) to the west, Binghamton (channel 12) to the south, and Watertown (channel 7) and Burlington–Plattsburgh (channels 3 and 5) to the north. This resulted in the Utica market having only one VHF license; WKTV was fortunate enough to gain that license, and as a result remained the only television station based in Utica for its first 21 years of existence. Although there were no allocations of channels 2, 8, and 11 in the immediate area, channel 2 was occupied in Buffalo, channel 11 was occupied in New York City, and channel 8 was occupied in New Haven and later Rochester, which were all too close to Utica to reallocate at the time.


In 1951, a young local radio announcer named Dick Clark joined the staff at WKTV. He quickly gathered a loyal following. Clark's father was the manager of Utica radio station WRUN (1150 AM, later to become WUTI and shut down in 2013; and 104.3 FM, now WFRG-FM), and his son wanted to avoid the name recognition factor. To avoid confusion, the younger Clark became known on-air as "Dick Clay". Eventually, Clark would anchor the weeknight newscasts on WKTV (replacing Robert Earle, who would later host the GE College Bowl).^[6] In 1952, Clark departed WKTV for WFIL AM-FM-TV in Philadelphia.


In 1958, Kallet sold WKTV and WKAL to a group led by Paul Harron and Gordon Gray, who had previously owned WIBG AM-FM in Philadelphia and WPFH in Wilmington, Delaware.^[7] Soon afterward, on January 1, 1959, WKTV moved to VHF channel 2 in a dial realignment, which allowed WTRI (channel 35) in Albany to move to channel 13 (where it became WAST, now WNYT), and (along with the earlier move of a channel 13 allocation in Hamilton, Ontario to channel 11, becoming CHCH-TV) led to a channel 13 allocation being assigned to Rochester (which signed on in 1962 as WOKR and is now WHAM-TV). With the switch, WKTV upgraded its signal and began to cover a fairly wide area stretching from as far south as the Catskill Mountains, as far east as The Berkshires in Western Massachusetts and into Southern Ontario, Canada. The Harron/Gray group, Mid-New York Broadcasting, sold WKAL in 1961, but retained WKTV,^[8] and in subsequent years acquired several additional stations, including KAUZ-TV in Wichita Falls, Texas, and WMTW-FM-TV on Mount Washington, New Hampshire.^[9] Harron also operated a chain of cable systems in the Northeastern United States, including a system in Utica, Central New York Cable TV (later Harron Cable TV) built in 1963.^[9][10] The company eventually became known as Harron Communications Corporation.^[10]


WKTV enjoyed a monopoly in the Utica television market until February 28, 1970, when WUTR signed on as an ABC affiliate. WKTV then became affiliated solely with NBC, and is now one of the network's longest-serving affiliates. In the mid-1980s, the FCC ruled on cross-ownership of broadcast, cable and print media in the same market. The FCC grandfathered Harron. A few years later Harron acquired a cable system in nearby Canajoharie, New York, then owned by a local appliance dealer. The Canajoharie plant extended well within a 20-mile (32 km) contour of WKTV's Middleville transmitter site. The FCC revoked Harron's grandfather status and required divestiture of either its cable or television assets in the region. In 1992, Harron sold controlling interest in WKTV to Smith Broadcasting (the cable system was later sold to Adelphia and is now part of Charter Communications). In 2004, Boston Ventures, acquired the Smith Broadcasting stations, and formed Smith Media, LLC, after founder Bob Smith died in 2003.^[11]


WKTV has been broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 29 since May 2006 and in high definition starting with the 2008 Summer Olympics. The station signed off its analog signal on February 18, 2009, and began broadcasting exclusively in digital. This left some viewers without a reachable signal and others looking for an outdoor UHF antenna. To continue serving those areas, WKTV began simulcasting its weekday newscasts at noon and 5 p.m. on WUTQ (1550 AM, now WUSP) and WADR (1480 AM, now WRCK). In May 2011, the radio stations began simulcasting the second hour of WKTV's weekday morning show. On March 16, 2012, WUTQ-FM (100.7 FM), then simulcasting WUTQ/WRCK, began simulcasting the newscasts. WUTQ/WRCK broke from the simulcast later that year when WUTQ-FM owner Ken Roser sold the stations to Good Guys Broadcasting Corporation. WUTQ-FM continues to simulcast WKTV's 5 p.m. newscast and its weekday morning show; however, it now simulcasts the first hour due to an expansion of its popular morning talk show Talk Of The Town.^[12]


Due to an ongoing retransmission dispute, Time Warner Cable replaced WKTV with fellow NBC affiliate WBRE-TV from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on December 16, 2010.^[13] WKTV-DT2 was also dropped and eventually replaced by HBO Family. On the same date, rival WUTR began to be seen in the Burlington, Vermont–Plattsburgh, New York, market on Time Warner Cable after sister station WVNY was dropped for the same reason. Nexstar Broadcasting Group, owner of WBRE, and Mission Broadcasting (a broadcaster whose stations are operated by Nexstar), owner of WUTR, opposed the use of their stations as replacement programming and requested the Time Warner Cable franchise for the affected regions be revoked. WKTV and Time Warner reached an agreement, the terms of which both sides refused to reveal, on January 8, 2011, allowing WKTV and the CW subchannel to return to the cable system the next day. (Ironically, WVNY would later be sold to Mission Broadcasting, making it a sister station to WUTR.)^[14]


On October 1, 2013, Smith Media reached a deal to sell WKTV to Heartland Media, a newly-formed company owned by former Gray Television executive Bob Prather.^[15] The sale was completed on March 20, 2014.^[16] WKTV launched a third digital subchannel eight months later on November 10, carrying programming from MeTV.