WKYC
WKYC (channel 3) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way (a section of Lakeside Avenue in Downtown Cleveland named after the station's longtime political reporter who retired in 2016),[2][3] and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.
For the television station in Philadelphia that currently uses the callsign formerly used by WKYC, see KYW-TV.
- Cleveland–Akron, Ohio
- United States
- Cleveland–Akron, Ohio
- United States
WKYC Studios, 3 News
- 3.1: NBC
- for others, see § Subchannels
- Tegna Inc.
- (WKYC-TV, LLC)
October 31, 1948
- WNBK (1948–1956)
- KYW-TV (1956–1965)
- WKYC-TV (1965–2009)
- Analog: 4 (VHF, 1948–1954), 3 (VHF, 1954–2009)
- Digital: 2 (VHF, 1999–2009), 17 (UHF, 2009–2019)
Nod to previous KYW-TV call sign
73195
1,000 kW
307.1 m (1,008 ft)
History[edit]
Early years[edit]
The station first signed on the air on October 31, 1948, as WNBK, broadcasting on VHF channel 4. It was the second television station in Cleveland to debut, ten months after WEWS-TV (channel 5), and was the fourth of NBC's five original owned-and-operated stations to sign on, three weeks after WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV) in Chicago. WNBK was a sister station to WTAM radio (1100 AM), which had been owned by NBC since 1930. Although there was then no coaxial cable connection to New York City, AT&T had just installed a cable connection between WNBK, WNBQ, WSPD-TV (now WTVG) in Toledo, KSTP-TV in St. Paul, Minnesota, and KSD-TV (now KSDK) in St. Louis, creating NBC's Midwest Network. WNBK became one of the originators of programming for the regional network, along with WNBQ. Two days after signing on, on November 2, WNBK transmitted its coverage of the Truman/Dewey election results to the NBC Midwest Network. On January 11, 1949, WNBK began carrying NBC's New York-originated programming live via a cable connection to Philadelphia.[4]
As a result of frequency reallocations resulting from the Federal Communications Commission's 1952 Sixth Report and Order,[5] WNBK was moved to channel 3, swapping frequencies with fellow NBC affiliate WLWC (now WCMH-TV) in Columbus to alleviate same-channel interference with another NBC station, WWJ-TV (now WDIV-TV) across Lake Erie in Detroit. After construction was completed on the station's new transmitter in Parma,[6] the channel switch took place on April 25, 1954.[7][8]
Programming[edit]
Local programming[edit]
Under Westinghouse's ownership, KYW-TV launched Barnaby, a children's program which starred Linn Sheldon as the title character. The show premiered in 1956 and was an immediate hit, running on weekday afternoons for ten years. In 1961, channel 3 originated a local 90-minute weekday daytime variety talk show with former band singer Mike Douglas, which went up against WEWS' One O'Clock Club. Quickly eclipsing the competition, The Mike Douglas Show became so popular that Westinghouse decided to carry the program on its other stations in 1963, and eventually to syndicate the program nationwide. WKYC-TV continued to air The Mike Douglas Show for many years after both the host and the program moved to Philadelphia, where it remained until 1978. Westinghouse also took the Eyewitness News name and format with it from Cleveland to Philadelphia; it would later return to Cleveland, being used on WEWS from 1972 to 1990.
One show that made the jump from Philadelphia to Cleveland was the award-winning documentary series Montage, produced and directed by Dennis Goulden. This nationally acclaimed series of over 250 episodes investigated the issues and lifestyles of the Cleveland community during the 1960s and 1970s.
On July 1, 2011, WKYC became Cleveland's television outlet for the Ohio Lottery's daily drawings, as well as its Saturday night game show Cash Explosion; the rights returned to the lottery's former longtime broadcaster WEWS-TV (which had carried the drawings from the early 1970s until WKYC assumed the rights) on July 1, 2013.[32][33]
Past programming preemptions and deferrals[edit]
Two NBC programs were notably excluded from the schedule of channel 3 under Westinghouse ownership: The Tonight Show, which was reformatted after original host Steve Allen's departure as the short-lived Tonight! America After Dark, was dropped by channel 3 in June 1957 and replaced with a late-night movie following the 11 p.m. newscast. NBC revived Tonight with Jack Paar as host in July of that year, but KYW-TV continued with its own programming, which also included the Westinghouse-produced-and-syndicated (new) Steve Allen, Regis Philbin, and Merv Griffin programs. The Paar-hosted Tonight Show would not be seen in Cleveland until October 1957, when NBC agreed to terms with WEWS to carry the program. KYW-TV also did not carry NBC's early-evening newscast, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, for exactly one year comprising the 1959-1960 television season. As with The Tonight Show, WEWS also ran this program.[34] Also during this period, WFMJ-TV (channel 21) out of Youngstown was the nearest full-time NBC station to Cleveland. Many were able to receive WFMJ with a good antenna and UHF converter at that time. The Tonight Show returned to WKYC-TV's schedule in February 1966, after airing on WEWS during channel 3's Westinghouse years.
In March 2013, the station made national headlines when it preempted NBC's Thursday night sitcom lineup for two weeks with Matlock telefilms. Coming so shortly after it was announced about NBC's then sagging ratings, the decision was perceived to be a result of the lineup's poor performance, though WKYC's manager reminded many who had not noticed that the station has typically preempted the lineup for Matlock telefilms quite often for the past ten years (usually to provide "make good" ad slots for local advertisers whose pre-scheduled inventory was preempted by breaking news or sports coverage), and the move had nothing to do with ratings, and that NBC had begun to push new programming on those March evenings without much advance notice; WKYC had originally scheduled the films when it was expected the night would carry mainly encore programming.[35][36][37]
Currently, the station's only preemptions outside of breaking news and weather situations mainly involve over-the-air simulcasts of Cleveland Browns games from ESPN's Monday Night Football.
Technical information[edit]
Subchannels[edit]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
Cable coverage in Canada[edit]
When atmospheric conditions permit, WKYC's signal can be received as far away as Detroit and into Canada in Windsor and London, Ontario. WKYC was also carried on cable channel 3 in London prior to 1974, but was bumped to make room for Paris, Ontario's CKGN-TV as the flagship for the newly launched Global network of stations across Ontario. The station is readily available over-the-air to Kingsville, Leamington and Pelee Island, and was once one of the three Cleveland area stations carried on local cable providers in those three locations; WEWS and WJW were also available until 2000, when Cogeco displaced Shaw Cable as the cable provider for Essex County.
On October 16, 2009, the Windsor Star had notified readers that digital subchannels of the Detroit and Toledo stations would be added, while the Cleveland stations (such as WKYC) and some Toledo stations would have to be dropped from the listings to make room for them, starting with the next issue of the TV Times, released the next day. The only Cleveland local station remaining in the Windsor-area TV Times is WUAB.