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WPVI-TV

WPVI-TV (channel 6), branded 6 ABC, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the market's ABC outlet. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on City Avenue in the Wynnefield Heights section of Philadelphia, and a transmitter in the city's Roxborough neighborhood.[4]

6 ABC or Channel 6, Action News

July 18, 1946[1][2]

September 13, 1947 (1947-09-13)

WFIL-TV (1947–1971)

  • Analog: 6 (VHF, 1947–2009)
  • Digital: 64 (UHF, 1998–2009)

DuMont (1947–1948, secondary 1948–1956)

Philadelphia and VI for the Roman numeral 6

FCC

45 kW

342 m (1,122 ft)

History[edit]

WFIL-TV[edit]

The station first signed on the air on September 13, 1947, as WFIL-TV. It is Philadelphia's second-oldest television station, signing on six years after WPTZ (now KYW-TV). The first program broadcast on channel 6 was a live remote of an exhibition game of the Philadelphia Eagles against the Chicago Bears from Franklin Field. This was followed by an inaugural program that evening.[5]


WFIL-TV was originally owned by Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, publishers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and owners of WFIL radio (560 AM, and 102.1 FM). The WFIL stations were the flagship of the communications empire of Triangle Publications, which owned two Philadelphia newspapers (the morning Inquirer and, later, the evening Daily News), periodicals including TV Guide, Seventeen and the Daily Racing Form, and a broadcasting group that would grow to ten radio and six television stations. WFIL radio had been an ABC radio affiliate dating back to the network's existence as the NBC Blue Network. However, WFIL-TV started out carrying programming from the DuMont Television Network, as ABC had not yet ventured into broadcast television. When the ABC television network debuted on April 19, 1948, WFIL-TV became its first affiliate. Channel 6 joined ABC before the network's first owned-and-operated station, WJZ-TV in New York City (now WABC-TV), signed on in August that year. However, it retained a secondary affiliation with DuMont until that network shut down in 1956.


The WFIL radio stations originally broadcast from the Widener Building in downtown Philadelphia. With the anticipated arrival of WFIL-TV, Triangle secured a new facility for the stations, located at Market and 46th streets, which opened in 1947. In 1963, Triangle built one of the most advanced broadcast centers in the nation on City (or City Line) Avenue in the Wynnefield Heights community, in a circular building across from rival WCAU-TV (channel 10). The station still broadcasts from the facility today, even as a new digital media building was constructed that now houses production of the station's newscasts and other local programs, while the original studio was turned over to public broadcaster WHYY-FM-TV.


Channel 6 was the first station to sign on from the Roxborough neighborhood. It started transmitting from a 600-foot (183 m) tower, but in 1957, it moved to a new 1,100-foot (335 m) tower, which it co-owned with NBC-owned WRCV-TV (channel 3, now CBS owned-and-operated station KYW-TV).[6] The new tower added much of Delaware and the Lehigh Valley to the station's city-grade coverage. WFIL-TV was also one of the first TV stations in Philadelphia to broadcast local color.

Programming[edit]

Past program preemptions and deferrals[edit]

Under Capital Cities ownership, channel 6 frequently preempted ABC programming in favor of locally produced and syndicated shows. In January 1975, when ABC entered the morning news field with AM America, WPVI chose not to carry the second hour of the program in favor of continuing Captain Noah and His Magical Ark at 8 a.m.; in response to viewer complaints, the station later moved Captain Noah to 7 a.m., with the one hour of AM America shifting to a tape-delay at 8:30.[18] When AM America's successor, Good Morning America premiered in November 1975, WPVI-TV aired only one hour at 9 a.m. on tape.[19] With the arrival of Donahue in January 1976, the station began clearing the first hour live at 7 a.m., with Captain Noah following at 8 a.m.[20] Channel 6 began carrying both hours of GMA live in September 1978; Captain Noah was moved to weekends and remained there for the remainder of its run.[21] Even in the years after WPVI became an ABC-owned station, it continued to preempt an hour of ABC daytime programs in favor of other programs. Wildwood, New Jersey–based NBC affiliate WMGM-TV (channel 40) picked up the preempted ABC shows until 1987, when those programs returned to channel 29, which was now WTXF-TV. The preempted programs were usually magazine shows, game shows or reruns of ABC prime time sitcoms. By the early 1990s, WPVI preempted only the first half-hour of The Home Show. WPVI-TV also did not run other ABC daytime programs, notably The Edge of Night and numerous sitcom reruns. ABC was able to get most of its daytime schedule on the air in Philadelphia anyway through contracts with independent stations WKBS-TV (channel 48) and WTAF-TV (channel 29). In 1997, per a directive from the new Disney ownership, WPVI-TV began carrying the entire ABC network schedule for the first time in the station's history with the network. It came at the expense of its highly rated local talk show, AM/Live (formerly AM/Philadelphia), which was shifted to an overnight timeslot to make room for ABC's then-new talk show The View. AM/Live was moved to 12:35 a.m. following Politically Incorrect and was renamed Philly After Midnight, where it lasted until 2001.

Local programming[edit]

Channel 6 has a long history of producing local programs. On March 26, 1948, it aired a production of "Parsifal" from the John Wanamaker Store that featured Bruno Walter conducting 50 players from the Philadelphia Orchestra, a chorus of 300, and the Wanamaker Organ. Perhaps its most notable local production was Bandstand, which began in 1952 and originated from WFIL-TV's newly constructed Studio B (located in the 1952 addition to the 46th and Market studio). In 1957, ABC added the program as part of its weekday afternoon network lineup and renamed it American Bandstand to reflect its more widespread broadcast scope.


Other well known locally produced shows included the children's programs Captain Noah and His Magical Ark; a cartoon show hosted by Sally Starr; and Chief Halftown (whose host, Traynor Ora Halftown, was a full-blooded member of the Seneca Nation), and two variety programs: The Al Alberts Showcase, a talent show emceed by the lead singer of The Four Aces; and The Larry Ferrari Show, on which the host played organ versions of both popular and religious music. WFIL-TV also produced an early and long-running program on adult literacy, Operation Alphabet. One of its earliest local series was Let's Pop the Question, from 1947 to 1948.

Sports programming[edit]

As a result of ABC losing Monday Night Football to now-sister network ESPN in the 2000s, WPVI has aired the Philadelphia Eagles' preseason and Monday night games, as well as the team's coaches' show (those programs moved to WCAU-TV in 2015). More recently, the Monday games have aired on news partner WPHL, while WPVI has opted to air the regularly-scheduled ABC programming, which includes the popular Dancing with the Stars. The Eagles' remaining games are split between KYW-TV (CBS), WCAU-TV (NBC) and WTXF-TV (Fox) through their respectively owned networks' NFL broadcast rights and NFL Network through its Thursday Night Football package.


On January 28, 2010, WPVI entered into a multi-year agreement with Major League Soccer expansion team Philadelphia Union to broadcast selected games along with CSN and later WPHL. Since 2023, these rights have been picked up by Apple TV and selected nationally televised games involving the Union on FOX (locally televised on WTXF). The station also formerly broadcast Union games through ABC's MLS television contracts from the league's inception until 2022. [22][23]


Since 2021, WPVI serves as the free-to-air broadcaster of nationally aired NHL on ESPN games featuring the Philadelphia Flyers; formerly, these were aired from 1997 to 2004 in conjunction with the NHL on ABC.


WPVI also airs select Philadelphia 76ers contests via the network's contract with the NBA.

News operation[edit]

WPVI-TV presently airs 53 hours, 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 8 hours, 5 minutes each weekday and 6+12 hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Action News Sports Sunday airs Sunday nights at 11:30 after the 11 p.m. newscast. In addition, the station produces a public affairs program on Sunday mornings called Inside Story, which discusses local and national issues; as it does not have a regular host, members of WPVI's anchor staff rotate hosting duties for the program. Since New Jersey is split between the Philadelphia and New York City markets, WPVI cooperates with its New York City sister station, WABC-TV, in covering New Jersey events. The two stations share reporters, live trucks and helicopters in areas where their markets overlap. The two stations also cooperate in the production and broadcast of statewide New Jersey political debates. Whenever the two stations broadcast a statewide office debate, such as those involving gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races, WPVI and WABC will pool resources and have anchors or reporters from both stations participate in the debate.

In popular culture[edit]

The 2011–13 ABC series Body of Proof, which was set around the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office and produced by ABC's television production division, used WPVI live trucks and microphones with the station's mic flags in a fictional sense, along with fictional press conference news graphics from the station, though none of WPVI's actual staff appeared during the course of the series, and retained the graphics and live truck look used before the introduction of the "Circle 6" logo. The 2014 Philadelphia-set How to Get Away with Murder also uses a fictional WPVI representation within the universe of that series.


In the second episode of the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, Jacob, Melissa and Barbara are seen watching a WPVI newscast.[41]

Technical information[edit]

Subchannels[edit]

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Cable and satellite carriage[edit]

Outside of the Philadelphia market in central New Jersey, WPVI is carried on Channel 6 on Comcast in the municipalities of Plainsboro, South Brunswick, Monroe, Cranbury, Jamesburg, Helmetta, Spotswood and East Brunswick, New Jersey in southern Middlesex County as well as the Monmouth County borough of Roosevelt. WPVI moved to channel 38 in the late 1980s (by what was then Storer Cable) and later moved back to channel 6 by Comcast in the late 1990s. WPVI is also available on channel 6 on all Comcast systems in Ocean County as well as in Lambertville. Comcast added WPVI's HD feed to its lineups in Ocean and southern Middlesex counties, Roosevelt and Lambertville on August 22, 2012, on digital channel 906.[51] WPVI's Live Well Network subchannel (both in high definition and standard definition) were added to the Comcast's southern Middlesex County system on November 27, 2012 (Live Well had previously been carried on that system through feeds from WPVI's New York City sister station WABC-TV), but have not been mapped into the Comcast digital boxes or DTAs.


In Plumsted Township, Ocean County, WPVI is carried in lieu of WABC-TV as Plumsted is served by Comcast's Garden State system (based out of Mount Holly, Burlington County) which does not carry any New York City stations.[52]


Cablevision also carries WPVI on channel 6 on its southern Monmouth County system. Both Comcast and Cablevision carry WPVI throughout Ocean County. Due to a contract dispute with ABC, WPVI was pulled from Cablevision systems in Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties on March 7, 2010. Verizon FiOS carries WPVI on channel 16 in Ocean County and extreme southern Monmouth County. WPVI is also carried by Comcast in New Castle County and portions of Kent County in Delaware. As such, WPVI is classified as a significantly viewed station in Warren, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties.


In the Lehigh Valley (most of which is in the Philadelphia market), WPVI is carried by Service Electric, RCN and Blue Ridge Communications. The station can be seen in Lancaster County as far west as Elizabethtown and as far north as Tamaqua, McAdoo, Hazleton, and Honesdale (in the ScrantonWilkes-Barre market).


WPVI is also carried on cable systems in Elkton and North East in Cecil County, Maryland. Atlantic Broadband carries WPVI in Middletown, Delaware, Delaware City, Delaware, and Chesapeake City, Maryland areas as well as the surrounding portions of southern New Castle County and southern Cecil County. Atlantic Broadband carries the major network affiliates from Philadelphia and Baltimore on both sides of the state line.

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