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WKYC (channel 3) is a
television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...
in
Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...
, 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),WKYC on Twitter
/ref> and its transmitter is located in suburban
Parma, Ohio Parma is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, located on the southern edge of Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, its population was 81,146. Parma is the seventh largest city in the state of Ohio, the largest suburb in the state, ...
. However,
master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as swi ...
and some internal operations are based at the studios of Tegna sister station and fellow NBC affiliate
WCNC-TV WCNC-TV (channel 36) is a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. WCNC-TV's studios are located in the Wood Ridge Center office complex off Billy Graham Parkway ...
in
Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most popu ...
.


History


Early years

The station first signed on the air on October 31, 1948, as WNBK, broadcasting on
VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below 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 (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
. WNBK was a sister station to WTAM radio (1100 AM), which was owned by NBC since 1930. Although there was no coaxial cable connection to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
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had just installed a cable connection between WNBK, WNBQ, WSPD-TV (now WTVG) in Toledo, KSTP-TV in
St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...
, 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 Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
.WKYC history - WKYC.com
/ref> As a result of frequency reallocations resulting from the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
's 1952 ''Sixth Report and Order'', WNBK was moved to channel 3, swapping frequencies with fellow NBC affiliate WLWC (now WCMH-TV) in
Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...
in order to alleviate same-channel interference with another NBC station, WWJ-TV (now WDIV-TV) across
Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also ha ...
in
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
. After construction was completed on the station's new transmitter in Parma, the channel switch took place on April 25, 1954.


Westinghouse moves in

In May 1955, NBC agreed to trade WNBK and WTAM-AM-FM to
Westinghouse Electric Corporation The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...
in return for KYW radio and WPTZ television in Philadelphia. Although Cleveland was a top-10 television and radio market at the time, NBC had long wanted to "trade up" its holdings to a larger market. Also, Philadelphia was the largest market in which it did not own a station. The swap became official on January 22, 1956, as NBC moved its operations (including much of its Cleveland staff) to Philadelphia, with WPTZ becoming WRCV-TV. Westinghouse took over the WNBK/WTAM operation and changed its call letters to KYW-AM-FM-TV on February 13, 1956. Westinghouse received a cross-station waiver from the FCC to own channel 3 since it has overlapping signals with Group W flagship KDKA-TV in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
. 200px, 1960s logo as KYW Despite its success in Cleveland, Westinghouse was not happy with how the 1956 trade with NBC played out. Almost as soon as the ink dried on the trade, the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation, claiming NBC
extorted Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, al ...
and coerced them into agreeing to the deal. The investigators discovered that Group W had only agreed to the deal after NBC threatened to remove its affiliation from WPTZ (the present-day KYW-TV) and Westinghouse's other NBC affiliate,
WBZ-TV WBZ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, airing programming from the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent station WSBK-TV (ch ...
in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, and to withhold a primary affiliation with newly purchased KDKA-TV, which ultimately affiliated with CBS despite its strong radio ties to NBC. In 1964, after an investigation that lasted eight years, the FCC ordered the swap to be reversed. NBC tried to appeal the decision, delaying the swap for one more year, but ultimately to no avail. Ironically, during the ordeal NBC was actually trying to sell its Philadelphia cluster it acquired from Westinghouse to RKO General in exchange for Boston cluster WNAC-AM- TV; NBC wouldn't own a station in Boston until purchasing WBTS-LD in 2016.


NBC returns

NBC re-assumed control of the Cleveland stations on June 19, 1965. Instead of restoring the previous WNBK and WTAM identities, the stations' new call letters became WKYC-AM-FM-TV, mostly as a nod to Westinghouse's stewardship of the stations. The AM station, for instance, had become a top 40 powerhouse under the moniker "KY11." WKYC-TV was separated from its sister stations in 1972, when NBC sold the WKYC radio stations to Ohio Communications. The AM station changed its calls to WWWE before restoring its historic WTAM calls in 1996, while the FM station became WWWM and then, in 1982, WMJI. In a reverse of what took place in 1956, some radio and television staffers who worked for Westinghouse in Cleveland moved to Philadelphia along with the KYW call letters. This included news reporter Tom Snyder, news director
Al Primo Albert Thomas Primo (July 3, 1935 – September 29, 2022) was an American television news executive who was credited with creating the ''Eyewitness News'' format. More than a hundred markets have taken the ''Eyewitness News'' name to label their ...
, and daytime talk show host Mike Douglas. Other Westinghouse employees—such as Linn Sheldon, Clay Conroy (who played ''Barnaby''s sidekick "Woodrow the Woodsman" before getting a spinoff show of his own), and staff announcer Jay Miltner (who had been with the station since its inception in 1948)—remained in Cleveland. NBC also relocated many of their top Philadelphia radio and television executives and some on-air personalities to Cleveland, such as meteorologist
Wally Kinnan Henry Wallace Kinnan (March 7, 1919 – November 22, 2002) was an American decorated World War II hero, also was one of the first well-known U.S. pioneer television broadcast meteorologists. Kinnan held American Meteorological Society Television ...
. Kinnan's arrival displaced Dick Goddard, who had been with channel 3 since 1961. Goddard moved to Philadelphia with Westinghouse but returned to Cleveland in early 1966 and joined WJW-TV (channel 8). Evening
sports anchor In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...
Jim Graner James R. Graner (February 21, 1919 – January 15, 1976) was the weeknight sports anchor for Cleveland NBC affiliate KYW-TV (later WKYC) beginning in 1957. He also served as color commentator for the Cleveland Browns Radio Network, most notab ...
, who had joined the station in 1957 while also serving as the
color commentator A color commentator or expert commentator is a sports commentator who assists the main ( play-by-play) commentator, typically by filling in when play is not in progress. The phrase "colour commentator" is primarily used in Canadian English and ...
for the Cleveland Browns radio network, remained through the transition; he stayed on until his death in 1976. To this day, the Philadelphia stations insist they "moved" to Cleveland in 1956 and "returned" to Philadelphia in 1965 after the trade was voided. At the same time, channel 3 enjoyed several technical advances with NBC's parent company, RCA (and after 1986,
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...
). It was Cleveland's first television station to broadcast full-time in
color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...
on September 13, 1965 (almost immediately after NBC regained channel 3 from Group W), the first to broadcast in stereo in 1985, and the first VHF station to closed caption its local newscasts for the hearing-impaired in 1990.


NBC cedes control to Multimedia, and then Gannett

After years of sagging ratings and continuing to be the lowest-rated of the network's owned and operated stations, NBC sold majority control of WKYC (51%) to
Multimedia, Inc. Multimedia, Inc. was a media company that owned 12 daily newspapers, 49 weekly newspapers, two radio stations, five television stations, and a cable television system division. The company was headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina. Histor ...
in 1990. Due to its long ownership by NBC, to this day channel 3 is the only major station in Cleveland to have never changed its primary affiliation. At that time, Multimedia's entertainment division (now part of NBC's syndication arm) produced a number of syndicated daytime talk shows, and as a result Multimedia productions such as '' Jerry Springer'' (who himself had come from then-sister station WLWT in
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...
), '' Sally Jessy Raphael'' and '' Donahue'' ended up on WKYC's daily schedule. In 1993, the NBC peacock was dropped from the primary station logo, which italicized the numeral 3, was put in a square, and took a red-white-blue color scheme, though WKYC was still (and continued to be up until 2019) identified as "Channel 3" (the previous logo was a plain Helvetica "3" lso used 1976–84, as per NBC's nationwide branding for its O&Os and was modified to become the logo today, after replacing the logo used 1984–91, an abstract, rectangular 3). The Gannett Company purchased Multimedia on December 4, 1995. Under a December 1998 put-call agreement with NBC, Gannett increased its stake in WKYC-TV to 58% in April 1999 and to 64% in December 2000; it acquired the remaining 36% of the station from NBC in 2001. WKYC accomplished another first in Cleveland television history by becoming the first station in Northeast Ohio to broadcast in high-definition in 1999. Soon after Gannett bought full control of the station, it moved from its longtime studios in the former East Ohio Gas building on East Sixth Street in downtown Cleveland to its state-of-the-art Lakeside Avenue studio on the shores of Lake Erie, which Channel 3 refers to as its "digital broadcast center". Around the first week of October 2012, Gannett entered a dispute against Dish Network regarding compensation fees and Dish's AutoHop commercial-skip feature on its Hopper
digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to ...
s. Gannett ordered that Dish discontinue AutoHop on the account that it is affecting advertising revenues for WKYC. Gannett threatened to pull WKYC from Dish in Cleveland should the skirmish continue beyond October 7 and Dish and Gannett fail to reach an agreement. The two parties eventually reached an agreement after extending the deadline for a few hours.


Tegna era

On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and home video media. WKYC was retained by the latter company, named Tegna. On September 23, 2019, WKYC debuted a new logo ("circle 3" as seen above), began referring to their production operations as "WKYC Studios"—an umbrella brand encompassing their on-air and digital platforms, and began incorporating more lifestyle and human interest reports in their newscasts (under the branding of "3 News"); the station also now utilizes the "3" brand for general entertainment programming.


Programming


Syndicated programming

Syndicated programming on WKYC includes ''
Dr. Phil Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), better known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality and author best known for hosting the talk show '' Dr. Phil''. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, though he ceased rene ...
'', '' Entertainment Tonight'', and '' The Kelly Clarkson Show''.WKYC schedule - Titan TV.com
/ref>


Local programming

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 A talk show (or chat show in British English) is a television programming or radio programming genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Sh ...
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.


Past programming preemptions and deferrals

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 11:00 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. Also during this period,
WFMJ-TV WFMJ-TV (channel 21) is a television station in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW. The station is locally owned by the Maag family. WFMJ-TV's studios are located on West Boardman Street in downtown Youngstown, and i ...
(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 Breaking news, interchangeably termed late-breaking news and also known as a special report or special coverage or news flash, is a current issue that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming or current news in orde ...
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. Currently, the station's only preemptions outside of breaking news and weather situations mainly involve over-the-air simulcasts of
Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conferenc ...
games from
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
's ''
Monday Night Football ''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, ...
''.


Sports programming

150px, Alternate Olympic logo used by WKYC during NBC's Olympic coverage.


Cleveland Indians

WKYC was the over-the-air home of
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...
games involving the Cleveland Indians (now the
Cleveland Guardians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. Since , they have played at Progressive ...
) from the 2006 season to an unknown date. WKYC also provided studio operations for
regional sports network In the United States and Canada, a regional sports network (RSN) is a cable television channel (many of which are also distributed on direct broadcast satellite services) that presents sports programming to a local market or geographical region ...
SportsTime Ohio (now
Bally Sports Great Lakes Bally Sports Great Lakes is an American regional sports network owned by Diamond Sports Group, and operates as an affiliate of Bally Sports. The channel, which is a sister network to Bally Sports Ohio, broadcasts statewide coverage of professional, ...
)—owned by the team itself until 2013—which aired the remainder of the team's games on cable and
satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
and simulcast the games broadcast by WKYC. During baseball season, WKYC aired a weekly half-hour Indians-themed program, ''Indians Tonight'', on Sundays at 11:35 p.m.
Matt Underwood Matt Underwood is an American sportscaster currently serving as the television play-by-play announcer for the Cleveland Guardians of Major League Baseball (MLB). Broadcasting career Prior to joining the Guardians broadcast team on a full-tim ...
and former outfielder Rick Manning served as the announcing team for the Indians telecasts. All Indians games and other related programs were broadcast in high definition. In addition to Indians games produced in-house by channel 3, the station aired select Indians games through NBC's broadcast contract with MLB, first from its 1948 sign-on until 1989, and then for postseason games only from 1995 to 2000.


Cleveland Browns

With the Cleveland Browns' move to the newly formed
American Football Conference The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
after the completion of the AFL-NFL merger of 1970, channel 3, by way of NBC's rights to carry the AFC games, became the station of record for the team, replacing WJW in that role. This partnership would continue through 1995. Since 2006, Browns games are shown on channel 3 when the team plays on NBC's ''
Sunday Night Football Sunday Night Football may refer to: * ''NBC Sunday Night Football'', the Sunday night broadcast of American NFL games by NBC since 2006 * ''ESPN Sunday Night Football'', the Sunday night broadcast of American NFL games from 1987 to 2005 by ESPN * ...
'', and since 2019, in a simulcast with ESPN when the team plays on ''Monday Night Football''. For many years, the station has also partnered with the Browns to carry preseason games and coach's shows since then, outside of five seasons (including two short-lived season deals with WOIO in 1999 and 2004, the latter of which ended before the 2005 season due to team displeasure with the station's coverage of its ownership). WEWS carried the team's programming and preseason games from 2015 until 2018. The Browns returned to WKYC with the start of the 2019 regular season as part of a deal lasting through the 2021 season.


Cleveland Cavaliers

WKYC aired select Cleveland Cavaliers games broadcast through NBC's broadcast rights to the NBA from 1990 to 2002.


News operation

WKYC presently broadcasts 35 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5 hours each weekday and four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).


News department history


=Early years and struggles

= Under Westinghouse, the station debuted the country's first 90-minute local news block in 1959, called ''Eyewitness'' (a precursor to the ''
Eyewitness News ''Eyewitness News'' is a style of television news presentation that emphasizes visual elements and action video, replacing the older "man-on-camera" newscast. History Pioneered by Westinghouse The earliest known use of the ''Eyewitness Ne ...
'' format). For much of the time between NBC's repurchase of the station and the dawn of the 21st century, WKYC-TV's news department was usually a very distant third in the ratings, well behind WJW-TV and WEWS. Part of the reason was that during most of its second stint as an NBC-owned station, it served mainly as a farm system for NBC, with almost no local talent. Given Cleveland's status as a mid-major television market, most of the promising reporters or anchors that NBC employed at WKYC could end up being promoted to other higher-profile NBC-owned outlets, especially New York City flagship
WNBC-TV WNBC (channel 4) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Linden, New Jersey–licensed Telemundo statio ...
or WMAQ-TV in nearby Chicago. Many WKYC alumni went on to long and successful careers with NBC; most notably, current '' Today'' weather anchor Al Roker served as WKYC's chief weatherman from 1978 to 1983. As a result of this practice, turnover at channel 3 was very high, and it was unable to establish any real talent continuity. In contrast, its two major competitors, WJ(K)W and WEWS, both had long-established anchor teams who often stayed together for a decade or more. It was by far NBC's weakest owned-and-operated station. From 1973 to 1984, WKYC tried to use the '' Action News'' branding several times while also using the music and graphics associated with the other NBC-owned stations, which employed the ''NewsCenter'' name. On March 19, 1984, the station dropped the ''Action 3 News'' name and adopted its current newscast moniker, ''Channel 3 News''. WKYC also adopted a new logo and a new slogan called "Turn to 3"; the accompanying jingle was composed by
Frank Gari Frank Daniel Garofalo (born April 1, 1944), known professionally as Frank Gari, is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Early life Gari was a popular singer and songwriter from the late 1950s and early 1960s. His best known songs as a ...
. The "Turn to 3" jingle and image campaign was borrowed by many TV broadcasters around the world—most notably Detroit's WXYZ-TV. Various anchors—such as Virgil Dominic,
Doug Adair Doug Adair (May 29, 1929 – April 29, 2019) was an American television news anchor and journalist who worked in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton, Ohio markets. Career Born in Xenia, Ohio, Adair got his start in journalism in television in ...
, Mike Landess, Dave Patterson, Mona Scott, Judd Hambrick,
Leon Bibb Leon Bibb (born October 5, 1944 in Butler, Alabama) is an American news anchor and commentator for WKYC in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a member of the BGSU Board of Trustees. Leon Bibb was the first African American primetime news anchor in Ohio. ...
and Dick Feagler—set designs, and imaging campaigns were tried out, usually with little to no success. Two of the few long-tenured personalities during this time included Joe Mosbrook and Del Donahoo. Both joined WKYC in 1967 (Donahoo from WOW in
Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest c ...
) and enjoyed long tenures at the station. Mosbrook retired in 2002, while Donahoo was co-host of ''Today in Cleveland'' with Tom Haley until 1997 and a feature reporter (under the "Del's Folks" banner) until 2006.


=Turning the corner

= After NBC sold controlling interest in the station to Multimedia, the station tried to rebuild its news operation in the mid-1990s. They attempted this by putting more of an emphasis on local talent and continuity, using the tagline of "We're Building Our Station Around You" (complete with idents suggesting the slogan, by showing a physical logo for the station being sketched out, welded, painted and having the call-letters applied). Channel 3 even set up a telephone feedback hotline—dubbed "Talkback 3"—which was intended to field suggestions and comments from viewers about what they would like to see in the newscasts. Despite the more interactive approach, WKYC did not immediately reap any benefits coming from longtime CBS affiliate WJW's switch to (and eventual purchase by) Fox in 1994. However, ratings for WKYC's newscasts gradually began to improve towards the end of the decade. The station started to finish in first place in assorted time slots and posted some of the highest ratings books in the station's history. In what was a somewhat controversial move, in September 1999, WKYC expanded its 6:00 p.m. newscast to one hour. This aggravated viewers because '' NBC Nightly News'' was pushed back from its long standing start time of 6:30 p.m., down to 7:00 p.m. This practice would be modified in July 2000 when ''Nightly News'' was moved back to its traditional 6:30 p.m. slot, and the second half-hour was used to start a 7:00 p.m. newscast, which continues to air. WKYC finally became a factor in the Cleveland television news race in 2003, after it had picked up the then brand new ''Dr. Phil'' program and placed it in the 5:00 p.m. time slot. This move proved to be very successful since all of the other local major network affiliates were broadcasting news at 5:00 p.m. and this gave viewers an alternative; it also allowed WKYC to be able to get many viewers to change channels at the end of WEWS's 4:00 p.m. broadcast of ''
The Oprah Winfrey Show ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', often referred to as ''The Oprah Show'' or simply ''Oprah'', is an American daytime syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois. Produced ...
'' so as to watch ''Dr. Phil'' (which was a spinoff of ''Oprah'') at 5:00 p.m. (the syndication contracts for both shows disallowed them from airing against each other). During the broadcast of ''Dr. Phil'', WKYC heavily promoted its 6:00 p.m. newscast, which began to experience sharp ratings increases, which then trickled down to the 7:00 p.m. newscast. In early 2004, viewers began turning away from WJW and WEWS' hard-hitting newscasts to the more traditional WKYC. This helped channel 3 rise to first place in the news ratings for the first time in decades; all of its newscasts won their timeslots. WKYC even managed to push WJW's popular morning newscast into second place. This continued until May 2005, when WKYC made two major changes in their newscasts: the station had its reporters extend the length of their stories, hoping to provide more detail; in attempt to combat the common viewer complaint that "all news is bad", WKYC also started inserting more "positive" stories into their newscasts. The combination of the two resulted in less "hard" news, and resulted in a drop in viewership. Over the summer of 2005, while ''Dr. Phil'' was in repeats, WKYC lost the top spot at 6:00 p.m. to WEWS.


=Finding success

= However, channel 3 retook the top spot in that slot during the November 2005 sweeps period. Additionally, despite fears due to a weakened NBC prime time schedule, WKYC retained its top spot at 11:00 p.m. which it has held for 17 straight ratings periods. In the February 2006 ratings period, WKYC continued its first place streak by placing first at 6 and 11:00 p.m. Its morning newscast was second only to WJW's. On May 22, 2006, WKYC-TV became the second television station in the Cleveland market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high-definition. In the November 2006 ratings period, WKYC's airing of ''Dr. Phil'' continues to lead at 5:00 p.m., and its 11:00 p.m. newscast held on to first place (though by a very slim margin over WOIO), although it slipped from first to third at 6:00 p.m. It came in last place at noon (it was the only "Big Four" affiliate in Cleveland not to air a newscast at that time slot). Channel 3's late-afternoon and early-evening slump continued from then on, reaching its nadir in the February 2008 ratings period, when both ''Dr. Phil'' and the 6:00 p.m. newscast finished third behind WJW's and WEWS's newscasts. Another reason for the sustained success was that channel 3 had a measure of stability at the anchor desk for the first time in decades. From 2000 to 2007, its weeknight news team consisted of Tim White and Romona Robinson, chief meteorologist Mark Nolan and sports director Jim Donovan. The long-standing team was broken up in 2007 when Nolan was reassigned to anchor the morning newscast, and weekend meteorologist Betsy Kling was promoted to weeknights. In December 2008, White's contract was allowed to lapse and Robinson anchored the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts alone until her departure at the end of 2011. On January 3, 2011, WKYC expanded its weekday morning newscast by a half-hour, to 4:30 a.m. (WJW expanded its morning newscast into that timeslot on that same day). On January 16, 2012, former
CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the '' CBS Evening News'', '' CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 4 ...
reporter/anchor Russ Mitchell became the new primary weeknight anchor and managing editor. On April 2, 2012, Kris Pickel became the new weeknight co-anchor with Mitchell at 6 and 11:00 p.m., marking a return of the traditional two-person anchor team at WKYC after three-plus years of solo anchors. In 2015, Pickel left WKYC and was replaced by Sara Shookman, who was previously a reporter/weekend morning anchor for channel 3. On January 22, 2013, WKYC began using the AFD #10 broadcast flag to present its newscasts and other station programming in letterboxed widescreen for viewers watching on cable television through 4:3 television sets; this change accompanied the switch to Gannett's new standardized station graphics package.


Honors

A park on the east side of Cleveland was named for Helen Simpson, an advertising and promotions manager at WKYC, who was murdered in 1972 on her way home from work. In 2016, after 37 years of serving as the station's political reporter, longtime channel 3 newsman Tom Beres announced his retirement after covering the
election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...
. The city of Cleveland then honored Beres by naming the section of Lakeside Avenue in front of the WKYC building "Tom Beres Way". On May 10, 2021, channel 3 honored alumnus Al Roker—who was in Cleveland reporting on the city's reopening efforts following the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
—by naming the radar tower on top of the WKYC building the "Roker Tower", with WKYC chief meteorologist Betsy Kling presenting him a plaque to commemorate the occasion live on the ''Today Show''. On March 25, 2022, in recognition of his 50th anniversary as a TV newsman, the city of Cleveland renamed a section of Parkway Avenue on the east side of Cleveland "
Leon Bibb Leon Bibb (born October 5, 1944 in Butler, Alabama) is an American news anchor and commentator for WKYC in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a member of the BGSU Board of Trustees. Leon Bibb was the first African American primetime news anchor in Ohio. ...
Way". Bibb—who spent a good portion of his career at WKYC and was their senior reporter/commentator at the time of the dedication—had grown up in a home near the street.


Notable current on-air staff

*
Leon Bibb Leon Bibb (born October 5, 1944 in Butler, Alabama) is an American news anchor and commentator for WKYC in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a member of the BGSU Board of Trustees. Leon Bibb was the first African American primetime news anchor in Ohio. ...
– senior reporter and commentator * Jay Crawford – news anchor * Jim Donovan – sports director and news anchor * Russ Mitchell – managing editor and lead news anchor * Christi Paul – news anchor * Mike Polk – feature reporter and contributor


Notable alumni

file:Al Roker October 2014 (cropped).jpg, 175px, Former chief meteorologist Al Roker, whom channel 3 honored in 2021 by naming the radar tower on top of the WKYC building the "Roker Tower". *Asa Aarons (consumer reporter; later at WNBC; now at WCBS-TV) *
Doug Adair Doug Adair (May 29, 1929 – April 29, 2019) was an American television news anchor and journalist who worked in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton, Ohio markets. Career Born in Xenia, Ohio, Adair got his start in journalism in television in ...
(deceased) * Roger Ailes (deceased) *
Jim Bittermann Jim Bittermann is Senior European correspondent for CNN since 1996. Career Bittermann graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University in 1970 and began in print journalism from 1965 to 1970 as a reporter for the Wa ...
(now at CNN) *
Joe Castiglione Joseph John Castiglione (born March 2, 1947) is an American radio announcer for the Boston Red Sox baseball team,Joe Castig ...
*
Lisa Colagrossi Lisa Colagrossi (May 9, 1965 – March 20, 2015) was an American journalist and television news anchor and reporter. She was a reporter for WABC-TV In New York City from September 2001 until her death on March 20, 2015. Career Prior to joinin ...
(deceased) * Tim Conway (deceased) *
Phil Donahue Phillip John Donahue (born December 21, 1935) is an American media personality, writer, film producer and the creator and host of ''The Phil Donahue Show''. The television program, later known simply as ''Donahue'', was the first talk show forma ...
* Mike Douglas (deceased) *
Doreen Gentzler Doreen Gentzler (born September 24, 1957) is a retired American television news anchor . She anchored the news at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. Early life Gentzler was raised in the Dominion Hills neighborhood of Arlington, ...
(now with WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.) * Dick Goddard (later at WJW; deceased) *
Jim Graner James R. Graner (February 21, 1919 – January 15, 1976) was the weeknight sports anchor for Cleveland NBC affiliate KYW-TV (later WKYC) beginning in 1957. He also served as color commentator for the Cleveland Browns Radio Network, most notab ...
(deceased) * Kathryn Hahn (actress, was on children's show '' Hickory Hideout'') * Judd Hambrick *
Bill Jorgensen Bill Jorgensen (born 1927) was the founding and longtime anchor of New York City's WNEW-TV's (now WNYW Fox 5) ''Ten O'Clock News'' from its inception on March 13, 1967, until he left in the spring of 1979. Jorgensen moved to WPIX-TV, also in New Y ...
(retired) *
Wally Kinnan Henry Wallace Kinnan (March 7, 1919 – November 22, 2002) was an American decorated World War II hero, also was one of the first well-known U.S. pioneer television broadcast meteorologists. Kinnan held American Meteorological Society Television ...
(deceased) * Fred McLeod (deceased) * Jay Miltner (deceased) * Carl Monday (now at WJW) *
Al Primo Albert Thomas Primo (July 3, 1935 – September 29, 2022) was an American television news executive who was credited with creating the ''Eyewitness News'' format. More than a hundred markets have taken the ''Eyewitness News'' name to label their ...
* Romona Robinson (retired) * Al Roker (now at
NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's v ...
) * Brian Ross (recently at
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show '' Good Morning America'', '' ...
) * Chuck Schodowski (later at WJW) * Linn Sheldon (deceased) * Charley Steiner (now broadcaster for
Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) National League West, West division. Established in 1883 i ...
baseball) * Robin Swoboda * Tim White (retired)


Technical information


Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:


Analog-to-digital conversion

WKYC shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
channel 17. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers continues to display the station's
virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former VHF analog channel 3.1. The "-TV" suffix was removed from the WKYC call sign on June 16, 2009. As part of the
SAFER Act In cryptography, SAFER (Secure And Fast Encryption Routine) is the name of a family of block ciphers designed primarily by James Massey (one of the designers of IDEA) on behalf of Cylink Corporation. The early SAFER K and SAFER SK designs share t ...
, WKYC kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.


Cable coverage in Canada

When atmospheric conditions permit, WKYC's signal can be received as far away as Detroit and into
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
in Windsor and
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
,
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
. WKYC was also carried on cable channel 3 in London prior to 1974, but was bumped to make room for
Paris, Ontario Paris (2021 population, 14,956) is a community located in the County of Brant, Ontario, Canada. It lies just northwest from the city of Brantford at the spot where the Nith River empties into the Grand River. Paris was voted "the Prettiest Li ...
's CKGN-TV, also on channel 3 at the time, and 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.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wkyc NBC network affiliates True Crime Network affiliates Cozi TV affiliates Quest (American TV network) affiliates Twist (TV network) affiliates Tegna Inc. Westinghouse Broadcasting Television channels and stations established in 1948 KYC National Football League primary television stations 1948 establishments in Ohio Former General Electric subsidiaries Former Gannett subsidiaries