WSIL-TV
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| WSIL-TV / KPOB-TV | |
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| WSIL: Harrisburg, Illinois KPOB: Poplar Bluff, Missouri |
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| Branding | WSIL-TV 3 |
| Slogan | The Southern Illinois News Leader |
| Channels | |
| Affiliations | ABC |
| Owner | Melvin C. Wheeler, LLC (WSIL-TV, Inc.) |
| First air date | WSIL: December 1953 KPOB: September 15, 1967 |
| Call letters’ meaning | WSIL: Southern ILlinois KPOB: POplar Bluff |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: WSIL: 22 (1953-1959) 3 (1959-2009) KPOB: 15 (1967-2009) |
| Transmitter Power | WSIL: 1000 kW (digital) KPOB: 34.5 kW (digital) |
| Height | WSIL: 291 m (digital) KPOB: 184 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | WSIL: 73999 KPOB: 73998 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | WSIL: 37°36′46.3″N 88°52′20.3″W / 37.612861°N 88.872306°W KPOB: 36°48′3.7″N 90°27′6″W / 36.801028°N 90.45167°W |
| Website | www.wsiltv.com |
WSIL-TV is the ABC television affiliate for the Harrisburg, Illinois/Cape Girardeau, Missouri/Paducah, Kentucky television market, which covers all of the southern tip of the state of Illinois, parts of southeastern Missouri, and the "Purchase" region of western Kentucky. It is licensed to Harrisburg, with studios in nearby Carterville; the station operates on digital channel 34. It also operates a translator station, KPOB, digital channel 15, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Both stations are owned by Melvin C. Wheeler, LLC. WSIL's transmitter is located near Creal Springs, Illinois.
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[edit] History
WSIL signed on the air for the first time on December 1, 1953. It originally broadcast on channel 22, but moved to channel 3 in March 1959, as did numerous stations originally assigned to UHF allocations before the Federal Communications Commission mandated that television-set manufacturers include UHF tuning capability in their products, in 1964. The original UHF transmitter had been built in Harrisburg before the three cities of Paducah, Harrisburg and Cape Girardeau had been collapsed into one large market. However, some parts of southeastern Missouri could not receive the channel 3 signal clearly, presumably because WSIL had to conform its signal to protect WREC-TV (now WREG-TV) in Memphis, Tennessee, the next market to the south. As a result, KPOB signed on September 15, 1967 to provide service to those counties, although Jonesboro, Arkansas' KAIT, another ABC station, may have been visible in much of the area. A translator site serves the Cape Girardeau area, with a new DTV translator to be installed by Spring of 09 that will reinforce the SE MO coverage area.
For many years, WSIL/KPOB did not clear the weeknight broadcasts of ABC News, airing instead a children's show featuring cartoons and Three Stooges shorts in the 5:30-6:30 p.m. time slots. It was not until sometime in the late 1970s that the stations became the last ABC affiliates in the U.S. to abandon the practice of preempting the network news. However, in ABC's earlier years, quite a number of local stations did not carry the newscasts because their ratings trailed competitors CBS and NBC by a large margin; this changed when ABC initiated the World News Tonight (now ABC World News) format in 1978, finally establishing the network as a significant news operation.
WSIL had the unique distinction of being the first station in the market to broadcast DTV at a full 1 megawatt of power on Oct. 22, 2002 and will soon also be the first to broadcast a Mobile DTV signal.
WSIL's newscasts focus almost exclusively on Southern Illinois, unlike the other stations in the area. In fact, the station does not even mention the market's other two main cities--Paducah and Cape Girardeau--in its on-air identifications, identifying as "Harrisburg/Marion/Carbondale."
[edit] NYPD Blue
WSIL was one of the ABC affiliates that refused to air NYPD Blue during its first season. Station Manager Steve Wheeler appeared on Good Morning America to explain his decision. During the interview with Charlie Gibson, Wheeler noted that if the program was successful, WSIL would reconsider. During this first season, rival FOX affiliate, KBSI, aired the program during its assigned network slot for Tuesdays 9pm Central Time.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=781790 Vanderbilt Television News Archive
[edit] External links
- WSIL-TV
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WSIL
- Query the FCC's TV station database for KPOB
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WSIL-TV
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KPOB-TV
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