WCAU

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For broadcast stations that previously used the WCAU call sign, see WCAU (disambiguation)

WCAU, channel 10, is the NBC owned-and-operated television station serving the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania market, with studios on the border between Philadelphia and Bala Cynwyd, and transmitter in the Roxborough neighborhood. Its signal covers the Delaware Valley area including Philadelphia, parts of central and southern New Jersey, and Delaware.

History

As a CBS station

In 1945, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin secured a construction permit for channel 10, naming their proposed station WPEN-TV after the newspaper's radio stations, WPEN (950 AM) and WPEN-FM (98.1 MHz., later WCAU-FM and now WOGL).

However, the picture changed dramatically in 1946, when the Philadelphia Record folded. The Bulletin inherited the Record's "goodwill," along with the rights to buy WCAU radio (1210 AM, now WPHT) and the original WCAU-FM (at 102.9 MHz.) from their longtime owners, brothers Ike and Leon Levy. The Bulletin sold off the less-powerful WPEN and WCAU-FM, with the latter being renamed WPEN-FM (it is now WMGK). The Bulletin kept its FM station, renaming it WCAU-FM to match its new AM sister. The newspaper also kept its construction permit for channel 10, renaming it WCAU-TV.

WCAU-TV went on the air on May 23, 1948 [1] as Philadelphia's third television station. It was able to secure an affiliation with CBS due to the influence of the Levy brothers, who continued to work for the newspaper as consultants. WCAU radio had been one of CBS' original 16 affiliates when the network premiered in 1927. A year later, the Levy brothers persuaded their brother-in-law, William Paley, to buy the struggling network. The Levy brothers had been shareholders and directors at CBS for many years. Due to this long relationship, channel 10 signed on as CBS' third affiliate.

Channel 10 was originally located at 1622 Chestnut Street in Center City along with its radio sisters. (The building now houses The Art Institute.) In 1952, the WCAU stations moved to a new facility in the Main Line suburb of Bala Cynwyd. The studio, located on Monument Road at City Line Avenue, was a state-of-the-art television center, and the first building in America constructed specifically for broadcasting. Channel 10 is still headquartered there today.

In the late 1950s, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that northern Delaware, southern New Jersey and the Lehigh Valley were part of the Philadelphia market. The Bulletin realized that channel 10's original tower, atop the PSFS Building in Center City, was inadequate for this enlarged viewing area. Accordingly, in 1957, WCAU-TV moved to a new 1,200-foot tower in Roxborough, which added most of Delaware, the Jersey Shore and the Lehigh Valley to its city-grade coverage.

Also in 1957, the Bulletin bought CBS affiliate WGBI-TV (channel 22) in Scranton, changing the calls of that station to WDAU-TV (it is now WYOU). Soon after, the FCC told the Bulletin that it couldn't keep both stations due to a large signal overlap which constituted a duopoly under FCC rules of the time. The Bulletin could not afford to get a waiver to keep both stations, so it opted to keep the smaller WDAU-TV and sell the WCAU stations to CBS. CBS had to seek a waiver to buy the WCAU stations, as the signals of both WCAU radio and channel 10 overlapped with those of WCBS radio and WCBS-TV in New York City. (In the case of the radio outlets, both were clear channel stations; the FCC at the time usually did not allow common ownership of clear channel stations with overlapping nighttime coverage areas.) The FCC readily granted the waiver, and CBS took control in 1958.

For a 21-year period (1965 to 1986), WCAU-TV was the only network-owned station in Philadelphia. As such, it was the only station in the city that did not heavily pre-empt network programming. The only significant exception occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, when channel 10 pre-empted an hour of Saturday morning cartoons in favor of the locally-produced children's program, The Gene London Show, which ended in 1977. During its run, the pre-empted hour of cartoons was aired on Sunday mornings instead.

Switch from CBS to NBC

In 1994, CBS entered into a long-term affiliation agreement with Westinghouse (Group W) Broadcasting, the owners of Philadelphia's longtime NBC affiliate, KYW-TV (channel 3). Westinghouse converted three of its stations, KYW-TV among them, into CBS affiliates. KYW-TV had been a very distant third in the Philadelphia ratings for more than a decade, while WCAU was a solid runner-up to WPVI. Nonetheless, CBS decided to affiliate with channel three and sell channel 10, ending a 47-year relationship (including 37 years of ownership) with the station.

NBC and New World Communications then emerged as the leading bidders for WCAU. NBC's motivation was obvious -- though they were losing KYW-TV, the network also saw a chance to get an owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, the largest market where it didn't own a television station. Meanwhile, New World had recently partnered with Fox and planned on turning WCAU into a Fox affiliate, as it was doing with most of its other stations. New World found the opportunity to win its new partner a VHF station in the nation's fourth-largest market too much to resist.

Even before CBS put WCAU on the market, rumors abounded that Fox was about to lose its original Philadelphia affiliate, Viacom/Paramount-owned WTXF-TV (channel 29), to the new United Paramount Network. Fox announced, and later cancelled its plans to buy WGBS-TV (channel 57, now WPSG) and entered the WCAU bidding in case New World's bid fell through. Fox and New World each had different plans for the station, but either way WCAU would have retained its status as the "home" station of the Philadelphia Eagles. The station had carried Eagles games since 1950, and continued to air most Eagles games after rights to National Football League games in 1956. CBS had recently lost the rights to the National Football Conference (where the Eagles played) to Fox. In the end, Viacom/Paramount opted to sell WTXF to Fox and buy WGBS, leaving NBC as the de-facto buyer of channel 10.

As an NBC-owned station

On September 10, 1995, KYW-TV and WCAU-TV swapped network affiliations, part of a more complex affiliation/ownership deal involving NBC and a new Group W/CBS partnership. Since NBC could not buy WCAU outright without going over the FCC's ownership limit of the time, it swapped its stations in KCNC-TV in Denver and KUTV in Salt Lake City to CBS in return for WCAU. CBS then sold controlling interest in KCNC and KUTV to Group W, and bought a minority stake in KYW-TV from Group W. As part of this deal, NBC and Group W/CBS also traded broadcasting facilities in Miami. Group W's parent, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, purchased CBS in 1996, making CBS's Philadelphia radio stations sisters to WCAU-AM/WPHT's longtime rival, KYW radio.

NBC had wanted to own a station in Philadelphia for many years. It briefly succeeded in 1956, when it used extortion to force Westinghouse into exchanging channel three (then called WPTZ-TV) and KYW radio for NBC's Cleveland stations, WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television. However, the FCC and the U.S. Justice Department forced the reversal of the swap in 1965. In purchasing channel 10 in 1958, CBS cited NBC's then-ownership of WRCV-TV and WRCA-TV in New York City in its successful effort to obtain an FCC waiver.

Further information: KYW (AM) and KYW-TV

Although the radio stations had dropped the WCAU calls some years before, NBC dropped the -TV suffix from channel 10's callsign soon after it assumed control.

News operation

Appropriately for a station founded by a newspaper and later owned by CBS for many years, channel 10 has a rich news tradition. The station's news operation was the ratings leader in Philadelphia for most of the time from the 1950s through the 1960s. Charles Shaw, who had worked with Edward R. Murrow as a CBS correspondent in London during World War II, was the station's news director from 1948 until he left the station in the early 1960s. John Facenda, who later gained fame as the voice of NFL Films, was the station's main anchorman from shortly after it signed on until 1973 -- the second-longest tenure in Philadelphia television history, behind only WPVI-TV's Jim Gardner.

Soon after joining the station, Facenda sold the Bulletin on the idea of a local 11 PM newscast -- the first in the country. It aired for the first time on September 8. In 1950, WCAU became the first station with a four-man news team. The 6 PM newscast was anchored by Facenda, with Philadelphia radio legend Phil Sheridan handling weather, Jack Whitaker on sports, and Ed McMahon as announcer. In 1965, channel 10 introduced the "Big News" format from sister station KNXT (now KCBS-TV) in Los Angeles.

WCAU remained unchallenged until the 1960s, when KYW-TV's Eyewitness News passed it. The station then remained a strong second until the 1970s, when WPVI-TV's Action News bumped channel 10 down to third place. WCAU struggled through the late 1970s while most of its CBS sisters dominated the ratings, but has since recovered and has been a solid runner-up to longtime leader WPVI for over a quarter century. WCAU did manage to pass WPVI in the 5 p.m. time slot for a time in the early 1980s with its original "Live at 5," anchored by Larry Kane and Deborah Knapp (now at KENS-TV in San Antonio). In 2001, WCAU made national news when its 11 pm news (anchored by Larry Mendte and Renee Chenault-Fattah) knocked WPVI from the top slot for the first time in decades. Since 2003, WCAU has had to fend off a spirited challenge from a resurgent KYW-TV for second place in the Philadelphia ratings. Channel 3's resurgence was fueled in part by luring Mendte away from channel 10.

Shortly after CBS agreed to sell the station to NBC, WCAU dropped its longtime moniker of Channel 10 News in favor of NewsCenter 10. After the sale closed, NBC changed the newscast name to News 10. It became NBC10 News in 2000.

WCAU used music based on "Channel 2 News," written for WBBM-TV in Chicago (the de facto official music for CBS' owned-and-operated stations) and variations on it from 1982 until the 11pm newscast on September 9, 1995 hours before the flip to NBC. It used the original 1975 version from 1982 to 1987, a synthesized version written by a local composer during the 1987-88 season, and the Palmer News Package from 1988 to 1995. KYW-TV has used variants on this theme in recent years.

The evening newscasts were recently overhauled. Tracy Davidson now anchors a consumer related program called "All That and More" which airs at 4 PM ET Monday-Friday. Vince DeMentri now anchors the current Live at 5 timeslot as a solo anchor, but as of Feb. 8, 2008, Dawn Timmeney joined DeMentri as co-anchor. The 6pm ET newscast is anchored solo by Tim Lake. The 11pm ET newscast is anchored by Tim Lake and Renee Chenault-Fattah.

As of April, 2008, WCAU is the only major station in Philly without High Definition news.

Current personalities

Anchors

• Renee Chenault-Fattah - weeknights at 11 p.m.
• Lori Delgado - weekday mornings
• Tim Lake - weeknights 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.
• Dawn Timmeney - weeknights at 5 p.m.

Anchors/Reporters

• Lynn Berry - weekend mornings and mid-day
• John Blunt - weekend mornings and mid-day
• Tracy Davidson - weeknights at 4 p.m. 'All That and More'; consumer reporter
• Vince DeMentri - weeknights 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. (on My PHL 17), investigative reporter
• Denise Nakano - weeknights at 10 p.m. (on My PHL 17)
• Aditi Roy - weekend evenings
• Terry Ruggles - weekday mornings

Weather

• Bill Henley - weekday mornings; co-host '10! show'
• Michelle Grossman- weekend mornings and mid-day
• Glenn Schwartz - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 4, 6, 11 p.m.
• Dave Warren- weekend evenings

Sports

• John Clark - weekends
• Jade McCarthy - sports reporter/fill-in anchor
• Vai Sikahema - sports director; weeknights at 5, 6, 10, 11 p.m.

Reporters

• Cherie Bank - medical reporter
• Monique Braxton
• Lu Ann Cahn - investigative reporter
• Deanna Durante
• Tim Furlong
• Ted Greenberg - Jersey shore reporter
• Harry Hairston - investigative reporter
• Steve Highsmith
• Edie Huggins
• Justin Pizzi
• Doug Shimell
• Mike Strug
• Jamison Uhler - 'All That and More' reporter
• Kristen Welker
• Lori Wilson - feature reporter; co-host '10! show'

Traffic

• John Ogden

External links

• WCAU website
• WCAU Wireless
• City Declares 'Bill Baldini Day' To Honor Reporter's 40 Years
• WCAU: A History Of Firsts
• Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia
• WCAU-TV Alumni
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