WPTZ

For the former WPTZ in Philadelphia, see KYW-TV.

{{Infobox broadcast}} may refer to:

• Template:Infobox broadcasting network
• Template:Infobox television channel
• Template:Infobox television station

WPTZ is the NBC-affiliated television station for northern Vermont and the North Country of New York State that is licensed to North Pole. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 14 from a transmitter on Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak. Owned by Hearst-Argyle Television, the station has studios on Television Drive in Plattsburgh. Syndicated programming on WPTZ includes: Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, Oprah, and Judge Judy. It operates secondary studios, known as the Vermont Bureau, on Roosevelt Highway in Colchester, Vermont. Like other stations that serve Plattsburgh and Burlington, it has a large audience in southern Québec, Canada. This includes Montréal, a city that is ten times larger than all of WPTZ's entire American viewing area combined.

At one point, they even identified on-air as "North Pole / Plattsburgh / Burlington / Montréal" to acknowledge its large cable viewership in Canada. It is widely carried over the province of Québec, as far north as Saguenay and as far east as Gaspé. On cable, WPTZ can be seen in Plattsburgh, New York on Charter channel 2 and in Burlington, Vermont on Comcast channel 5. It is also the default NBC affiliate for Essex, Franklin, and St. Lawrence Counties in Upstate New York where it is seen on Time Warner Cable. On Vidéotron systems in Montreal, it can be seen on: channel 23 (West Montreal), channel 18 (Central and East Montreal), and channel 52 (Illico digital).

However, during NBC prime time programming, Canadian cable systems frequently cover up WPTZ's signal on cable systems in Montreal and, to a lesser extent, Quebec City. This is done to satisfy CRTC's simsub rules. That action benefits CFCF-TV and CKMI-TV. Sister station and NBC affiliate WNNE has most of its operations and master control located at WPTZ's facilities. However, that station has its own studios on Dewitt Drive in White River Junction, Vermont. It serves the Connecticut River Valley (a.k.a. Upper Valley) area of central and southern Vermont along with western New Hampshire as a semi-satellite of WPTZ. However, WNNE airs its own station identifications and local advertisements.

History

Channel 5 first signed on-the-air on December 8, 1954 as WIRI. It was owned by the Great Northern Broadcasting Company along with WIRY-AM 1340. It has been an NBC station since its inception although it carried secondary affiliations with ABC from its launch until 1968 (when WVNY signed on) and DuMont (until that network ceased operations in 1956). Rollins Telecasting bought the station in 1956. Shortly before that, WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia was sold to NBC and renamed WRCV-TV (it is now CBS affiliate KYW-TV). Rollins quickly grabbed the WPTZ calls for channel 5 after realizing that "PTZ" could stand for Plattsburgh. Rollins merged with Heritage Broadcasting in 1987 to form Heritage Media. In 1991, Heritage bought NBC affiliate WNNE in Hartford, Vermont which was a separate station with its own news department. With Heritage's purchase, it was made into a semi-satellite of WPTZ. Heritage moved WNNE's master control to WPTZ in 2000. Heritage Media sold all of its broadcasting properties to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1997 prior to Heritage's merger with News Corporation.

The sale protected new FOX affiliate WFFF-TV which was initially operated by WPTZ under a local marketing agreement (LMA). Otherwise, WPTZ and WNNE along with then-sister stations WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Florida and WCHS-TV in Charleston, West Virginia would have been forced to switch their network affiliations to Fox. Sinclair, in turn, sold WPTZ and WNNE (along with the WFFF LMA) to Sunrise Television in 1998. However, instead of keeping them, Sunrise decided to swap all three stations along with Smith Broadcasting-owned KSBW in Salinas, California to Hearst-Argyle Television in return for WNAC-TV in Providence, Rhode Island and WDTN in Dayton, Ohio. The swap became official on July 2, 1998. WFFF began operating as an independently-controlled station in 2000 when the LMA with WPTZ was terminated. On June 23, 1999, WPTZ petitioned the FCC to change its city of license from North Pole to Plattsburgh. The station cited the area's declining population. The last census did not even count North Pole as a separate community and collapsed it into Lake Placid. As of 2007, this has not yet been approved.

However, the station has largely dropped North Pole from its station identifications and now identifies on-air as "Plattsburgh / Burlington" most of the time. WPTZ is one of two television stations in the United States to broadcast from the "North Pole". The other is KJNP-TV, a religious station licensed to North Pole, Alaska that serves Fairbanks. It was a subject of a blooper when Oprah Winfrey taped a promo for her show for WPTZ and started laughing after she spoke the station's community of license. David Letterman, in another promo during his NBC tenure, riffed on the station's request for him to pronounce the "Z" in WPTZ as "zed" instead of "zee" for the station's Canadian audience. On February 17, 2009, the station shut down its analog signal and began to broadcast exclusively in digital. It is one of the first stations owned by Hearst-Argyle Television to cease analog broadcasting (KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii is the other). WPTZ's analog signal on VHF channel 5 transmitted from Terry Mountain in Peru, New York.

NBC Weather Plus

In September 2006, WPTZ established a daily web video forecast as part of a major revamping of its website. The video forecast, known as the "Weather Plus Update", featured a logo showing WPTZ and WNNE offering NBC Weather Plus together known as "5 & 31 Weather Plus". Starting in October, channel 5's studios in Plattsburgh underwent extensive renovations. During that time, its newscasts were broadcasted from a temporary news set while the renovations took place. While the studios as a whole were being upgraded, the weather department underwent the most change. In advance of the launch of NBC Weather Plus, the weather center was expanded to make room for new combined WPTZ and WNNE weather graphics and logos. The remodeling was completed by late-November. WPTZ launched Weather Plus on its new second digital subchannel on November 15. The station had launched a new digital signal from Mount Mansfield a day earlier. Weather Plus was never offered on WNNE's digital signal. On digital cable, Weather Plus was carried on Comcast channel 169, Time Warner channel 854, and Telecom channel 305. It was never offered on Charter systems in New York State. In December 2008, NBC shut down the national Weather Plus service. WPTZ still airs 24 hour weather updates on the digital subchannel and still uses the Weather Plus logo. The station will keep the 24-hour local weather channel to keep in competition with WCAX's 24-hour weather channel, "WCAXtra".

News operation

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, WNNE had its own news department. In 1989, the station began the process of downsizing its staff and integrating them with WPTZ. See that article for more information about the station's own in-house news production. Today, WPTZ and WNNE use the NewsChannel branding. During WPTZ news, WNNE is referred to as the Upper Valley Bureau and features two full-time reporters based in that station's White River Junction studios. Weeknights at 5:30, there is a live update from channel 31's studios that features headlines from the Upper Valley. In addition to the Upper Valley and Vermont bureaus, WPTZ broadcasts national news from a Washington D.C. bureau that is operated by Hearst-Argyle. It employs several reporters who give live reports to the various Hearst-Argyle affiliates. Although the two stations do not own or operate weather radars of their own, they use live NOAA National Weather Service radar data from several regional sites. It is presented on-screen in a forecasting system known as "Storm Tracker 5000". The main signal comes from the NWS' Local Forecast Office at Burlington International Airport. Unlike most other NBC affiliates, WPTZ does not air a weekday Noon newscast. The station had aired news at that time until 2005 but it was dropped in favor of 5:30 Now. With the departure of Thom Hallock (contract was not renewed by station) on November 23, 2007, WPTZ was left with an all woman anchor team. That changed with the arrival of Gus Rosendale. He left WPTZ in 2005 to report at sister station WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh. Rosendale made his debut back at WPTZ in mid-December.

News staff

Anchors

• Mary Morin - weekday mornings
• Stephanie Gorin - weeknights and "Learning Counts" segment producer
• Gus Rosendale - weeknights
• Gabrielle Komorowski - weeknights at 5:30
• Kelley Morris - weekends

NewsChannel 5 Weather Plus Meteorologists

• Tom Messner (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - Chief seen weeknights at 5, 6, and 11
  • heard on WOKO-FM 98.9, WKOL-FM 105.1, WJOY-AM 1230, WSLP-FM 93.3, and CKON-FM 97.3
• Gib Brown (AMS Seal of Approval) - weeknights at 5:30
• Jim Moore (Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and NWA Seal of Approval) - weekday mornings
• Keith Carson - weekends

Sports

• Matt Hobbs - weeknights at 6 and 11
• Ken Drake - weekends and reporter

Reporters

• Stewart Ledbetter - Vermont Bureau Chief and host of Vermont This Week on VPT
• Mia Moran - Vermont
• Matt Gerien - Vermont
• Ashe Reardon - Upper Valley (WNNE)
• Jackie Bender - Upper Valley (WNNE)
• Sally Kidd - national correspondent
• Laurie Kinney - national correspondent
• Nikole Killion - weekday morning national correspondent
• Heather VanArsdel - New York
• Erin Vannella - New York

Past personnel

• Mark Sudol - Sports Anchor/Reporter at News 12 CT
• Erin Connors - anchor seen weeknights at 5 and 5:30 and reporter
• Jeanne Moos - now reporter for CNN
  • in 1976, Moos became WPTZ's first female correspondent
• Dawn Fratangelo - now NBC News correspondent
• Cindy Fitzgibbon - now at WFXT Boston
• Thom Hallock - weeknight 6 and 11 o'clock anchor
  • at the station from 1996 until 2007
• Hailee Lampert - New York reporter
• Chris Kelley - occasional fill-in at WFSB
• Erik Heden - weekend meteorologist
  • now working for the National Weather Service
• Bird Berdan - original weatherman from 1950s until 1980s
  • nicknamed the "Atlantic Weatherman" and appeared in advertisements at least through late 1996
  • in late-1980s, a Montreal radio station (95.9 FM) made a rap song poking fun and paying tribute to Bird Berdan
  • died in December 2004
• Neil Drew - anchor in the 1970s
• Chris Ortloff - anchor in the early-1980s
  • served in the New York State Assembly from 1986 until 2007
  • on December 24, 2008 he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of online enticement of minors
  • his sentencing was April 23, 2009
• Erin Clark - now main anchor for sister station KSBW in Salinas / Monterey, California
• Michelle Mortensen - anchor and consumer reporter

External links

• WPTZ "NewsChannel 5"
• WPTZ wireless
• WNNE "NewsChannel 31"
• NBC
• Template:TVQ