WPSG
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WPSG, channel 57, is currently the UPN-affiliated television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like UPN, WPSG is owned by the CBS Corporation, and is also a sister station to KYW-TV (channel 3). The studios are within the KYW facility in downtown Philadelphia, with transmitter located in the Roxborough section of the city.
On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced that they would merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW, the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger will take effect on-the-air in September 2006, and WPSG will be the CW's Philadelphia station.
History
Pre-1981 History of the Channel 57 frequency in the Delaware Valley
The channel 57 frequency in what is now the Philadelphia market was originally assigned to Easton. In the 1950's it was home to WGLV-TV, a dual ABC/DuMont affiliate owned by the Easton Express newspaper. However, the station struggled mainly due to the fact that it was a UHF station and at the time new TV sets were not required to have UHF tuners. The station went dark in the late 1950s, and somewhere along the line channel 57 was reassigned to Philadelphia. [1]
1981-1985: Prism/FNN
Channel 57 first signed on the air on August 31, 1981 as WWSG-TV, a station which aired Financial News Network programming during the day and subscription TV at night. The station ultimately dropped the FNN feed when it decided to become subscription full-time eighteen months later, and changed to the now-defunct PRISM pay-cable service in 1983.
1985-1995: Independent station
In 1985, William Gross, the founder of the station, sold it to Milton Grant, who changed the call letters to WGBS-TV and turned the station into an independent. WGBS aired a typical mix of cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas, sports and westerns. Many of the shows that WGBS began with were Viacom-syndicated programs that were formerly on WKBS-TV (channel 48, now WGTW-TV) before that station went off the air in August 1983.
A distinct feature of WGBS was the very slick look adopted by the station. WGBS boldly branded itself as Philly 57, and also adopted the use of CGI graphics of near network-quality. The station's announcer, Kim Martin (then an announcer at WPEN radio), offered bold, brash, and entertaining voice-overs. Grant had hoped to have his stations -- in addition to channel 57, Grant owned UHF independents in Miami and Chicago at the time -- become regional or national superstations. However, he overpaid for programming, ended up in debt and later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 1986. In 1988, Grant's creditors formed a holding company, known as Combined Broadcasting, and took over control of the Grant stations. Combined put the stations up for sale in 1993, but it would be two years before Combined found a buyer, and only then in a roundabout way.
In early 1994 Viacom's newly-acquired subsidiary Paramount Pictures announced plans to form the United Paramount Network, in tandem with Chris-Craft Industries. In Philadelphia, Viacom owned Fox affiliate WTXF-TV (channel 29), and initially planned to make that station the market's UPN affiliate. Though there was no official notification that they were going to lose WTXF, Fox made a tentative deal with Combined to buy WGBS and move its programming there.
However, later that year, Westinghouse Broadcasting, owners of NBC-affiliated KYW-TV, cut a deal with CBS to switch channel three and two of Westinghouse's other stations to CBS. New World Communications had recently partnered with Fox, and emerged as a candidate to purchase CBS' longtime owned-and-operated WCAU-TV (channel 10). New World owned several VHF stations that were due to switch to Fox, and the opportunity to win its new partner a VHF station in the nation's fourth-largest market was too much to resist. Fox canceled its preliminary deal with Combined to buy channel 57 and entered into the WCAU bidding just in case New World's offer fell through. However, Viacom opted to sell WTXF to Fox, opening the door for WCAU to be purchased by NBC. Using the cash received from Fox for channel 29, Viacom then bought WGBS (along with Miami sister station WBFS) and made the station Philadelphia's UPN affiliate. Ironically, of course, Viacom had been the owner of the majority of channel 57's schedule back in 1985, and in fact was one of Grant's former creditors.
1995-present: As a UPN station
WGBS became the UPN affiliate on January 16, 1995, the day the network was launched. After UPN launched, the station's image changed to fit its new status. The name changed to "UPN Philly 57" and finally "UPN57", the graphics got simpler, and Martin was replaced by the more staid Larry Van Nuys. In September 1995, Viacom changed the call letters to WPSG, for "Paramount Stations Group." Also gradually the old sitcoms and cartoons were replaced by first run syndicated talk/reality/court shows. Viacom bought CBS in 2000, and WPSG later moved into KYW's studios on Independence Mall. In the same year Viacom also purchased Chris-Craft's 50-percent share of UPN, making WPSG UPN's largest owned-and-operated station, which it still is to this day.
Today, WPSG, while broadcasting the usual mix of syndicated and UPN network programming, is trying to position itself as more of a "local" station, using the tagline "So Philly, So U!" Weekend movie marathons, usually hosted by local personalities (or KYW/WPSG staff like Sean Murphy), have become normal, and the station recently broadcast the Philadelphia version of "Gimme The Mike!", a competition for aspiring stand-up comedians. WPSG is also the broadcast home of MLB's Philadelphia Phillies, the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers, and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers (although the majority of those teams' games are on Comcast SportsNet).
News Operations
In September 2002, KYW radio, KYW-TV and WPSG launched a morning news program called KYW NewsRadio This Morning. Originally anchored by KYW radio anchor Beth Trapani (who was later succeeded by Ed Abrams then he was succeeded by Leslie Van Arsdall), the broadcast was essentially an embellished radio newscast, with simple graphics and video borrowed from channel three. The newscast did surprisingly better than expected, but the effort would be short-lived: KYW Newsradio This Morning aired its final broadcast on May 30, 2005. The following day, a new program called Wake UPNews, whose production is outsourced by KYW/WPSG to Traffic Pulse, premiered in the four-hour time slot previously held by KYW NewsRadio This Morning. This show is fronted by news anchor Karen Adams, meteorologist Christa Quinn, and traffic reporter Sean Murphy. The music and graphics were created by Emmy Award winner Randy Pyburn, and are a variant of KYW-TV's graphics package, with the main difference a change from blue to red. Interestingly, the Pyburn graphics package is quite similar to the one they created for WNBC-TV in 2003, which some NBC owned and operated stations are currently standardizing around.
Overall, since the fall of 2004, KYW-TV began to broadcast its news on WPSG whenever it had an obligation to show network sports programming. These broadcasts carried KYW-TV's regular CBS 3 branding and graphics, but the channel bug was changed to WPSG's UPN 57.
Trivia
As WPSG will become an affiliate of The CW, it will be the largest CW affiliate to be owned by parent company CBS Corp.