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WGNT, channel 27, is the CW-affiliated station for the Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, Virginia (known collectively as Hampton Roads) market. The station is licensed to Portsmouth, and its transmitter is located in Suffolk, Virginia. WGNT is owned by the CBS Corporation, which owns a 50-percent share of the CW. Prior to the launch of the CW, WGNT was affiliated with UPN.

History

WGNT is one of the oldest surviving UHF stations in the country. It first appeared on December 6, 1953 as WTOV-TV, a commercial independent owned by Commonwealth Broadcasting. It was the third television station in the Hampton Roads area, and the second on UHF (WVEC-TV signed on at channel 15 three months earlier). WTOV later became an affiliate of the DuMont network. Channel 27 was on the air for limited hours, and had very limited viewership because it was impossible at the time to watch UHF stations without buying an expensive converter. Even with a converter, WTOV's picture wasn't very clear. With low viewership, poor advertising revenues, and the impending loss of DuMont programming, WTOV went dark in 1956.

The CBN Years

In 1961, M.G. "Pat" Robertson, an attorney who became Southern Baptist minister (though with a strong pentecostal tinge) purchased the license for channel 27. Under the ownership of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, the station returned to the air as WYAH-TV in October, with "YAH" standing for "Yahweh" according to some sources and "You are Holy" according to others. At first it was on the air eight hours a day with televangelists such as Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, local church services, and a locally produced program which was the ancestor of what would become the 700 Club. The early 700 Club featured faith healing, preaching, Christian music, prayers, and testimonies. Robertson was the primary host. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker produced a children's program. WYAH was one of the first Christian television stations in the United States. It was a viewer-supported noncommercial station, though it sold blocks of time to ministries.

In September 1967 WYAH expanded its broadcast day and went commercial with old westerns, public domain movies, and classic cartoons except on Sundays. By the early 1970s WYAH had expanded its broadcast day to 19 hours and was a traditional independent station running cartoons, off-network sitcoms, and religious programming, including thrice-daily airings of the 700 Club. Sundays were devoted entirely to religious programs. About this time, the Bakkers left for the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network before going on their own in 1975. Hampton Roads was one of the smallest markets with a commercial independent station. However, in keeping with Robertson's fundamentalist views, its programming was very conservative. Hampton Roads viewers had other choices, though, as WTTG and WDCA-TV from Washington, D.C. were available on cable.

In June 1971, CBN signed on WHAE-TV (now WGCL-TV) in Atlanta, followed with the January 1973 purchase of KBFI-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. CBN later changed the calls of that station to KXTX-TV and, in April 1973, merged it with KDTV (the current KXTX-TV). CBN's fourth station, WXNE-TV (now WFXT) in Boston was signed-on in October 1977. These stations formed the Continental Broadcasting Network, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Christian Broadcasting Network, and of which WYAH was the flagship station.

In 1980 WYAH along with the rest of the Continental stations began eight hours of general entertainment programming on Sundays, mostly extending the non-religious programming to syndicated theatrical shorts from Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount and a pair of weekly "theaters" dedicated to Shirley Temple movies and Blondie and Dagwood movies, and added more off-network reruns to the schedule during the early 1980s. Because of CBN's fundamentalist bent, profanity that was permitted on broadcast television was often muted for family viewing. However, it lost some ground to WTVZ, which signed on in 1979 and aired programming that was too racy for Robertson's liking, mostly uncensored off-network programming and syndicated fare.

In the late 1980s, Robertson began selling off the over-the-air stations that he owned. In 1989 WYAH was sold to Centennial Broadcasting. The new owners renamed the station WGNT, which calls stand for Greater Norfolk Television.

After CBN: WGNT Today

WGNT began showing far racier programming after Centennial purchased the network and ended its decades-long practice of censoring profanity from off-network syndicated programming. As the 1990s began, WGNT began showing controversial talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, The Ricki Lake Show and The Jerry Springer Show and syndicated fare like the Universal Action Pack, and dropped the 11 p.m. repeat of the 700 Club in 1991. By 2003, the series was completely off the air on WGNT, though it aired on numerous outlets in the area in the years since. (The 700 Club currently airs on four stations in the area: NBC affiliate WAVY-TV in the mornings, Fox station WVBT-TV in the afternoons, independent WSKY-TV in primetime, and TBN affiliate WHRE.)

In 1995, WGNT became a charter UPN affiliate and branded itself as "UPN 27". In 1997, Paramount Stations Group bought WGNT, making it a UPN owned-and-operated flagship station. Viacom, Paramount's owner, later bought CBS, making WGNT a CBS-owned station affiliated with UPN. When Viacom spun off its broadcasting properties into CBS Corporation at the end of 2005, WGNT and the other UPN O&Os became part of the new company. It currently ranks as the highest-rated UPN affiliate in the nation.

On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced 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. WGNT became the Hampton Roads area's CW affiliate on September 18, 2006.

Local programming

In 1995, WTKR produced the market's first newscast at 10:00pm, "NewsChannel 3 News at 10 on UPN 27" [1]. The newscast was short-lived and cancelled by 1997.

Currently WGNT airs the syndicated weekday morning program, The Daily Buzz. The station also produces a public affairs program, called Here and Now on The CW, airs every week on Sunday at 7 AM. Kafi Rouse, the program's host, is also the marketing and public affairs Director for the channel 27. The program covers topics including community affairs, politics, government, social issues, and business that affects the Hampton Roads area.

Logos

Trivia

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