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WUSA (TV)

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WUSA, channel 9, is the Washington, D.C. affiliate of the CBS television network. The flagship of the Gannett Company, WUSA's studios and transmitter are located in the Tenleytown area of Washington. WUSA was CBS' largest station in market size not to be owned and operated by the network until the 2007-08 television season, when the Atlanta market passed up Washington, D.C. in the market rankings; however, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta is on UHF, making WUSA the largest VHF CBS affiliate to not be a network O&O.

History

The station officially went on the air on January 11, 1949 as WOIC-TV, and began full-time operations on January 16. It is the fourth-oldest station in the nation's capital. Its original owner was the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, a subsidiary of R.H. Macy and Company, which also owned WOR-AM-FM in New York City, and was working to put WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) on the air at the same time. Nine days later, WOIC broadcast the first televised American presidential inaugural address, given by President Harry S. Truman.

WOIC-TV picked up the CBS affiliation upon signing on, replacing WMAL-TV (channel 7, now WJLA-TV) as CBS's Washington outlet. But the Bamberger/Macy's ownership had other plans for their station: both WOIC and its New York sister station were scheduled to become affiliates of a planned television network operated by Mutual Radio. However, Mutual Television never made it to air, leaving channel 9 to remain a CBS station.

In June 1950, CBS teamed up with the Washington Post to purchase WOIC-TV from Bamberger/Macy's. The new owners, WTOP Incorporated (the Washington Post owned 55 percent, and CBS held the remaining 45 percent), changed the station's call sign to WTOP-TV, after its new sister stations WTOP radio (then at 1500 kHz.) and WTOP-FM (96.3 MHz., now WHUR-FM).

In July 1950, WTOP-TV became the first television station in Washington authorized to broadcast color television in the 405-line field sequential color standard, which was incompatible with the black-and-white 525-line NTSC standard. Color broadcasts would continue for nearly 30 months, when regulatory and commercial pressures forced the FCC to rescind its original color standard and begin the process of adopting the 525-line NTSC-3 standard, developed by RCA to be backwards compatible with the existing black-and-white televisions.

In 1954, the WTOP stations moved into a new facility, known as "Broadcast House", at 40th and Brandywine streets NW in Washington. The building was the first in the country designed as a unified radio and television facility. Its name was in honor of Broadcasting House, home of the BBC in London. The building was well-known to WTOP's president. since he had spent much of World War II assigned to the BBC. Previous to the move to Broadcast House, the radio stations operated out of the Earle Building (now the Warner Building, home of the Warner Theatre), and WTOP-TV had operated out of the small WOIC studios at the same location. When Broadcast House was completed and the new television studios were inaugurated, the old studio became the garage for Broadcast House and the old master control room became both the master control and transmitter room for channel 9, since Broadcast House had been built around the station's original, four-sided tower. People can still see the building with the tower in the middle at the same location, although it is now an office building and retail store front operated by Douglas Development Corp.

The WTOP-TV tower was well known in Washington for two things. First, at Christmas time, the tower was strung with Christmas lights and glowed brightly on top of Mount Reno, the tallest point in the District of Columbia. Second, the tower tended to sway much more than three-sided towers. In a strong wind the tower could be seen swaying back-and-forth, and during the winter ice from the tower fell quite often on the streets below.

Also in 1954, CBS sold its share of WTOP Inc. to the Post to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's new seven-station-per-group ownership rule. CBS's partial ownership of WTOP radio and WCCO radio in Minneapolis exceeded the FCC's limit for AM stations. CBS opted to sell its share of WTOP. It had bought the station in 1932, selling controlling interest to the Post in 1949. After the sale closed, the Post merged the WTOP stations with its other broadcast property, WMBR-AM-TV in Jacksonville, Florida and changed the name of the licensee from "WTOP Inc." to "Post Stations, Inc." WMBR-AM was sold off in 1958, and WMBR-TV became WJXT. The Post renamed its broadcasting group "Post-Newsweek Stations" in 1961 after the Post bought Newsweek magazine. Post-Newsweek acquired its third television station, WLBW-TV (now WPLG) in Miami in 1970 and in 1974 added WTIC-TV (now WFSB) in Hartford, Connecticut to the group.

In 1972 WTOP-TV joined with the Evening Star Broadcasting Company (owned by the Post's rival, the now-defunct Washington Star and licensee of WMAL-TV) to build the Joint Tower, a 1040-foot, three-sided tower across the alley from Broadcast House at 4010 Chesapeake Street, NW. Transmission lines were extended from Broadcast House's transmitter area to the new tower for both WTOP-TV and WHUR-FM (the former WTOP-FM, which had been donated by Post-Newsweek to Howard University in 1971). The old tower continued to serve as the backup antenna for channel 9 until the station sold Broadcast House in 1996.

In 1974, WTOP and the other Post-Newsweek stations adopted the slogan The One and Only. The moniker was part of a trend toward group identification of stations, with each station being The One and Only Channel (channel number). Staff members from the One and Only period usually refer to themselves as "the one and onlies" as a source of pride. The slogan was dropped from active use in the late 1990s and has not been used as part of an image campaign since 1996. The slogan no longer appears on the air, but was revived in a sense when channel 9 adopted its current slogan, First and Only with Local News in HDTV.

In July 1978 Post-Newsweek exchanged WTOP-TV with the Evening News Association's WWJ-TV (now WDIV) in Detroit. Upon completion of the swap, WTOP-TV changed its call letters to WDVM-TV, with the new call letters representing the initials of the areas which channel 9 serves: D for the District of Columbia, V for Virginia, and M for Maryland. The Washington Post and the Evening News Association, which published the Detroit News, decided to swap their stations for fear the FCC would force them to sell the stations at unfavorable terms or revoke their very valuable licenses because the FCC at the time was considering forbidding ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations in the same market.

In 1985, the Gannett Company purchased the Evening News Association.[1] On July 4, 1986, Gannett changed WDVM's call letters to WUSA both in honor of the station being located in the nation's capital and Gannett's ownership of USA Today. The same connection is noted with Gannett's Denver station, KUSA-TV. The WUSA callsign had previously been used by Gannett's station in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which changed its callsign to KARE. While the station's current call sign is commonly printed as W*USA, particularly in Gannett press releases, the asterisk or star between the W and U is not officially recognized as part of the call sign, as FCC records list the station as WUSA. The star device was used to denote its connection to USA Today. KUSA employs a similar practice. After the Women's United Soccer Association (the WUSA) was founded in the late 1990s, the star was replaced on-air with the CBS eye.

WUSA-TV moved to a new Broadcast House at 4100 Wisconsin Avenue, NW in January 1992. WTOP-FM had left the old Broadcast House in 1971, but kept its transmitter there. WTOP-AM departed in 1978; the Post had sold it a year earlier to the Outlet Company. The move to the more modern building was tinged with sadness due to the death from a brain tumor of channel 9's popular sportcaster, Glenn Brenner just days before the move.

WUSA-TV began broadcasting digital television in 1999 on WUSA-DT, channel 34. From the start of transmissions, WUSA-DT carried the HDTV transmissions of the CBS Television Network in the network's chosen standard, 1080i. On May 2, 2005 at 11:00PM EDT, WUSA-DT became the first station in the D.C. Metropolitan Area to broadcast their local newscasts in HDTV using the 1080i standard. The newscast promos, traffic cameras, and "Doppler 9000" has changed to 16:9 HD, and the remote reports are usually SD widescreen, although, occasionally, featured stories will be done in HDTV. The station has said that they would be ready to carry syndicated programming in HDTV, if the content becomes available.

Personalities

WUSA-TV was the launchpad for several well-known news anchors. Sam Donaldson and Warner Wolf are among WUSA-TV's most successful alumni. The late Max Robinson was co-anchor of Eyewitness News with Gordon Peterson from 1969 to 1978 before he became the first black anchorman on network television and one of the original anchors of ABC's World News Tonight. James Brown of CBS Sports was a sports anchor at the station in the 1980s.

Current Personalities

Anchors

  • Lesli Foster, Weekend mornings
  • J.C. Hayward, Noon (celebrated 35th anniversary with the station in February, 2007)
  • Bruce Johnson, Weekend evenings
  • Todd McDermott, Weekdays 6 and 11 p.m.
  • Derek McGinty, Weekdays 5 and 7 p.m.
  • Tracey Neale, Weekdays 5, 6, and 11 p.m.
  • Andrea Roane, Morning anchor and reporter
  • Jennifer Ryan, Weekend evenings; also health reporter
  • Mike Walter, Weekday mornings anchor and reporter

Reporters

  • Phyllis Armstrong, was a morning anchor during the 1980s
  • Audrey Barnes, also a frequent substitute anchor
  • Doug Buchanan, son of former WUSA/WJLA anchor/reporter Mike Buchanan
  • Becky Diamond, Backpack journalist
  • Jan Fox, 9 Wants You to Know correspondent, was also a weekend anchor
  • Peggy Fox
  • Bruce Leshan, freelance reporter
  • Gary Neurenberg
  • Cindy Peña
  • Gary Reals, also was at WJLA from 1983 to 1990 before returning
  • Dave Statter, husband of former WUSA/WTTG meteorologist Hillary Howard Statter
  • Nancy Yamada

Weather

  • Howard Bernstein, Noon, Fill-in weekday morning
  • Kim Martucci, Weekday mornings
  • Tony Pann, Weekends
  • Topper Shutt, Chief meteorologist, weekday evenings

Sports

  • Brett Haber, Sports director, weekday anchor (also fill-in anchor of Sports Plus)
  • Levan Reid, Sports reporter, weekend sports anchor (primary anchor of Sports Plus)
  • Sara Walsh, Sports reporter, Fill-in sports anchor

Traffic

Managers

  • Allan S. Horlick, President/General Manager
  • Mike Ward, News Director
  • Catherine Snyder, Assistant News Director
  • Tony Castrilli, Executive Producer/News Coverage
  • Jay Mishkin, Morning Executive Producer
  • Jeff Rosetti, Evening Executive Producer
  • Samara Martin-Ewing, Executive Producer/Special Projects
  • Rick Garner, WUSA9.com Manager
  • Steve Houk, Marketing Director
  • Anthony Diaz, General Sales Manager
  • Victor Murphy, Director of Technology
  • Linda Barnhill, Business Manager

Past Personalities

  • Donald Allen - anchor/reporter (1962-1969, then moved to WJLA) (D)
  • Louis Allen - chief meteorologist (1974-1976) (D)
  • Bob Althage - anchor/health reporter (1982-1997)
  • Jess Atkinson - sports anchor (2000-2002)
  • Gordon Barnes - chief meteorologist (1976-1988)
  • Glenn Brenner - sports anchor (1976-1992) (D)
  • Mike "Buck" Buchanan - anchor/reporter (1970-2004, now at WTOP radio; father of reporter Doug Buchanan)
  • Maureen Bunyan - anchor/reporter (1973-1995, now at WJLA-TV/News Channel 8)
  • Ken Broo - sports director (1997-1999, now at WLWT in Cincinnati)
  • James Brown - sports anchor (1984-1990, now at CBS Sports)
  • Heather Cabot - general assignment reporter (2000-2002)
  • Pat Collins - reporter (1976-1986, now at WRC-TV)
  • Stacey Cohan - general assignment reporter (1999-2006, now at WTTG)
  • Steve Davis - sports director (2002-2003)
  • Gurvir Dhindsa - anchor/reporter (2000-2004, now at WTTG)
  • Mike Dunston - general assignment reporter (1997-2000, now anchor at WTVD in Durham, NC)
  • Bob Dalton - anchor (1951-1995) (D)
  • Sam Donaldson - anchor/reporter (1961-1967)
  • Beverly Farmer - traffic reporter (1998-2000, 2002-2006)
  • Mark Feldstein - investigative reporter (1984-1989)
  • Joan Gartlan - political reporter (1989-2001)
  • Steve Gendel - reporter (1971-1985, most recently a science and medical correspondent for CNBC)
  • Charlie Gertz- meteorologist (1969-1972) (D)
  • Chris Gordon - anchor/reporter (1976-1980 and 1984-1996, now at WRC-TV)
  • Miriam Hernandez - general assignment reporter (?-1998, now at KABC-TV in Los Angeles)
  • Frank Herzog - sports anchor and reporter (1969-1983 and 1992-2004, now at WTOP Radio)
  • Doug Hill - chief meteorologist (1984-2000, now at WJLA-TV)
  • Lexy Hickok - weekend meteorologist (1996-1999)
  • Hillary Howard Statter - meteorologist (2000-2004, now at WTWP radio... wife of reporter Dave Statter)
  • Joyce Jackson - sports anchor and reporter (2002-2006)
  • Virg Jacques - anchor/reporter (2000-2002, now at WTTG (FOX) in Washington, DC)
  • Paul Jones - reporter (1987-1994)
  • Hilton Kaderli - chief meteorologist (1972-1974)
  • Bill Kamal - meteorologist (1982-1993)
  • Susan King - anchor/reporter (1975-1979)
  • Ellen Kingsley - consumer reporter (1980-1992) (D)
  • Edwin Laskos - reporter (1997-1999)
  • Mack Lee - anchor/reporter (1982-1997)
  • Mark Lodato - reporter, first to KPHO-TV in Phoenix, AZ. Now a professor at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University
  • Keith Marler - weekend meteorologist (2001-2003, now at KMSP-TV in Minneapolis)
  • Davey Marlin-Jones - film critic and entertainment reporter (1970-1987) (D)
  • Andrea McCarren - reporter (1987-1990, now at WJLA-TV)
  • Patrick McGrath - anchor/reporter (1972-1983, now at WTTG)
  • Ken Mease - sports anchor and reporter (1985-2003)
  • Andrea Mitchell - reporter (1976-1978, now at NBC News)
  • Nicole O'Brian - Weekday morning/noon traffic reporter (2006-2007)
  • Teri Okita - weekend anchor/reporter (1997-2000, now at CBS News)
  • Gerald Owens - sports anchor and reporter, was originally morning co-anchor (1997-2003, now at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC)
  • Ralph Penza - reporter (1979-1980) (D)
  • Gordon Peterson - anchor/reporter (1969-2004, now at WJLA-TV/NewsChannel 8)
  • Carolyn Presutti - morning anchor/noon reporter (1994-1996, now at WTTG-TV)
  • Carol Randolph - host Morning Break (1975-1986)
  • Steve Rudin - meteorologist (1995-2001)
  • Max Robinson - anchor/reporter (1969-1978, moved to ABC News) (D)
  • Monika Samtani - morning traffic reporter (1997-1999 and 2001-2002)
  • Lee Shepard - anchor/reporter (1961-1971)
  • Greg Starddard - general assignment reporter (2000-2003), left for WRC-TV Washington DC
  • Bob Strickland - anchor/reporter (1969-1996)
  • Henry Tennenbaum - reporter (1974-1981, now at KRON-TV in San Francisco)
  • Hal Walker - reporter/anchor (1963-1968, went on to be the first black Washington correspondent at CBS News) (D)
  • Ruth Todd - meteorologist/anchor (1991-1992, now semi-retired in Salt Lake City)
  • Jane Van Ryan - reporter (70s-early 80s)
  • Rick Williams - reporter (1983-1984)
  • Tom Wills - reporter (1967-1975, now at WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, FL)
  • Tony Williams - reporter (1992-1995)
  • Warner Wolf - sports anchor (1968-1976 and 1992-1996) (now works at WABC in New York as the sports reporter for the Curtis & Kuby morning show)
  • Eun Yang - reporter/anchor (1995-2001, now at WRC-TV)
  • Barry Zee Van - meteorologist (mid 70s)

(D) - Deceased

This list is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

Slogans

  • 1974: The one and only! (also "The one and only channel 9!")
  • 1976: "Keep Your Eye On"
  • 1977: "We Give It All We've Got"
  • 1979: "You Make Us the One"
  • 1981: "One Thing Leads to Another"
  • 1982: "The One to Watch" (a similar promo was used by Melbourne's ATV-10 and Los Angeles's KNXT, and another promo was made for Sky News). The advertising series won a Clio Award.
  • 1983: "We've Got the Touch"
  • 1985: "Ours to Share"
  • 1986: "Share the Spirit"
  • 1989: "Get Ready"
  • Mid–Late '90s: Whatever It Takes.
  • 2000–02: Where local news comes first.
  • 2002–05: No Gimmicks. No Hype. Just The News.
  • 2005–06: The First and Only Local News in the Nation's Capital in High-Definition
  • Summer 2006–present: "____" Now

Awards

2001 Emmy: NEWS SPECIALS, "Katherine Graham: A Washington Legend" - Ben Brodsky, Producer, Catherine Snyder-Charlip, Producer, Samara Martin Ewing, Producer [1]

Footnotes

  1. ^ As indicated under "Licensee" above, the Evening News Association was renamed "Detroit Free Press, Inc." in 2005, when that Gannett subsidiary simultaneously bought the Free Press and sold the News.
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