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WPIX

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WPIX "(WB-11)" is a television station in New York City. It has been owned by the Tribune Company since its inception, and is currently an affiliate of the WB television network. Before joining the WB, WPIX was one of the leading independent stations in the country. The station's signal covers the three-state New York metropolitan area, and WPIX is also available as a regional superstation via satellite and cable in the United States and Canada.

On January 24, 2006, the WB and UPN 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 (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger will take effect on-air in September 2006, and WPIX was announced as the CW's New York affiliate. Current UPN station WWOR-TV, owned by the News Corporation, will become a My Network TV station.


History

WPIX made its on-air debut on June 15, 1948. Like its longtime Chicago sister station, WGN-TV, its call letters come from the slogan of the newspaper that founded it. In this case, it was the New York Daily News, whose tag was "New York's Picture Newspaper". Both the paper and the station were owned by the Tribune Company. Then and now, WPIX's studios and offices are located in the News Building, at 220 East 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan.

Through the early 1990s, WPIX was operated separately from the other Tribune television and radio outlets through the News-owned license holder, WPIX, Incorporated, which (starting in 1966) also operated WPIX-FM (101.9 MHz., now WQCD). The WPIX stations were separated from the Daily News in 1991, when British businessman Robert Maxwell bought the newspaper. Tribune retained WPIX and WQCD, and the radio station was sold to Emmis Communications in 1997.

From the outset, WPIX featured programming that was standard among independents: movies, syndicated reruns of network programs, childrens' shows, public affairs programming, religious programs, and sports -- specifically, the New York Yankees baseball team, which WPIX carried from 1951 until 1998. At various points, WPIX also aired the New York (baseball) Giants, the New York Giants and New York Jets football teams, the NHL's New York Rangers, and the NBA's New York Knicks.

In the 1960s, WPIX, like the other two major independents in New York -- RKO General's WOR-TV (now WWOR) and Metromedia's WNEW-TV (now WNYW) -- struggled to acquire better programming. By the early 1970s, WPIX was the clear number-two independent station in the city, behind WNEW-TV. It offered a wide selection of programming including cartoons, off network sitcoms, dramas, a strong library of movies and of course, Yankees baseball. It identified on-air as 11 Alive from 1977 to 1986.

WPIX suffered through a dry spell, ratings-wise, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, now-Fox-owned WNYW and a resurgent WWOR, then owned by MCA/Universal, relegated WPIX to sixth place among New York's VHF stations. After a new general manager, Michael Eigner, was transferred to WPIX from Los Angeles sister station KTLA in 1989, the station engineered a slow turnaround that eventually resulted in WPIX becoming the leading independent station in the New York market. In 1994, the station became the exclusive home of the New York City Marathon. In January 1995, WPIX became an affiliate of the new WB network.

WPIX lost its over-the-air broadcast rights to the Yankees to WNYW following the 1998 baseball season, more a result of regional cable sports networks (in this case, the Madison Square Garden Network) gaining team broadcast rights, leaving broadcast stations with fewer games to air. The station replaced them with the New York Mets, which up until that point had spent their entire televised history with WOR/WWOR. Ironically, beginning in 2005, over-the-air Yankees broadcasts were aired by WWOR, which was as synonymous with the Mets as WPIX was with the Yankees.

However, being a network affiliate does have its negatives. As WB network and syndicated daytime programming (such as Maury, Judge Mathis, and The Jerry Springer Show) became more prominent on channel 11's schedule, some of the station's local-interest programming has disappeared. WPIX was once home to the St. Patrick's Day, National Puerto Rican Day and Columbus Day parades, and the Macy's Independence Day fireworks program. Along with the New York City Marathon all of these events have moved to WNBC-TV, and the Marathon and the Macy's show are now carried on the NBC network. In recent years, WPIX has revived The Yule Log, a special holiday program that combines Christmas music with a film loop of logs burning inside a fireplace. The Yule Log aired on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas morning, initially from 1966 until 1989, and viewer response brought it back in 2001. WPIX also airs a live broadcast of the Midnight Mass, from St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Christmas Eve.

As childrens' programming began to fade from broadcast television, the WB dropped its morning cartoon block in 2000, leaving the time for local stations to carry their own programming. On June 2, 2000, WPIX launched the WB-11 Morning News, which has grown to challenge the established network morning programs as well as its more direct competitor, WNYW's Good Day New York. The station continues to carry Saturday morning cartoons from WB (known as Kids WB), but the afternoon cartoon block was discontinued on Friday, January 6, 2006 (not Monday, January 2, 2006, as has been incorrectly mentioned previously).

On September 11, 2001, the transmitter facilities of WPIX as well as eight other New York City television stations and several radio stations were destroyed when two hijacked airplanes crashed into and destroyed the World Trade Center towers. The station's lead engineer, Steve Jacobson, was lost in the tragedy. WPIX's satellite feed eerily froze on the last image received from the WTC mast - the North Tower just as it started to collapse; the image remained on the screen for much of the day until WPIX was able to set up alternate transmission facilities. Since then, WPIX has transmitted its signal from the Empire State Building.

News programming

Appropriate for a station originally owned by the Daily News and linked to the Tribune Company, news has played an important role on WPIX from the station's beginnings. WPIX won national acclaim in 1956 for its filmed documentary coverage of the collision, and later, sinking of the New York-bound oceanliner SS Andrea Doria off the coast of Nantucket.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, WPIX used the Action News title and format for its local news programs, complete with its theme music, "Move Closer to Your World". A 30-minute newscast aired at 7:30 PM, and a one-hour program (at some points it was also 30 minutes) ran at 10:00 PM.

From June 1980 until June 1990, WPIX produced and syndicated Independent Network News (INN), a national newscast for independent stations. The program featured the same talent that worked on WPIX's local newscasts. As part of a midday expansion of INN, channel 11 also experimented with a newscast at Noon, but this effort was short-lived. The station dropped Action News in 1983 and renamed its programs as The Independent News. In 1986, the national INN newscast, which was contained within the 10:00 show, was renamed USA Tonight, while the 7:30 program retained the title Independent News. When INN was cancelled, the 7:30 program ended as well, and WPIX focused its efforts on the 10:00 program. Currently, WPIX uses segments within its newscasts to cross-promote Newsday, the Melville, New York-based daily newspaper purchased by Tribune in 2000.

Over the years, channel 11 has won many awards for news, and was the first independent station to win a New York-area Emmy Award for outstanding newscast, first gaining the statuette in 1979 and earning it again in 1983. Ironically, this news operation was accused of falsifying news reports broadcast in the late 1960s, such as labeling stock footage as "via satellite", and saying a voice report was live from Prague when, in actuality, it was made from a pay telephone in Manhattan. As a result, a group called Forum Communications -- led by future PBS and NBC News president Lawrence Grossman -- approached the FCC to challenge WPIX Inc.'s license to operate channel 11, but after years of litigation, WPIX and the Daily News prevailed in 1979.

Newscasts

Weekdays

  • WB-11 Morning News 5 AM to 7 AM (Craig Treadway / Tiffany McElroy / Linda Church [weather] / Jill Nicolini [traffic])
  • WB-11 Morning News 7 AM to 9 AM (Sukanya Krishnan / John Muller / Linda Church [weather] / Emily Frances [entertainment] / Jill Nicolini [traffic])
  • WB-11 News at Ten 10 PM to 11 PM (Kaity Tong / Jim Watkins / Irv "Mr. G" Gikofsky [weather] / Sal Marchiano [sports])

Weekends

  • WB-11 News Closeup Sundays 6 to 6:30 AM (Marvin Scott)
  • WB-11 News at Ten 10 PM to 11 PM (Mary Murphy / Peter Thorne / Joseph Cioffi [weather] / Lolita Lopez [sports])

Logos

WPIX's famous Circle 11 logo -- which closely resembles the World Trade Center -- was first unveiled in 1969. (A Yankee Stadium advertising billboard for WPIX with the Circle 11 logo appeared that year.) It had become the official station emblem by 1974.

The station dropped it when it adopted the 11 Alive moniker in 1976, but re-incorporated the circle 11 into "11 Alive" print ads in 1984 and the Yankee broadcast intros in April 1985. The circle 11 returned full-time in 1986.

The current "11" logo was first unveiled during WPIX's broadcast of the 1994 New York City Marathon, and eventually became the full-time logo, augmented with the WB logo after the station became a WB affiliate in 1995.

Old logos

See also

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