WKTV

WKTV is the NBC-affiliated television station for the Mohawk Valley area of Central New York State licensed to Utica. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 29 from a transmitter in the Eatonville section of Fairfield and Herkimer. The station is seen on Time Warner channel 4 and in high definition on digital channel 863. Owned by Smith Media, it has studios on Smith Hill Road in Deerfield(address says Utica). Syndicated programming on WKTV includes: ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy! Jeopardy!], Wheel of Fortune, Dr. Phil, and Judge Judy''.

Digital programming
It operates the area's CW affiliate on a second digital subchannel. This can also be seen on Time Warner channel 11 (hence the Central New York CW 11 branding). WKTV-DT2 gets all of its programming from The CW Plus.

History
WKTV began broadcasting on December 1, 1949 on VHF channel 13 affiliated with NBC and DuMont. [1] It was the 93rd television station in the country to sign-on. This made Utica one of the smallest cities in the nation with its own television station. Soon after, it also picked upCBS and ABC giving it the interesting situation of being a local network affiliate for all major television networks for a period of time. The DuMont affiliation ended in the mid-1950s with that network's closure and, due to a dispute with CBS, that affiliation ended soon after. WHEN-TV (now WTVH) in Syracuse would become the default affiliate for the Utica area.

On New Year's Day 1959, WKTV moved to VHF channel 2 in a dial realignment. This change involved a station located on channel 13 inHamilton, Ontario switching channel positions to add a channel 13 allotment in Rochester. This in turn allowed a relocation of a channel 13 inAlbany. With the change, WKTV upgraded its signal and began to cover a fairly wide area stretching from as far south as the Catskills, as far east as the Berkshires, and into Canada. In the mid-1950s, a young local radio announcer named Dick Clark joined the staff of announcers at WKTV.

He was a talented good looking announcer and quickly gathered a following. Mr. Clark’s father was the manager of Utica radio station WRUN-FM (now WAMC-FM in Albany) and the son wanted to avoid the name recognition factor. To avoid confusion, Dick Clark became known on-air as "Dick Clay". Eventually, Dick Clark would anchor the evening newscasts on WKTV replacing Robert Earle who would later host the GE College Bowl. [2]

WKTV enjoyed a monopoly in the Utica television market until February 28, 1970 when WUTR signed-on as an ABC affiliate. WKTV then became an exclusive NBC station resulting in the channel being one of the oldest affiliates of the network today. In 1980, Kallet Television would sell WKTV to Harron Communications (owner of a chain of cable companies in theNortheast) along with WMTW in Portland, Maine. During this time, it was carried on cable systems in areas as far away as Schenectady and for a time in Syracuse. In the mid-1980s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled on cross ownership of broadcast, cable, and print media in the same communities.

Harron Communications owned both WKTV and Harron Cable Television in Utica. It was required that Harron divest itself of one or the other. As a result in 1992, an agreement was reached between Harron and Smith Broadcasting. One year later, after Harron purchased the cable system in Utica (later sold to Adelphia and now part of Time Warner), Smith Broadcasting acquired WKTV. Today, the station is owned by Smith Media, LLC which is a successor to Smith Broadcasting as well as a subsidiary of Boston Ventures.

In 1998, the creation of The WB 100+ led WKTV to partner with the group to launch a cable-only WB affiliate. This new service replaced WPIX from New York City on Time Warner systems and used the "WBU" call sign in a fictional manner. On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that the networks would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined service would be known as The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros. Warner Bros.] unit of Time Warner. On September 18, WKTV added a new second digital subchannel to simulcast WBU and offer non-cable subscribers access to CW programming. That station then began using the WKTV-DT2 calls in an official manner.

Originally, the CW subchannel was known as "Central New York CW" but in recent times was re-branded "Central New York CW 11" to reflect its location on Time Warner systems. The station has been broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 29 since May 2006 and in high definition starting with the 2008 Summer Olympics. On February 18, 2009, WKTV turned-off its analog transmitter and began broadcasting exclusively in digital. This left some viewers without a signal and others looking for an outdoor UHF antenna. To continue serving those areas, WKTV began simulcasting its weekday newscasts at noon and 5 on WADR-AM 1480/WUTQ-AM 1550/W238CA-FM 95.5.

The station shares some management, including a Vice President, with sister stations WFFF-TV and WVNY in the Burlington, Vermont/Plattsburgh, New York market. Due to an ongoing retransmission dispute, Time Warner systems replaced WKTV with WBRE-TV from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on December 16, 2010. [3] Its CW subchannel on WKTV-DT2 was also dropped eventually replaced by HBO Family. On the same date, rival WUTR began to be seen in the Burlington/Plattsburgh areas on Time Warner after WVNY was dropped for the same reason. Nexstar Broadcasting Group, owners of WBRE and WUTR, opposed the use of their stations as replacement programming and requested that Time Warner's cable franchise for the affected regions be revoked. (Incidentally, Nexstar's sister company, Atlantic Broadband, is the only other company with operations in upstate New York.) WKTV and Time Warner reached an agreement, the terms of which both sides refuse to reveal, on January 8, 2011, allowing WKTV to return to air the next day.

America's Greatest Heart Run and Walk
WKTV hosts a telethon for the American Heart Association every March during the same weekend as America's Greatest Heart Run and Walk. The telethon is aired live from Utica College and usually begins the Friday evening before the run/walk. It continues on Saturday during the event with live coverage from various points along the course. Ironically, the telethon usually out-raises the WIBX-AM 950 Heart Radiothon by more than tenfold even though the radiothon was the original event from the entire Heart Weekend.

Boilermaker Road Race
For many years, WKTV has provided live coverage of the Boilermaker Road Race, a 15 kilometer (9.3 mile) road race that begins near Utica Boilers and ends at the F.X. Matt Brewery. Coverage is anchored primarily from the finish line and supplemented by live trucks positioned at key points along the course, portable transmitters on the race's media truck, motorcycles (driven by volunteers), and formerly a helicopter. The coverage is unique in that it begins by covering the race itself following the leaders throughout the race with interviews after they reach the finish line. Then, the focus shifts to the local angles of the race, with stories of life on the volunteers who make the race happen, local notables running the race (usually including current WKTV on-air staff), and former on-air staff who come back home to run. There is also coverage of post-race events.

Christmas cards
WKTV is popular in its coverage area for its Christmas cards where station personnel gather with their families. Each person (or group/family) gets about 7–10 seconds of face time and various shots are spliced together to create a sixty second spot. In order to include every employee, several versions are created and are rotated throughout the holiday season. The song "Christmas is Paintin' The Town" by The Oak Ridge Boys is played in the background every year. WUTR does a similar feature every year as well.

News operation
<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">Starting in 2002, WUTR began to downsize its news operation resulting in the regionalism of newscasts with some content coming from then sister station WSYR in Syracuse. Eventually, its local broadcasts were canceled altogether with the news department being shut down completely in August 2003. In 2002, the channel began producing prime time news weeknights at 10 on WFXV called NewsChannel 2 on Fox. This broadcast was supposed to originate live from WKTV's studios in Utica but problems beaming the show to the former's facilities (then based in Rome) via microwave sometimes required WKTV to pre-record the newscast and physically deliver the videotape to WFXV every night which was a thirty minute drive.

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">The station has been a ratings stronghold for its entire history facing no local competition until the sign-on of WUTR and the launch of the area's second news department. Since the June 1993 acquisition of WTVH by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation, that channel has not really taken advantage of its status as this market's de-facto CBS affiliate in terms of advertising opportunities and providing coverage to Utica.WSTM-TV in Syracuse, which took over WTVH's news operations in 2009, carries substantial news stories from Herkimer County but WKTV is currently the only locally-based station to offer newscasts.

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">When the contract ended in 2004, that station decided not to renew the news share agreement and the show was moved to cable-only WBU where it remains to this day. The broadcast is currently known on WKTV-DT2 as NewsChannel 2 at 10. Like all CW Plus affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone, that station also airs the nationally syndicated morning show The Daily Buzz on weekdays from 6 until 9. In January 2006, WKTV added a weekend morning show. During weather forecasts, it uses live NOAA National Weather Service radar data from several regional sites. On-air this is known as "StormTracker 2 Live Doppler".

Newscast titles

 * World News (1950s-1960s)
 * WKTV News (1960s)
 * TV-2 News (1960s-1980s)
 * WKTV 2 News (1980s-1992)
 * NewsChannel 2 (1992<span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">– present)

Station slogans

 * "Central New York's Full Color Station" (1960s)
 * "TV-2, Proud as a Peacock!" (1979-81; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "TV-2, Our Pride is Showing" (1981-82; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "We're TV-2, Just Watch Us Now" (1982-83; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "TV-2 There, Be There" (1983-84; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "TV-2, Let's All Be There!" (1984-86; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "Come Home to TV-2" (1986-87; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "Come on Home to TV-2" (1987-88; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "Come Home to the Best, Only on TV-2" (1988-90; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "TV-2, is the Place to Be" (1990-92; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "Central New York's <span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">News Leader " (1992-1994)
 * "It's a Whole New TV-2" (1992-93; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "The Stars Are Back on TV-2" (1993-94; localized version of NBC ad campaign)
 * "<span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">The #1 Rated Newscast in Central New York " (1994-1998)
 * "Where the News Comes First" (1998<span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">– present)

News team
<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">Anchors


 * Jason Powles - Anchor, NEWSChannel 2 at Daybreak, Sunrise, and Noon
 * Kristen Copeland - Co-Anchor, Live at Five Newshour and NEWSChannel 2 at Six
 * Don Shipman - Co-Anchor, Live at Five Newshour and NEWSChannel 2 at Ten on the CW11 and NEWSChannel 2 at 11
 * Steve McMurray - General Manager and Co-Anchor, NEWSChannel 2 at Six
 * Gary Liberatore - Anchor, NEWSChannel 2 Weekend Today
 * TBD - Anchor, NEWSChannel 2 Weekend

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">StormTracker 2 Meteorologists


 * Adam Musyt <span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">(NWA  <span style="color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:22.399999618530273px;">Seal of Approval) - weeknights
 * Bill Kardas (NWA Seal of Approval) - weekday mornings and weekdays at noon
 * Jill Reale (NWA Seal of Approval) - weekends

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">Sports (both seen on Sports Express)

<p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;"> <p style="margin-top: 0.4em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em;">Reporters
 * Mike Levin - Director seen weeknights at 6, 10, and 11 (also Sports Express anchor)
 * TBD - weekend evenings


 * Joleen Ferris
 * Gary Liberatore
 * Allison Norlian
 * Anna Meiler

Former staff

 * Donna Adamo (last worked at WTVH in Syracuse, NY)
 * Sara Allen Davenport (now at KPRC-TV in Houston, formerly at WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee)
 * Sandy Arnn
 * Jeff Baskin
 * Amanda Bertram
 * Lyle Bosley (deceased)
 * Courtney Brennan
 * Joe Brown
 * Andrea Bullard (now at WSTM-TV in Syracuse, NY)
 * Ryan Burr (2006–present (anchor, ESPN Sports Center, College Basketball Gameday)
 * Fran Cafarell (now an attorney in Rochester, NY)<sup class="Template-Fact" style="line-height: 1em; white-space: nowrap; " title="This claim needs references to reliable sources from March 2008">[citation needed]
 * Kyla Campbell (at WJAC-TV in Johnstown, PA until 2008, Now at WBRE-TV in Wilkes-Barre, PA)
 * Lila Carney (now at WSTM-TV in Syracuse, NY)
 * Bill Carroll (former news anchor/voiceover/program director and briefly did the morning news and advertisement voiceover work for WXUR radio in Ilion, NY)
 * Dick Clark (started his TV career at WKTV)
 * Elizabeth Chernak
 * Nate Crossett
 * Matt DiNardo (now at WRIC in Richmond, Virginia)
 * Robert Earle (later host of GE College Bowl; Clark replaced him as news anchor)<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Rock_1976_1-1" style="line-height: 1em; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">[2]
 * Tiffany Eddy
 * Dick (Richard) Fettes (Accounting)
 * Jerry Fiore (1977-1989, WFLA-TV in Tampa, FL, then WROC-TV in Rochester, NY)
 * Desiree Fraser
 * Jack Fredericks (deceased)
 * Amanda Gabeler
 * Mavis Glass
 * Angela Grande
 * Molly Graves
 * Lynda Hammond
 * Donna Hanover
 * Karen Huxtable (now in public relations for Bassett Healthcare Network based in Cooperstown, NY)
 * Crystal Jackson
 * Andy Jenks (now at WWBT in Richmond Virginia)
 * Aaron Keller
 * Karey Kirkpatrick (married to her former co-anchor Ryan Nobles who is currently at CNN Newsource in Washington DC)
 * Frank Kipers (Accounting- deceased)
 * Susan Koeppen (now consumer correspondent CBS News' The Early Show)
 * Heather Kovar (now anchor at News 12 Connecticut)
 * Matt Lanza (working in energy industry)
 * Dick Lawler (retired)
 * Teresa Lee (now at WUTR in Utica, NY)
 * Melissa Long (left for WROC-TV in Rochester, NY, now at CNN)
 * Kristin Lowman (now at WXXA in Albany, NY)
 * Rich Lupia (now an account executive at WFXV in Utica, NY)
 * Rich Luterman (now at WJBK in Detroit)
 * Kelly Lynch
 * Pete Maneen (Engineer/Photojounalist- deceased)
 * Steve Merren (Vice President & General Manager (1992-2004) now at WFXV/WPNY/WUTR in Utica, NY)
 * Ryan Nobles (formerly at WWBT in Richmond Virginia and now at CNN Newsource in Washington, DC.   Married to former co-anchor Karey Kirkpatrick )
 * Wendy Peterson
 * Kevin Nunn
 * Brianne Puleo
 * Lisa Quintana
 * Ali Reina
 * Brian Sandler (Now at YNN, in Syracuse, NY])
 * Lisa Shell
 * Stacey Simms (morning co-host WBT-AM Radio in Charlotte, NC, author of "I Can't Cook, But I Know Someone Who Can")
 * Meg Stapleton (formerly at KTUU-TV in Anchorage, former press aide to Alaska Gov. Palin, McCain/Palin campaign spokesperson)
 * Liz Tedone
 * Susan Tran (now at WSOC in Charlotte)
 * Vic Vetters (general manager of WKTV, as well as general manager of WFFF/WVNY Burlington, VT)
 * Cassie Vogel (1994-1997) (now owns The Media Coach-company providing media training for businesses, formerly Director of Corporate Communication for Ubisoft, Director of Public Relations for Red Storm Entertainment, and at WTVD in Durham, NC)
 * Rich von Ohlen
 * Justine Waldman (now at WFTX in Fort Myers, Florida as a Reporter/Anchor/Weather)
 * Jessica Weinstein (now at WGRZ in Buffalo, formerly at WHEC-TV in Rochester, NY)
 * Ed Whitaker (played Bozo and Uncle Charlie in live Utica Club commercials, deceased.)
 * Evan White (now at WHAM-TV in Rochester, NY)
 * Dennis Williams (now at WGR in Buffalo, New York)