WINP-TV

WINP-TV
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
United States
Branding Ion Television
Slogan Positively Entertaining.
Channels Digital: 38 (UHF)
Virtual: 16 (PSIP)
Subchannels 16.1 Ion Television
16.2 qubo
16.3 Ion Life
16.4 ShopTV
16.5 QVC
16.6 Home Shopping Network
Affiliations Ion Television (O&O; 2011–present)
Owner Ion Media Networks
(Ion Media of Scranton, Inc.)
First air date August 31, 1953 (First incarnation as ABC affiliate)[1]
March 1959 (Second incarnation)
January 1963 (1963-01) (Current incarnation)[2]
Call letters' meaning I O N Pittsburgh
Former callsigns WENS (1953–1957)
WQEX (1959–2011)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
16 (UHF, 1963–2009)
Former affiliations ABC (1953–1957)
Silent (1957–1959, 1961–1963)
NET (1959–1961, 1963–1970)
PBS (1970–2004)
America's Store (2004–2007)
ShopNBC (2007–2011)
Transmitter power 500 kW
Height 213 m
Facility ID 41314
Transmitter coordinates 40°26′46″N 79°57′51″W / 40.44611°N 79.96417°W / 40.44611; -79.96417
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS

WINP-TV, virtual channel 16 (UHF digital channel 38[3]), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks.

On cable, WINP is carried on Comcast channels 4 (WTAE, which broadcasts over-the-air on channel 4, is instead carried on channel 8) (standard definition) and 807 (high definition), and on Verizon FiOS channels 16 (standard definition) and 516 (high definition).

History

As WENS

Channel 16 in Pittsburgh started as WENS, a commercial station that operated from August 31, 1953[1] until 1957 before going dark because of storm damage and mediocre ratings.

WENS was Pittsburgh's first ABC network affiliate, broadcasting from studios at 750 Ivory Avenue, in the city of Pittsburgh's Summer Hill section. WPGH-TV broadcasts from this location today.

While off to a good start, financial problems forced the station to dump its locally produced programming and only operate for about six hours daily, airing only its network programming in pattern before leaving the air completely in 1957. One year after WENS shut down, WTAE-TV signed on and took the ABC network affiliation.

As WQEX

The station became WQEX in March 1959, after WQED acquired the station as a secondary station for televising educational programs. The new WQEX moved its transmitter from Summer Hill to that of its new sister TV station, with both stations broadcasting from a dual "candleabra" style antenna standing above a single tower at 4802 Fifth Avenue in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh.

WQEX went dark again in November 1961, but returned to the air over a year later, in January 1963. For much of its early years, owing in part to the experimental nature of UHF television, the station was plagued by a weak signal, operating at 171 kilowatts visual, and 34.2 kilowatts aural, resulting in a Grade B signal over most of Pittsburgh. A power increase in the 1970s to 264 kW visual and 52 kW aural did finally provide a city-grade signal to the city of Pittsburgh. However, the city's outlying suburbs that were unable to receive the station clearly on cable received a spotty to non-existent signal.

WQEX was one of the last stations in Pittsburgh (if not North America) to convert to color. For decades, the station broadcast with WENS's black-and-white transmitter. However, in February 1985, the transmitter broke down completely, and the parts required to fix it were no longer available. With limited time to restore WQEX to the air and avoid forfeiture of the license, WQED diverted pledge monies to WQEX and also cut back its own broadcast hours in an attempt to lower its operating costs.

Under WQED managers Lloyd Kaiser and Jay Rayvid, the new WQEX was set up as an almost autonomous station within a station. A new, more powerful NEC color transmitter was signed on the air for testing over the summer of 1986 at an authorized power increase to 660 kW visual, and 66 kW aural.

WQEX took over Studio C at WQED and built its entire studio, offices and technical space within the 36 by 32 foot area. It took six months from April 1, 1986 until launch on October 16, 1986 to build the station, train the personnel and organize the programming, all of this under the direction of Kenneth Tiven as general manager. Tiven, with years of experience in local television, produced a station unlike any other in the PBS system. Station management explained their extended time off the air between programs with a vignette called "The Little Transmitter That Could... couldn't anymore." One Pittsburgh radio engineer said there was nothing little about the old transmitter, that it "was the size of a Port Authority transit bus".

In 1986, WQEX was one of the most automated stations in the world. It was the first station to adopt the then-state-of-the-art Beta tape technology and the Betacart player for airing all of its programs. Local programming by its competitors had been delivered on film, reel videotape and U-matic videocassettes. The Betacam professional format, which is different from the failed Betamax consumer format, produced a high-quality picture with crisp on-air resolution. The tape gained popularity among television stations not only because of its quality, but also because of its smaller size and ease of storage. In addition, the station designed a database system for managing the program playout. It was this list which told the Betacart machine what to do.

In its return to the air, WQEX's schedule resembled that of a commercial independent station, with reruns, movies and British situation comedies (often called "Britcoms"). The station even had on-camera hosts. Pip Theodor was one several personalities who introduced the programs, similar to what was done on MTV and Britain's ITV.

What was notable about the station during this era was its nightly sign-off. WQEX ended each night with a comedy sketch involving some men trying to make it home from a bar after 2 a.m., set to the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's The Life of Brian. The sketch was accompanied by fake closing credits. Viewers could have their names in the credits by making a pledge to WQEX and becoming members of the "QEX Sign-Off Society."[4] The station's sign-on message also developed an on-air persona of its own, with the message followed by the 1955 Chuck Berry hit "Sweet Little Sixteen" introduced as a "morning wake-up call from Mr. Charles Berry."

From 1986 through to 1990, the station's quirky persona stayed intact. It produced a 10 p.m. news program from Monday through Friday, in conjunction with the reporting staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. Reporters were debriefed about their stories. These video clips were then played back in the Betacart automation system as a complete program. This innovation, called modular production, later became the keystone of several television news channels, including the Orange County Newschannel (OCN) and NY1. When funding became tight in the mid-1990s, WQED began using WQEX to simulcast its own programming as of November 1, 1997; some of the programming formerly exclusive to WQEX was consolidated into the WQED lineup at that time.[5]

Financial troubles and transition to commercial license

Due to a combination of high costs of continuing national programming production, bloated payroll expenses, and what the station's critics identify as a top-heavy management structure and a long history of mismanagement,[6] WQED's total liabilities at one point had mounted beyond $10 million. Station debts were being paid four months behind schedule and approximately 100 of the 220 staff jobs at WQED were abruptly eliminated. A station once respected for having originated programming such as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and National Geographic specials was quickly finding itself relegated to the role of a primarily-local producer of educational programming.

WQED began to seek a removal of the non-commercial educational status which restricted the WQEX license as early as 1996, with the intention of selling the secondary UHF station outright in the hope that an infusion of cash would solve some of the financial woes of the main station. WQED's initial application to take WQEX commercial was rejected outright by the Federal Communications Commission,[7] leaving it to pursue an alternate plan by which the station was almost sold to religious broadcaster Cornerstone Television in 1999. The original plan was to move WPCB-TV from channel 40 (a commercial license) to channel 16 (non-commercial educational WQEX), with Paxson Communications buying channel 40 and converting it to a Pax TV affiliate with the call letters WKPX-TV.[8] This move, which would have led to a $35 million payout being split equally between Cornerstone and WQED, was approved conditionally by the Federal Communications Commission in 2000, allegedly after lobbying by Republican Senator John McCain on behalf of Pax president Lowell Paxson,[9] an intervention which Senator McCain would later deny having made.[10] However, in response to vociferous concerns from members of the Pittsburgh local community,[11][12] the FCC did impose one condition on the sale: half of Cornerstone's programming needed to be of educational value, effectively respecting the non-commercial educational condition of WQEX's existing license.[13]

Cornerstone flatly refused, abruptly backing out of the proposed deal.[14] Religious programming does not qualify as educational if it is "primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing or statements of personally held religious views or beliefs," according to the FCC's ruling conditionally allowing religious broadcaster Cornerstone Television to take over WQEX and add educational content to the station.[15][16] Although the FCC abruptly reversed its position less than a month later[17] removing the condition in response to intense political and legislative pressure,[18] Cornerstone withdrew its application and the sale was cancelled, keeping WQEX as a WQED simulcast.[19]

In July 2002, the FCC abandoned its long-held position on instructional content, removing WQEX's non-commercial educational status outright in response to continued claims of economic hardship by WQED[20] – hardships which the station has long blamed not on its own past management practices, but on the local economic situation and the long-term decline of Pittsburgh's industrial base.[21]

From 2004 to March 2007, WQEX brokered much of its airtime to America's Store, a discount shopping channel from the Home Shopping Network, along with repeats of WQED's news magazine, OnQ, on Monday mornings.[22] In January 2007, America's Store announced it would cease operations on April 3 of that year; WQEX switched its programming to ShopNBC on March 26.[23] Rumors and actual proposals of a sale of WQEX came up from time to time, the most noteworthy of which was a proposed 2002 sale to Shooting Star Broadcasting, a company headed up by Pittsburgh native and former Shamrock Broadcasting president Diane Sutter, that was never consummated.[24]

Sale to Ion Media Networks

On November 8, 2010, WQED entered into a deal with Ion Media Networks (the former Paxson Communications) to sell WQEX to Ion for $3 million.[25][26] The sale was consummated (after FCC approval) on May 2, 2011, at which time the station's call sign changed from WQEX to WINP-TV,[27][28] making it the first Ion-owned station without the Pax-era "PX" in its call sign (the calls stand for IoN Pittsburgh or, to note one news article on the sale, "WIN Pittsburgh Over").[29] WINP-TV continued to carry ShopNBC programming to fill their contractual obligations; however, on October 1, 2011, it began carrying Ion Television on its main channel, with Ion Life and Qubo on subchannels. This is the network's first over-the-air presence in Pittsburgh, the largest media market in which Ion and its predecessors had never had an over-the-air signal (Pittsburgh was the 24th largest television market for 2010–2011, according to AC Nielsen).

Digital television

This station's digital channel is multiplexed:[30]

Digital channels

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Network
16.1 720p 16:9 ION Ion Television
16.2 480i 4:3 qubo Qubo
16.3 IONLife Ion Life
16.4 Shop Ion Shop
16.5 QVC QVC
16.6 HSN HSN

Analog-to-digital conversion

WINP (as WQEX) shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 16, on February 17, 2009, the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate, the deadline had later been extended to June 12.[31]

Sometime between April 1 and the new June 12 deadline, the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 26 to channel 38;[32][33][34] channel 38 was used for the digital signal of now-former sister station WQED until April 1 after the end of its annual PBS pledge drive in March.[35] The early signoff for WQED gave the station time to move its own digital signal to channel 13. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 16. WQEX was one of three stations in the Pittsburgh market to shut down their analog signals on the original transition date, alongside the Sinclair Broadcast Group duopoly of WPGH-TV and WPMY.

References

  1. 1 2 Broadcasting The Local News: The ... – Lynn Boyd Hinds – Google Books. Google Books. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  2. ↑ The Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook says September 14, while the Television and Cable Factbook says March 20.
  3. ↑ Brien, Eric O (February 17, 2009). "Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online – It's February 17". Pbrtv.com. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  4. ↑ "Sign-Offs". Radio-info.com. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  5. ↑ Weiskind, Ron (September 20, 1997). "WQEX to air WQED fare". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. pp. A–9, A–13. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
  6. ↑ "Signal Degradation, Jerold M. Starr, American Prospect, November 30, 2002". Prospect.org. January 19, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  7. ↑ "FCC won't allow dereservation of WQEX Pittsburgh, Current, Aug. 5, 1996". Current.org. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  8. ↑ Owen, Rob (July 15, 1999). "Pax TV wants to be on the air in Pittsburgh, not up in the air". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved February 2, 2012.
  9. ↑ McCain's Letter to F.C.C. and Excerpts From Replies, New York Times, January 6, 2000
  10. ↑ McCain Disputed On 1999 Meeting: Broadcaster Recalls Urging FCC Contact, James V. Grimaldi and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post, February 23, 2008
  11. ↑ "WQEX deal squeaked through FCC in 3–2 vote, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 30, 1999". Post-gazette.com. December 30, 1999. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  12. ↑ "Future dim for WQEX, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tony Norman, January 21, 2000". Postgazette.com. January 21, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  13. ↑ FCC Says Cornerstone Must Prove it is "Educational", Michael Schneider Archived July 11, 2001, at the Wayback Machine.
  14. ↑ "WQEX deal wins at FCC, loses in the end, George Miles / Jerry Starr, Current, Jan. 24, 2000". Current.org. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Religion Rules Clarified, Television Digest with Consumer Electronics, January 10, 2000". Findarticles.com. January 10, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  16. ↑ "Deal looks dead, but debate isn't, January 20, 2000, Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette". Post-gazette.com. January 20, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  17. ↑ "FCC Order on Reconsideration of its December 29, 1999 Order on religious broadcasting. Re: Applications for Transfer of Licenses of WQED Pittsburgh and Cornerstone, January 28, 2000". Techlawjournal.com. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Bill Protects Religious Broadcasters, Television Digest with Consumer Electronics, May 22, 2000". Findarticles.com. May 22, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  19. ↑ "WQEX deal falls apart, January 20, 2000, Sally Kalson and Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette". Post-gazette.com. January 20, 2000. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  20. ↑ The 'Public Interest', Bill O'Driscoll, January 6, 2003, The Nation.
  21. ↑ "WQEX Loses the Asterisk, Scott Fybush, North East RadioWatch: July 22, 2002". Bostonradio.org. July 22, 2002. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  22. ↑ Shopping Network to lease WQEX, April 7, 2004, Rob Owen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  23. ↑ "TV Notes: WQEX to become ShopNBC, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 18, 2007". Post-gazette.com. March 17, 2007. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  24. ↑ "WQEX sale falters, as Sutter backs out", from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11/19/2002
  25. ↑ TVNewsCheck.com: "Ion Buing WQEX Pittsburgh for $3 million", November 8, 2010.
  26. ↑ "Broadcasting & Cable: "Ion to Buy WQEX: "Positively entertaining" network grabs Pittsburgh outlet", November 8, 2010". Broadcastingcable.com. November 8, 2010. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  27. ↑ "CDBS Print". Licensing.fcc.gov. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  28. ↑ FCC Internet Services Staff. "Call Sign History". Licensing.fcc.gov. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  29. ↑ "WQEX will change to WINP", from post-gazette.com, 11/10/2010.
  30. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for WINP
  31. ↑ Togyer, Jason. "Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online – D-Day, part 1". Pbrtv.com. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  32. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  33. ↑ http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/getattachment_exh.cgi?exhibit_id=619184
  34. ↑ "CDBS Print". Fjallfoss.fcc.gov. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  35. ↑ Brien, Eric O (February 7, 2009). "Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online – WQED joins list of delayed". Pbrtv.com. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
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