WPHL-TV


WPHL-TV, virtual and UHF digital channel 17, is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station licensed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group. WPHL-TV's studios are located in the Wynnefield section of West Philadelphia, and it shares transmitter facilities with Vineland, New Jersey-licensed Univision owned-and-operated station WUVP-DT in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.

History

Channel 17 first signed on the air on June 17, 1960, as WPCA-TV, the call letters standing for "People's Church of the Air." Founded by Percy Crawford, it originally maintained a religious programming format. WPCA was Philadelphia's first commercial UHF station; however, the station suffered due to the fact that UHF tuners were not required to be incorporated onto most television sets at the time ; WPCA shut down on August 1, 1962 after only being on the air for two years.
Subsequently, advertising executive Len Stevens and attorney Aaron Katz formed Philadelphia Television Broadcasting Company which purchased the channel 17 license and returned it to the air on September 17, 1965 as independent station WPHL-TV. It was the third UHF independent to sign-on in Philadelphia that year, two and a half weeks after WKBS-TV and four months after WIBF-TV. After merging with U.S. Communications Corporation in 1967 WPHL-TV became the flagship station for their station group. U.S. Communications also operated WATL in Atlanta, WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati and KEMO-TV now in San Francisco. The station produced and aired numerous local television shows over the years, including kids' favorite the Wee Willie Webber Colorful Cartoon Club and Dr. Shock's back-to-back shows Mad Theater and Horror Theater.
In the summer of 1975, WPHL-TV moved from its original studio facility at 1230 East Mermaid Lane in the suburb of Wyndmoor to its current studio on Wynnefield Avenue in the Wynnefield suburb of West Philadelphia. The building had once been the location of an A&P supermarket. The station offered a schedule of off-network drama series, sitcoms, old movies, sports and religious programs. It also ran NBC and ABC programs that KYW-TV and WPVI-TV had respectively preempted until the fall of 1976, and again from the fall of 1977 to the summer of 1983. The Providence Journal Company bought channel 17 in 1979. At that point, WPHL sought a different programming strategy geared towards adults, gradually dropping children's programming and cartoons. It focused more on movies, off-network drama series, recent off-network sitcoms and sports. The station also aired several hours of religious programming each day.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, WPHL was known on-air as "The Great Entertainer," with voiceovers provided by announcer Sid Doherty. The station positioned itself as an alternative to both WTAF and WKBS, as it programmed more towards adults with movies and other syndicated programs, while its competitors were heavy on sitcoms and children's cartoons. WPHL was also a station heavy on local sports, as it aired games featuring Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies until 1982, the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers from 1982 to 1995 and the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers in the 1990s.
From October 1981 to August 1987, the WPHL studios hosted a weekday afternoon dance show called Dancin' On Air, hosted by Eddie Bruce, as well as a spin-off on the USA Network called Dance Party USA, whose host, Dave Raymond, was better known as the Phillie Phanatic mascot seen during Phillies games. Those shows marked the on-air debut of a young girl from nearby Voorhees, New Jersey named Kelly Ripa.
In the summer of 1982, WKBS went on the market after its owner, Field Communications, decided to exit broadcasting. The Providence Journal Company was among those who were bidding for channel 48's license. Had it won, Journal would have merged WPHL's and WKBS' schedules under the WKBS license and channel allocation, while selling the channel 17 license to either a religious or educational broadcaster. However, the Journal Company's bid was still far below Field's asking price. With no takers willing to give Field what it wanted for the station, WKBS-TV ceased operations one year later on August 29, 1983, and WPHL picked up various syndicated programs, cartoons, movies and production equipment from WKBS.
In 1987, the Providence Journal Company sold WPHL-TV to a consortium headed by Dudley S. Taft Jr., the former president of the Cincinnati-based Taft Television and Radio Company, the longtime owners of rival WTAF-TV. Dudley Taft had left his family's namesake company following a corporate restructuring which resulted in the firm changing its name to Great American Broadcasting. He also brought along key personnel from WTAF, including general manager Randy Smith. The new ownership scrapped the "Great Entertainer" slogan and related logo for a new identity as "PHL 17", in an apparent attempt to counter WGBS-TV's "Philly 57" branding. The new owners restored some cartoons to the schedule. In 1991, the Taft group sold channel 17 to the Tribune Company.
On November 2, 1993, Tribune and the Warner Bros. Television division of Time Warner announced the formation of The WB Television Network. Due to the company's minority interest in the network, Tribune chose to affiliate the majority of its independent stations with the upstart network, resulting in WPHL-TV becoming a network affiliate for the first time in its history upon The WB's January 11, 1995 debut. In September of that year, the station changed its on-air identity to "WB 17". For most of The WB's run, WPHL was one of the network's strongest affiliates.

Switch to MyNetworkTV

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB and merge both networks' stronger programming onto a newly created network, The CW. Concurrent with the announcement, it signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with 16 of Tribune's 19 WB-affiliated stations. However, in the case of Philadelphia, The CW's affiliation went to the city's UPN station, CBS-owned WPSG. It would not have been an upset had WPHL been chosen as the area's CW affiliate, however. The network's officials were on record as preferring The WB and UPN's "strongest" stations for their new network, and Philadelphia was one of the few markets where the affiliates of both networks were both relatively strong.
WPHL was slated to revert to its previous independent status, but on May 15, 2006, Tribune announced that it would affiliate channel 17 with MyNetworkTV, making WPHL the largest station in terms of market size affiliated with the network that was not owned by its then-parent company News Corporation. It is also the only major station in Philadelphia that is not owned by its respective network. In July, WPHL rebranded itself as "MyPHL17", reviving the station's former "PHL 17" moniker. WPHL began airing MyNetworkTV programming on the day that the new service was launched, September 5, 2006. As a result, it did not air the final two weeks of The WB's programming.
On October 4, 2010, the station removed the "My" portion of the branding as many affiliates of the network began dropping references to MyNetworkTV due to it becoming more of a prime time programming service than a true television network. WPHL retains the multi-shaded 'blue TV' component of the network's logo as part of the station's own logo. Before the move of the broadcast rights of the Phillies in 2014 to WCAU-TV, another version of the logo was used where the "p" in "phl" was replaced with the hat insignia "P" from the logo of the Philadelphia Phillies. In addition, the Antenna TV subchannel the station carries is branded with a modified version of their 1970s/80s "Great Entertainer" logo; many other Antenna TV stations do this as well.

Aborted sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group; sale to Nexstar Media Group

On May 8, 2017, Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. Had the deal received regulatory approval by the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, the transaction would have brought WPHL under common ownership with CBS-CW affiliate WHP-TV in Harrisburg. Because of WPHL's status as a MyNetworkTV affiliate with limited local programming, some analysts initially believed that Sinclair may choose to sell WPHL to Fox Television Stations to form a duopoly with Fox owned-and-operated station WTXF-TV, which would make WPHL a MyNetworkTV O&O. However, Sinclair did not include WPHL in a subsequent $910-million sale of seven Tribune-owned stations to Fox Television Stations that was announced on May 9, 2018. It is asserted that Pennsylvania's status as a swing state in presidential elections may have been considered a deciding factor in Sinclair choosing to acquire WPHL.
Less than one month after the FCC voted to have the deal reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, on August 9, 2018, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities. Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the DOJ over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.
On December 3, 2018, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire Tribune's assets for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019—would give WPHL-TV additional sister stations in Hagerstown, Maryland and Scranton–Wilkes-Barre. Nexstar would also be present in every market serving Pennsylvania except for Pittsburgh if the deal is closed. The acquisition was completed on September 19, 2019.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
17.1720pWPHL-DTMain WPHL-TV programming / MyNetworkTV
17.2480iAntennaAntenna TV
17.3480iCourt TVCourt TV
17.4480iCometComet

WPHL-TV's broadcasts became digital only, effective June 12, 2009.

Local programming

Sports programming

Throughout the station's three of its first four decades on the air, WPHL had a tremendous professional sports presence—at various points holding the broadcast rights to the Phillies, the Flyers and the 76ers, as well as covering local college basketball and football, with games featuring teams from the Philadelphia Big 5. After the station joined The WB, it released many of its sports contracts in order to concentrate on its network programming obligations.
The station aired syndicated college football and basketball games from the syndication arm of ESPN involving the Mid-American Conference and Big East Conference until 2009, when WPVI took over rights. WPHL also aired Big Ten Conference games until the creation of the Big Ten Network on cable in 2007.
WPHL has aired preseason games of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles. Also, it usually wins the rights to air one or two regular season Eagles games on Monday nights, due to the NFL's anti-siphoning rule requiring games airing on cable to be available on an over-the-air station in each team's home market; by rule, the NFL sells syndication rights of local teams' games. The station's news partner, WPVI-TV, has the right of first refusal on Monday night games due to its parent company being majority owner in ESPN, but generally defers in order to air Dancing with the Stars during that program's fall season.
As of the 2018 season, WPHL and WPVI share local broadcast rights to the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer. WPVI produces the telecasts.
As of the 2018–2019 season, WPHL covers the Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League, carrying all home games and select away games.

Newscasts

In 1994, WPHL entered into an agreement with local daily newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer to broadcast an Inquirer-branded prime time news program. The half-hour Inquirer News Tonight was a hybrid newscast that integrated the conventions of a typical television news program with contributions from the newspaper's personnel. However, the format failed to make any headway against WTXF's established prime time newscast; behind-the-scenes issues with Knight-Ridder, including newspaper staffers' wariness of being on TV and compensation and contract issues, as well as general mismanagement, doomed the program. Another blow occurred in October 1995 when weekend weatherman Bill Elias was fired following the revelation of his involvement with a local crime family ; he had previously lost his job at WTXF over this. WPHL took full control of the newscast, changing to the WB 17 News at Ten in late 1996.
Even after WPHL took its newscast in-house, it still remained far behind WTXF in the ratings. In the fall of 2005, WPHL announced that its news department would be shut down; the final 10 p.m. newscast produced by WPHL aired on December 9, 2005. The following day, production of the 10 p.m. newscast was turned over to NBC O&O WCAU through a news share agreement. This newscast was partially renamed to WB 17 News at 10, Powered by NBC 10. On July 25, 2006, the program was renamed My PHL 17 News, Powered by NBC 10 to correspond with WPHL's upcoming switch to MyNetworkTV. On December 10, 2008, WCAU began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition, and the WPHL newscast was also included in the HD upgrade. The newscast was renamed once again on October 4, 2010 as phl17 News at 10, Powered by NBC 10.
On October 31, 2011, WPHL began airing EyeOpener, a morning news program concept by Tribune Broadcasting that originally debuted in May 2011 on Houston sister station KIAH, featuring a mix of news, lifestyle, entertainment and opinion segments. Local news, weather, and traffic segments are featured along with local reports presented by five multimedia journalists; however, much of EyeOpener is pre-produced at the studios of Dallas–Fort Worth sister station KDAF and is also distributed on Tribune-owned stations in three other markets that provide their own localized content.
The WCAU-produced 10 p.m. newscast ended on September 14, 2012, with WPHL entering into a new agreement with the ABC owned-and-operated station WPVI-TV to produce the new Action News at 10 on PHL17. The weekday editions of the newscast utilize the same anchor team as WPVI's 5 p.m. newscast, while the weekend editions use the same staff as WPVI's weekend evening newscasts. It is the third ABC owned-and-operated station to be involved in a news share agreement, following KGO-TV in San Francisco and WTVD in Durham, and was later joined in 2014 by KABC-TV in Los Angeles. On September 8, 2014, the newscast was expanded to an hour, making it only the second hour-long 10pm newscast in Philadelphia other than that of competitor WTXF.
On March 9, 2015, WPHL launched a half hour 5:30 a.m. newscast produced independently called The PHL17 Morning News. It is the first in-house newscast since the closure of their former news department at the end of 2005. The station's news studio was rebuilt, and the tri-caster formerly used was replaced with switchers, along with other equipment. The team then started producing independent news reports for the Delaware Valley.
On October 22, 2018, PHL17 Morning News expanded to a three-hour newscast from 5 to 8 a.m., when Eye Opener, which had changed its name to Morning Dose, was cancelled. In September of 2019, PHL17 Morning News expanded again by an additional hour to run from 5 to 9 a.m.

Notable current on-air staff

In Pennsylvania, WPHL was carried on Comcast cable systems in Harrisburg, York and Lancaster; however, it was not available in high definition. It was available on South Central Pennsylvania cable systems for four decades; indeed, for most of The WB's run, it was that market's default WB affiliate. On June 26, 2019, it was discontinued on those Comcast systems. It is also carried in Milford, Pike County. In Maryland, WPHL is carried on cable in Cecil County.
In New Jersey, WPHL is carried in parts of Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Somerset and Warren counties. It is available on Cablevision's analog service on its systems in Ocean and Monmouth counties. On Comcast in Ocean and southern Middlesex counties, WPHL was available in standard definition on digital cable 255. Comcast had carried the station on analog channel 17 until February 2008, when it was moved to digital only to "preserve bandwidth". Comcast added WPHL's HD signal to its lineups in Ocean and Southern Middlesex counties, the borough of Roosevelt in Monmouth County and Lambertville in Hunterdon County on August 22, 2012 on digital channel 907. The station was removed from Comcast's Central New Jersey systems altogether on June 26, 2019, due to Fox invoking exclusivity, only allowing MyNetworkTV O&O WWOR-TV to be carried on those systems. WPHL's Antenna TV, This TV and Tango Traffic subchannels were added to the provider's Southern Middlesex County system on November 27, 2012 but have not been mapped into the Comcast digital boxes or DTAs. There is no satellite coverage of WPHL outside of the Philadelphia market.
During the 1970s and 1980s, WPHL was a regional superstation available in New York City and portions of Long Island, as well as the large majority of New Jersey. In New Jersey, WPHL was carried on alongside competitors WTAF, and until it shut down in 1983, WKBS. The station was also carried on Comcast on the former Adelphia system in the suburbs of Scranton until replaced with a local affiliate.