WPTZ
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kW | |
HAAT | 845 m (2,772 ft) |
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Transmitter coordinates | 44°31′32.1″N 72°48′56.4″W / 44.525583°N 72.815667°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
WPTZ (channel 5) is a
History
Early years
The station signed on the air on December 8, 1954, as WIRI, originally licensed to the hamlet of North Pole, New York. It was owned by the Great Northern Broadcasting Company along with Plattsburgh's WIRY radio (1340 AM). The station's first studio facilities were located on Cornelia Street/Route 3 in Plattsburgh; the transmitter was located on Terry Mountain in Peru, New York. The station would have had the call letters WIRY-TV to match its radio sister, but at the time Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations did not allow two stations to share the same base call letters if they were licensed to different cities.
The station has been a primary NBC affiliate since its inception; it carried secondary affiliations with ABC until 1968 when WVNY (channel 22) signed on, and with DuMont until that network ceased operations in 1956.
Becoming WPTZ
Rollins Telecasting purchased channel 5 in 1956. The new owners changed the station's call letters to the present WPTZ (for Plattsburgh); the WPTZ call had recently been dropped by the
Ownership changes
Heritage sold all of its broadcasting properties to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1997 prior to its merger with News Corporation. The sale protected new Fox affiliate WFFF-TV, which was initially operated by WPTZ under a local marketing agreement (LMA) and shared the analog transmitter on Terry Mountain. Otherwise WPTZ/WNNE, along with then-sister stations in Pensacola, Florida, and Charleston, West Virginia, would have been forced to switch to Fox. Sinclair, in turn, sold WPTZ/WNNE along with the WFFF LMA to Sunrise Television in 1998. Sunrise then decided to swap WPTZ/WNNE, along with Smith Broadcasting-owned KSBW in Salinas, California, to what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television in return for WNAC-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, and WDTN in Dayton, Ohio; both of those stations were forced to be divested by Hearst-Argyle due to significant signal overlap with WCVB-TV in Boston and WLWT in Cincinnati (the FCC did not allow common ownership of two stations with overlapping coverage areas until 2000). The swap became official on July 2, 1998. WFFF began operating as an independently-owned and controlled station around the same time Hearst took over WPTZ/WNNE when the LMA with WPTZ was terminated.
Relocating to Plattsburgh
On June 23, 1999, WPTZ petitioned the FCC to change its community of license (COL) from North Pole to Plattsburgh. The station cited the area's declining population as the reason for the change. The
On July 9, 2012, WPTZ's parent company Hearst Television was involved in a dispute with
On August 2, 2016, just before the Summer Olympics in Rio, WPTZ changed its logo and on-air branding from "NewsChannel 5" to "NBC 5", a rarity for Hearst, which prefers to brand their stations by call letters and channel numbers rather than their network affiliation.
Move to Vermont
On June 12, 2018, WPTZ announced it was moving to a brand new broadcast facility in
2019 antenna fire
On November 19, 2019, WPTZ, WNNE and CBS affiliate WCAX-TV (channel 3) were knocked off the air by a fire at their combined antenna at the transmitter facility. The cause of the fire was unknown. The outage affected over-the-air and satellite viewers; cable subscribers continued to receive the three stations via direct fiber feeds,[11][12] while Vidéotron in Quebec temporarily replaced WPTZ with Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV-TV.[13]
WPTZ-DT2
In September 2006, WPTZ established a daily web video forecast as part of a major revamping of its website. The feature, called "Weather Plus Update", introduced a logo showing WPTZ/WNNE offering NBC Weather Plus together as "5&31 Weather Plus". Starting in October, its studios in Plattsburgh underwent extensive renovations. During that time, its broadcasts were from a temporary set while the construction took place. While the studios as a whole were being upgraded, the weather department underwent the most change. In advance of the launch of NBC Weather Plus, the weather center was expanded to make room for new combined WPTZ/WNNE weather graphics and logos. The remodeling was completed by late-November.
WPTZ launched Weather Plus on a new second digital subchannel on November 15 after debuting a new digital signal from Mount Mansfield a day earlier. The service was never offered on WNNE's digital signal even though this had been airing since July 20, 2005. On digital cable, WPTZ-DT2 was carried on Comcast digital channel 169 (serving the Upper Valley), Telecom digital channel 305, and Time Warner Cable digital channel 854. It was never offered on legacy Charter systems in New York State.
In December 2008, NBC shut down the national Weather Plus service after its parent company,
On March 4, 2013, WPTZ's second digital subchannel assumed the
On September 15, 2014, WPTZ separated The CW and MeTV into their own subchannels, 5.2 and 5.3 respectively, but did not add them to WNNE's signal.[17] In April 2016, the over-the-air digital signal of WPTZ-DT2 was upgraded into 720p high definition; thus offering a high definition feed for The CW for the first time in the Burlington–Plattsburgh area (and the entire Champlain Valley and beyond) and a second high definition feed for The CW in Massena (the other being WWTI-DT2 of Watertown, which has been broadcasting its digital over-the-air signal in 720p high definition since August 17, 2012).[18] In May 2016, Comcast began carrying WPTZ-DT2's high definition feed on digital channel 706 for Burlington (as well as Upper Connecticut River Valley) viewers and Charter began carrying WPTZ-DT2's high definition feed on digital channel 711 for Plattsburgh viewers.[19][20]
On July 22, 2018, WNNE assumed the CW affiliation previously held by the 5.2 subchannel; this was a result of WNNE shutting down operations on its pre-auction channel and commencing channel-sharing operations, effective July 22, 2018.[21] On July 20, Hearst Television announced that WNNE would become a CW affiliate following the move. Concurrent with the move, the 5.2 subchannel was remapped to WNNE's virtual channel 31.1 under channel-sharing operations.[22] This resolves the concerns raised years before regarding a lack of access to the WPTZ sub-channels for WNNE viewers, yet it also limits viewers in the Upper Valley to cable and satellite viewing options for NBC programming.
Programming
Past programming preemptions
In the 1980s, WPTZ preempted select NBC shows, including
News operation
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2017) |
For most of its history, WPTZ's newscasts have been a distant second in the ratings behind long-dominant WCAX-TV. Traditionally, it focused more on the North Country and New York State, while WCAX and WVNY/WFFF tend to cover more from Vermont. In order to cover that state, from the mid-1990s to July 2019,[10] WPTZ operated secondary facilities known as the Vermont Bureau on Roosevelt Highway (US 2/US 7) in Colchester. At one point, there had been more general assignment reporters based at the main studios in Plattsburgh. However in more recent times,[when?] additional reporters based at the Vermont Bureau have been hired.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, WNNE operated its own news department and aired local newscasts. This was progressively cut back after being bought by Heritage, eventually resulting in the elimination of a full news operation in 2007. Later, the only visual difference between the stations were different channel bugs during newscasts. Occasionally when WNNE had technical problems, WPTZ's logo peeked through.
In addition to the Upper Valley and Vermont bureaus, WPTZ airs national news from Hearst Television's Washington, D.C. bureau. It employs several reporters who give live reports to the various Hearst affiliates.
Although WPTZ and WNNE do not own or operate
In August 2009, the station introduced a new format and title to its weeknight newscast at 11. The re-formatted show called NewsChannel 5 Nightcast features more fast-paced and edgier news. Despite its logo which includes "HD", the newscasts were aired in pillar-boxed
In April 2014, the station announced they were going to revamp their set. After a few weeks of broadcasting from a temporary set put together in the newsroom, the new set debuted. The old set was completely removed and a new set was constructed by FX Group. The set was a major departure from their prior set, which debuted in 2006. One major change made was the elimination of the newsroom as the backdrop for the anchor desk. Also on September 29, 2014, WPTZ debuted a nightly 10 p.m. newscast which airs on both WNNE and WPTZ-DT3 simultaneously.[23]
On June 20, 2016, WPTZ debuted a half-hour noon newscast, became the second television station in the Champlain Valley complete with a 10-minute newscast on WCAX-TV, coinciding with the cancellation of FABLife.[24] On August 2, 2016, following the station rebrand itself as "NBC 5", the newscast branding was now named as NBC 5 News.
In August 2018, WPTZ's Upper Valley bureau moved from White River Junction to a new space on Mechanic Street in Lebanon, New Hampshire.[25] On July 27, 2019, WPTZ's Vermont facilities moved from Colchester to South Burlington; the station's newscasts were concurrently relocated to the new facility from the Plattsburgh studio.[10] To coincide with the aforementioned relocation to the new South Burlington facilities, WPTZ became the last station in the market to broadcast newscasts in high definition.
Notable former on-air-staff
- Jeanne Moos — became WPTZ's first female correspondent in 1976 (now reporter for CNN)
- Chris Ortloff (early-1980s; served in the New York State Assembly from 1986 until 2007; Ortloff pled guilty to felony charge of online enticement of minors on December 24, 2008, and was sentenced on April 23, 2009)
In popular culture
The 2008 film
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
5.1 | 1080i | 16:9 |
WPTZ-HD | Main WPTZ programming / NBC |
5.2 | 480i | Story | Story Television | |
5.3 | Me-TV | MeTV | ||
5.4 | Defy | Defy TV | ||
5.5 | QVC | QVC |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WPTZ shut down its analog signal, over
Out-of-market and Canadian viewership
WPTZ previously served as the default NBC affiliate for northern areas of the nearby Watertown, New York, market (most notably Massena), while WSTM-TV in Syracuse served Watertown proper. Both WPTZ and WSTM-TV lost those statuses on December 1, 2016, when WVNC-LD signed on as the Watertown market's first full-time NBC affiliate.[28]
Like the other network stations that serve Plattsburgh and Burlington, WPTZ has a large audience in southern Quebec, Canada. This includes Montreal, a city with ten times as many people as all of WPTZ's entire American viewing area. For many years, station promos and IDs have read "North Pole–Plattsburgh–Burlington–Montreal" or "Plattsburgh–Burlington–Montreal" to acknowledge its large cable viewership in Canada.
WPTZ is widely carried on cable in the province of Quebec as far north as
References
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WPTZ". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ https://www.mynbc5.com/article/the-history-of-nbc5-an-interactive-timeline/30163722# WPTZ Interactive Timeline
- ^ "The community-of-license change was approved by the FCC on January 2011" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 29, 2011. Retrieved February 23, 2011.
- ^ "Hearst and Time Warner Cable Part Ways Over Retrans".
- ^ "Imported Signals in Retrans Fight Raise Regulatory Questions".
- ^ "Orlando Sentinel: "WESH off Bright House; Pennsylvania station is substitute", July 10, 2012". Archived from the original on July 14, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
- ^ "Hearst TV, Time Warner Cable End Viewer Blackout".
- ^ "Media Note: WPTZ-TV Announces Move From Colchester to South Burlington". Seven Days. June 13, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
- ^ 30 Community Drive, Unit 2 South Burlington, VT 05403 (PDF) (Map). Technology Park. Retrieved January 15, 2020.
- ^ a b c Delise, McKenzie (July 27, 2019). "WPTZ newscasts now out of VT". Press-Republican. Retrieved July 29, 2019.
- Gannett Company. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
- ^ Balderston, Michael (November 22, 2019). "Tower Fire Keeping Vermont's WCAX, WPTZ Off The Air". TV Technology. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
- ^ Faguy, Steve (November 23, 2019). "Media News Digest: GCM heads toward coop, WCAX catches fire, CBC North backtracks on merging newscasts". Fagstein. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
- ^ Me-TV Adds WPTZ Burlington, KVLY Fargo, TVNewsCheck, November 14, 2012.
- ^ "Official WPTZ-TV announcement of plans to launch The CW Network | Vermont - WPTZ Home". Wptz.com. March 4, 2013. Archived from the original on November 12, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2014.
- ^ "The CW Television Schedule". www.yourcwtv.com.
- ^ "WPTZ launches new channel, expands programming of two popular networks | Entertainment - WPTZ Home". Wptz.com. August 13, 2014. Retrieved August 21, 2014.
- ^ "WPTZ PLATTSBURGH, NY". www.rabbitears.info.
- ^ "Yahoo!". tvlistings.aol.com.
- ^ "Spectrum.net". tv.twcc.com.
- ^ "Program alert: Rescan your TV to continue receiving WNNE's signal". WPTZ. August 1, 2018. Retrieved August 1, 2018.
- ^ "WPTZ and 10:00 p.m. news on 2 channels? Yes, this is true..." The Changing Newscasts Blog. September 12, 2014.
- ^ WPTZ now decides to have local news at 12:00 Noon to compete against WCAX. The Changing Newscasts Blog, June 22, 2016.
- ^ "NBC5 announces new Vermont & New Hampshire locations". MyNBC5.com. Hearst Television. June 12, 2018. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
- ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WPTZ". RabbitEars.info.
- ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
- ^ NBC to launch affiliate in Watertown, Watertown Daily Times, November 4, 2016