WSTM-TV

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WSTM-TV
kW
HAAT410 m (1,345 ft)
Transmitter coordinates42°56′41.8″N 76°7′6.2″W / 42.944944°N 76.118389°W / 42.944944; -76.118389
Links
Public license information
Websitecnycentral.com

WSTM-TV (channel 3) is a

Near Northeast section of Syracuse; WSTM-TV's transmitter is located in the town of Onondaga, New York
.

History

The station began operations on February 15, 1950, on VHF channel 5 with the call sign WSYR-TV, moving to VHF channel 3 in 1953. It was owned by

Syracuse Post-Standard, Syracuse Herald-Journal, and WSYR radio (AM 570 and FM 94.5, now WYYY
). It was Syracuse's second television station, signing on a year and three months after WHEN-TV (now WTVH). It originally had facilities at the Kemper Building in Downtown Syracuse. In 1958, WSYR-AM-FM-TV moved to new studios on James Street.

Unlike most NBC affiliates in two station

Nexstar Broadcasting Group and fed via centralcasting facilities of a Syracuse cross-town rival, which ironically now holds the WSYR-TV
call letters. It remains affiliated with NBC.

The Newhouse family largely exited broadcasting in 1980. The WSYR cluster had been grandfathered after the

Fort Worth, and KTBC in Austin, Texas
(KTVI is now owned by Nexstar and sister station to the present-day WSYR-TV).

In 1986, Times Mirror sold WSTM-TV to

Clear Channel Communications purchased WIXT-TV (formerly WNYS-TV) as part of the Ackerley Group
acquisition three years earlier. The company changed WIXT-TV's calls to match WSYR radio, which it had owned for several years.

On March 5, 1996, WSTM-TV

Charter Spectrum
) on July 1.

Before the purchase, Time Warner Cable had refused to carry WAWA-LP. The same "must-carry" rules that kept the station off the cable system eventually got WSTQ-LP on. The must-carry rules give full-powered stations the option of "retransmission consent" or requiring compensation from cable systems as a condition of carrying a station's signal. In this case, full-powered WSTM-TV can require cable systems like Time Warner Cable to offer WSTQ-LP on their systems as a condition of carrying WSTM-TV.

On March 27, 2006, Raycom Media announced the sale of WSTM-TV and WSTQ-LP to Barrington Broadcasting. The sale was finalized that August. On March 2, 2009, as a result of low ratings and slow advertising sales, it was announced that WTVH would enter into a local marketing agreement with WSTM-TV.[2][3][4] Initially, WTVH continued to operate out of its own James Street studios a block away but was eventually merged into WSTM-TV's facilities. WTVH was also integrated into WSTM-TV's website.[5] On September 6, 2009, WTVH's transmitter was damaged after a power failure. While Granite Broadcasting worked to fix the signal, WSTM-TV's third digital subchannel carried that station.[6] On September 12, WTVH's signal was restored.[7]

Former logo of WSTM-DT2

On February 28, 2013, Barrington Broadcasting announced the sale of its entire group, including WSTM-TV and the LMA for WTVH, to Sinclair Broadcast Group (which announced that it would not renew the LMA with WTVH when it expires in March 2017). To comply with FCC ownership regulations, Sinclair initially announced its intent to transfer the license of its existing Syracuse station, Fox affiliate WSYT, along with WSYT's local marketing agreement with MyNetworkTV affiliate WNYS-TV, to Cunningham Broadcasting.[8] Had the transfer been approved, Sinclair would have continued to effectively own WSYT because nearly all of Cunningham's stock is controlled by trusts in the names of the children of Sinclair's principals. However, in an updated filing that August, Sinclair would instead sell WSYT and the LMA for WNYS-TV to Bristlecone Broadcasting, a company owned by Northwest Broadcasting owner Brian Brady. Following the completion of the sale, Sinclair continued to operate WSYT and WNYS-TV through a transitional services agreement for six months, until May 2014. Those transactions were finalized on November 25.[9]

Through cable coverage, WSTM-TV serves as the de facto NBC affiliate for the

Plattsburgh
.

News operation

Local news offerings on this station originally consisted of ten-minute-long capsules; this effort would not be expanded to thirty-minute full newscasts until the 1960s. For the past two decades, WSTM-TV's newscasts have been second overall in the viewership

ratings behind longtime dominant WSYR-TV. As of July 2008, that station remains number one in Central New York for the whole day-part. However, it remains in a tight battle with WSTM-TV for weekday mornings and weeknights at 11. WSYR-TV makes up for this with huge leads during the week at noon, 5, 5:30, and 6. In two periods during its broadcasting history, WSTM-TV has used the popular Action News
branding.

From 1996 until 2000 through a news share agreement, WSTM-TV produced a prime time newscast for Fox affiliate WSYT. Known as Fox 68 News at 10, the broadcast could be seen every night for thirty minutes. After WSTM-TV declined to renew the arrangement, WSYT then partnered with WTVH to keep the broadcasts continuing. Meanwhile, in 2003, WSTM-TV brought back a weeknight prime time news show for newly acquired sister station WSTQ-LP. Although WTVH would terminate its arrangement with WSYT in April 2006, the nightly 10 o'clock broadcasts were WTVH's most successful having soundly beat WSTM-TV's effort on WSTQ-LP.

After becoming operated by WSTM-TV, WTVH shut down its separate news department and merged it with that of WSTM-TV. This resulted in the elimination of 40 jobs at WTVH. Only Michael Benny was retained to anchor by himself the weeknight newscasts on WTVH from its separate studios (less than a block away on James Street from WSTM-TV's facility) using other personalities from WSTM-TV for all other content.[12] The system set up by WTVH to use videotaped footage (including interviews) shot by WSTM-TV presented problems for WSTM-TV staff, who had to walk to WTVH's old studios to deliver raw video for WTVH to edit for its weeknight news programs. Neither station attempted to offer newscasts outside traditional time slots to compete with WSYR-TV (such as weekdays at 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m., or weeknights at 4 and 7) despite a plan originally announced.[5][13] However, WSTM-TV eventually expanded WSTQ-LP's weeknight prime time newscast to an hour on August 30, 2010.

In October 2009, Barrington Broadcasting began to produce separate weeknight newscasts on WTVH from a new secondary set at WSTM-TV's facility. Otherwise, at that time, the CBS and NBC stations would simulcast each other on weekday mornings (except the first hour at 4 a.m. on WSTM-TV), weekdays at noon, and weekend evenings. Although WTVH retained unique branding, music, and graphic aspects of the separately-produced news broadcasts on weeknights, coverage was essentially the same with re-purposed and packaged stories from the NBC affiliate airing on WTVH. WSTM-TV usually featured more live reports from the field during a breaking news event.[14]

In mid-December 2010, WSTM-TV became the first television station in the market to produce local newscasts in

standard definition
. In January 2013, the CW subchannel (WSTM-DT2) was upgraded to high definition allowing the WSTQ-LP shows to be aired terrestrially in widescreen. On October 23, 2016, both WSTM and WTVH became the second and third stations in the Syracuse market to upgrade their newscasts to true HD.

On April 13, 2015, WTVH reintroduced separately-produced local newscasts airing weekday mornings (from 5 to 7 a.m.) and weekdays at noon (seen for a half-hour) with a dedicated anchor and meteorologist that do not appear on WSTM-TV. At the same time, the CBS station also began to feature its own meteorologist for the weeknight newscasts rather than sharing an on-air personality with WSTM-TV. WTVH already has a separate news anchor seen weeknights exclusively on the station. The CBS station continues to simulcast local news with WSTM-TV on weekend evenings. These broadcasts use the two station's shared branding, CNY Central. There can be a preemption or delay on one channel due to network obligations (most notably sports programming).[15][16]

WSTM-TV was the first in Syracuse to use

NOAA National Weather Service radars in Montague
, Binghamton and Buffalo. On-air, this is known as "Live Triple Doppler" and the radar beams are superimposed over the on-screen image.

On October 7, 2019, WSTM launched the market's first and only newscast airing at 7 p.m.[17]

On July 1, 2021, Buffalo sister station WUTV introduced a 10 p.m. newscast that was anchored and produced from WSTM's studios. The program also used resources from WHAM-TV in Rochester.[18] It was canceled on January 27, 2023.[19]

Notable former on-air staff

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the

multiplexed
signals of other Syracuse television stations:

Subchannels provided by WSTM-TV (ATSC 1.0)[21][22]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming ATSC 1.0 host
3.1 1080i
16:9
 WSTM NBC WTVH
3.2
 CW6 The CW WSYR-TV
3.3 480i Comet Comet WTVH

Analog-to-digital conversion

WSTM-TV shut down its analog signal, over

UHF channel 54, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to UHF channel 24,[23] using virtual channel
3.

ATSC 3.0 lighthouse

Subchannels of WSTM-TV (ATSC 3.0)[24]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
3.1 1080i
16:9
 WSTMNBC NBC
5.1 WTVHCBS CBS (WTVH)
9.1 720p WSYR-HD ABC (WSYR-TV)

References

  1. ^ "Facility Technical Data for WSTM-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. ^ Fybush, Scott. A Great Voice is Stilled. NorthEast Radio Watch. March 2, 2009.
  3. ^ [Syracuse's Channel 5 cuts at least 40 workers, guts news division] [1]
  4. ^ [Central New York television stations join forces] [2] Archived March 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ a b "Syracuse's Channel 5 shuts down its newsroom - syracuse.com". March 3, 2009.
  6. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved February 9, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. ^ "WTVH's broadcast signal has been restored : Entertainment : CNYcentral.com". Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved February 9, 2012.
  8. ^ Malone, Michael (February 28, 2013). "Sinclair's Chesapeake TV Acquires Barrington Stations". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved March 1, 2013.
  9. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  10. ^ NBC to launch affiliate in Watertown, Watertown Daily Times, November 4, 2016
  11. ^ Cogeco to replace channels:Syracuse feeds to be lost, MIKE KOREEN, Kingston Whig-Standard, January 2009
  12. ^ "WTVH Move to WSTM Studios Final on Monday". Archived from the original on April 12, 2015.
  13. ^ "Central New York television stations join forces : News". CNYcentral.com. March 2, 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2012.
  14. ^ http://radiodiscussions.com/smf/index.php?topic=171703.0;wap2 [dead link]
  15. ^ "Syracuse News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News". August 14, 2023.
  16. ^ "Syracuse News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News". August 14, 2023.
  17. ^ "Michael Benny to anchor Central New York's first and only 7 p.m. TV newscast on NBC3". September 10, 2019.
  18. ^ Pergament, Alan (June 22, 2021). "WUTV's new newscast will rely on news, weather and sports anchors outside of Buffalo". The Buffalo News. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  19. ^ Pergament, Alan (January 11, 2023). "WUTV's 10 p.m. newscast ending Jan. 27, eliminating four jobs in Buffalo". The Buffalo News. Retrieved March 28, 2024.
  20. ^ "Jim Axelrod bio". CBS News. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
  21. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WTVH". RabbitEars. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  22. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WSYR". RabbitEars. Retrieved December 22, 2020.
  23. ^ "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.
  24. ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WSTM". www.rabbitears.info.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WSTM-TV&oldid=1220121924"