WWL-TV
FCC | |
Facility ID | 74192 |
---|---|
ERP | 1,000 kW |
HAAT | 311 m (1,020 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 29°54′22.9″N 90°2′22.1″W / 29.906361°N 90.039472°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
WWL-TV (channel 4) is a
WWL-TV formerly served as the CBS affiliate of record for the
History
Early history
The station first
In 1988, WWL-TV and
In 1989, Loyola sold its media properties to different owners. WWL radio and its FM
In 1990, WWL-TV began running one of the most successful station image campaigns in the United States with the debut of its "Spirit of Louisiana" promotions. The one-minute spots focus on the region's musical and cultural heritage, and also showcase life in southeastern Louisiana. Many of the ads in the campaign, which continues to this day, feature well-known area musicians and singers.
Belo ownership
The station's local ownership came to an end in 1994, when the station was bought by the
In 2005,
Hurricane Katrina
Two days prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall, WWL-TV began 24-hour continuous coverage of the storm on August 27, 2005, from its Rampart Street facility.
The station briefly returned to its Rampart Street studios in New Orleans on August 29 at 4 p.m. Flooding forced the station to again move operations back to the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, as well as a foyer used as a makeshift studio at the Gretna transmitter site, which did not sustain significant damage as the facility—built in 2000—was constructed to withstand 140-mile-per-hour (230 km/h) winds with the transmitter building positioned 15 feet (4.6 m) above ground on concrete; the transmitter site was evacuated on August 30 due to
WWL-TV's extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina earned the station its sixth
Post-Katrina
After Hurricane Katrina, some of the station's most visible talent—including weekend anchor/reporter Josh McElveen and reporter Stephanie Riegel—left channel 4 to pursue other opportunities. 10 p.m. anchor Karen Swensen also left WWL to work at Boston-based regional news channel New England Cable News; meteorologists David Bernard and John Gumm also left the station (Bernard was already scheduled to leave the station before the storm struck).
Following the storm, WWL-TV brought back a station editorial segment. Modeled after the editorials presented for many years until the 1990s by longtime news director and station manager Phil Johnson, editorials seen in the present day (which air during the station's 6 p.m. newscast on Tuesday nights) are read via script by WWL-TV political analyst Clancy Dubos, who discusses current political issues related to the post-Katrina redevelopment of New Orleans.
In 2004, WWL-TV and Belo announced plans to construct a new multimillion-dollar broadcasting facility for the station and WUPL at 700 Loyola Avenue in downtown New Orleans. The complex—to have been named the J. Michael Early Broadcast Center, after the station's former general manager—was originally scheduled to be completed in late 2007 or early 2008. Groundbreaking of the new facility occurred on July 25, 2005 (just over one month before Katrina hit on August 29); however, its construction has been delayed (as of recently, the site is still a parking lot). As a result, WWL-TV and WUPL will remain at the existing Rampart Street studio location for the foreseeable future. WWL-TV celebrated its 50th anniversary of broadcasting on September 7, 2007; it observed its 55th anniversary half a decade later, in 2012; its 60th in 2017, and its 65th in 2022.
Hurricane Gustav
The same agreement for the use of Louisiana Public Broadcasting's studio facilities and the simulcast on LPB's stations statewide that was enacted following Hurricane Katrina was also utilized for coverage of Hurricane Gustav, when the storm hit southern Louisiana in early September 2008.
WWL-TV's coverage also carried on the second digital subchannels of fellow Belo sister stations WFAA-TV in Dallas and KHOU-TV in Houston for the convenience of evacuees who relocated to Texas to avoid the storm.
Sale to the Gannett Company and Gannett-Tegna split
On June 13, 2013, the
On June 29, 2015, Gannett split in two with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WWL-TV and WUPL were both retained by the latter company, named Tegna.[13]
Programming
WWL-TV carries the majority of the CBS network schedule, although the station splits the
WWL-TV preempted moderate amounts of CBS programming from the 1960s to the 1980s—including most notably, programs that the network aired weekdays during the 9 a.m. hour, as well as CBS' late night lineup, prior to the debut of Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. During the 1970s, WWL-TV preempted the last hour of the network's Saturday children's programming, between noon and 1 p.m., with local programming. Prior to 2015, WWL-TV would air The Late Late Show on a half-hour delay at 12:07 a.m., with syndicated programming (including The Insider) filling the program's 11:37 p.m. network timeslot on weeknights. Since then, WWL-TV airs what is currently After Midnight in its current 11:37 p.m. slot after The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
On September 1, 1986, WWL-TV dropped the
News operation
WWL-TV presently broadcasts 27 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 4+1⁄2 hours each weekday, 2+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays and two hours on Sundays). In addition, the station produces the half-hour sports highlight and discussion program 4th Down on 4, which airs Sunday nights at 10:35 p.m. The station also operates a Northshore bureau located on North Causeway Boulevard in suburban Mandeville.
The station implemented the Eyewitness News format on February 26, 1968, having rebranded its newscasts from the Evening News title it had been using for the previous two years. WWL-TV has been the top-rated station among the New Orleans market's local newscasts for nearly 30 years, according to Nielsen Media Research. During the November 2007 sweeps period, the first major ratings period in New Orleans reported to Nielsen since Hurricane Katrina, the results affirmed that WWL-TV continued to lead its nearest competitors, WDSU and WVUE, by a wide margin.
In March 2006, WWL-TV began producing a half-hour newscast called I-News, featuring more in-depth reporting on topics important to viewers. The program also featured live interviews with local, state and national officials. The newscast aired weekday evenings on the station's website, WWLTV.com, after its 6 p.m. newscast and was rebroadcast on channel 4. (The webcast has since been canceled.)
On June 4, 2007, WWL-TV began producing a half-hour prime time newscast each Monday through Friday evening at 9 p.m. for MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister station WUPL. Titled My54 Eyewitness News at 9, it was anchored by Lucy Bustamante and Mike Hoss—who also anchored the station's 10 p.m. newscast, Eyewitness News Nightwatch—until Bustamante departed WWL-TV for sister station WVEC in Norfolk on October 1, 2010. Bustamante was replaced by Karen Swensen—whom Bustamante replaced as evening co-anchor—as anchor of the 9 p.m. newscast on WUPL and the 10 p.m. newscast on channel 4 on February 24, 2011; in the interim, Hoss anchored the newscast on WUPL with a rotating series of co-anchors. The 9 p.m. newscast on WUPL was discontinued on April 26, 2013, as a result of consistently low ratings.[16]
Since the anchor changes, WWL-TV has lost its significant ratings lead over WDSU, WVUE and WGNO, according to Nielsen Media reports, but its newscasts remain the highest-rated among the New Orleans market's news-producing stations. WWL-TV had once doubled the ratings of each of its competitors in every time period, but its lead gradually declined, reaching as close a margin as one household rating point ahead of second place WDSU (in the 6 p.m. timeslot) during the July 2011 sweeps period. At 5 p.m., WWL-TV led WDSU by only two ratings points, while claiming ratings wins in key demographics at both 5 and 6 p.m.—marking the first time in about 25 years that a station other than WWL-TV had placed first in the 25-54 demographic. At 10 p.m., WWL-TV led WVUE by 1.9 ratings points.[17] Newscasts in less competitive time periods of 4:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. also scored wins in key demographic categories, as well as in household ratings.
In April 2010, WWL-TV became the second station in the market to install an HD-based weather system. Former WDSU morning anchor Melanie Hebert joined channel 4 in January 2012, however she did not appear on-air until that July due to a
On August 9, 2014, WWL-TV debuted hour-long weekend editions of its Eyewitness Morning News broadcasts on Saturdays at 8 a.m. and Sundays at 6 a.m. On September 9, the station restored an evening newscast on WUPL's schedule with the debut of a half-hour 6:30 p.m. newscast on weeknights.[19]
Notable current on-air staff
- Meg Farris – general assignment reporter/medical reporter ("Medical Watch")
Notable former on-air staff
- Frank Davis – feature reporter (1981–2011; "In the Kitchen" and "Naturally N'Awlins" host) (deceased)
- Bill Elder – anchor/investigative reporter (1966–2000; nicknamed the "Mike Wallace of Louisiana") (died of complications of radiation treatment for brain cancer, September 17, 2003)
- Buddy Diliberto, who succeeded him at WWL-AM)
- Jim Henderson – longtime Eyewitness Sports director (May 1978–Jan. 2012; longtime radio play-by-play announcer for the New Orleans Saints, later at WVUE-DT as Saints analyst and commentator; retired)
- Hoda Kotb – anchor/reporter (1992–1997; now with NBC News as co-host of Today)
- St. Charles ParishRecreation Department)
- Jim Metcalf – anchor/reporter/host of A Sunday Journal (1966–1977) (deceased)
- Chris Myers – sports reporter/anchor (1982–1986; now with Fox Sports)
- Nash Roberts – chief meteorologist (1978–1984)/weather consultant/hurricane analyst (1984–2001) (deceased)
- Sally-Ann Roberts – anchor (sister of Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts) (Mar 1977–2018) (retired)
- WWL-AM/WWL-FM; retired)
- Norman Robinson – reporter (1979–1989; later anchor at WDSU; retired)
- Charles Zewe – anchor/reporter (1971–1976; later at WDSU and CNN; now Vice President of Communications for the Louisiana State University System)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Video | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
4.1 | 1080i | 16:9 |
WWL-HD | Main WWL-TV programming / CBS |
4.2 | 480i | Crime | True Crime Network | |
4.3 | TheNest | The Nest | ||
4.4 | Crimes | True Crime Network | ||
4.5 | GetTV | Get | ||
4.6 | DABL | Dabl | ||
4.7 | QVC2 | QVC2
| ||
4.8 | ShopLC | Shop LC |
On September 8, 2010, former owner Belo signed an agreement with the
were launched from Mid to late quarter 2021.Analog-to-digital conversion
WWL-TV shut down its analog signal, over
As part of the
References
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WWL-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ "It's Official: WWL is Sold," The Times-Picayune, August 28, 1990, Page D-1
- ^ CBS, NBC Battle for AFC Rights // Fox Steals NFC Package, Chicago Sun-Times, December 18, 1993.
- ^ Nice Price, Broadcasting & Cable, February 19, 2006.
- ^ CBS Sues Belo Over WUPL, Broadcasting & Cable, February 9, 2006.
- ^ http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/tvstations/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003550412 "Belo Nabs WUPL-TV, CBS' New Orleans Affil." By Katy Bachman, MEDIAWEEK.
- ^ http://www.belo.com/pressRelease.x2?release=20070223-1126.html "Belo Purchases WUPL-TV, Expanding Its Presence in New Orleans." Belo press release. Retrieved February 28, 2007
- ^ a b c d e f g One Station Stayed on the Air, Broadcasting & Cable, September 16, 2005.
- ^ 65th Annual Peabody Awards, May 2006.
- ^ DuPont Columbia Award Winners, Broadcasting & Cable, January 15, 2007.
- The Times-Picayune. Associated Press. June 13, 2013. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
- ^ Gannett Completes Its Acquisition of Belo, TVNewsCheck, Retrieved December 23, 2013.
- ^ "Separation of Gannett into two public companies completed | TEGNA". Tegna. June 29, 2015. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
- ^ "Show may be live from N.O., but localites won't get to see it," The Times-Picayune, February 26, 1987, Page E-15
- ^ WWL-TV, WUPL-TV team up to give viewers more choices in the morning, WWL-TV, November 18, 2016, Retrieved November 24, 2016.
- The Times-Picayune. Retrieved April 27, 2013.
- ^ NEWS RELEASE: WDSU Surpasses WWL, Becomes Louisiana's New News Leader
- user-generated source]
- ^ Walker, Dave (July 17, 2014). "WWL-TV announces new newscasts for weekend mornings, 6:30 p.m. weeknights on WUPL". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved July 18, 2014.
- ^ "Angela Hill, Biography". wwltv.com. Archived from the original on August 24, 2013. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
- ^ RabbitEars TV Query for WWL
- ^ Belo Adds ABC's Live Well Network, Broadcasting & Cable, September 29, 2010.
- ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
- ^ "UPDATED List of Participants in the Analog Nightlight Program" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. June 12, 2009. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
External links
- WWLTV.com - WWL-TV official website
- WUPLTV.com - WUPL official website