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- For broadcast stations that previously used the WCAU call sign, see WCAU (disambiguation)
WCAU, channel 10, is the NBC-owned and operated television station serving the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania market, with studios on the border between Philadelphia and Bala Cynwyd, and transmitter in the Roxborough neighborhood. Its signal covers the Delaware Valley area including Philadelphia, parts of central and southern New Jersey, and Delaware.
History
As a CBS station
In 1945, the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin secured a construction permit for WPEN-TV, named after the Bulletin's radio stations, WPEN-AM 950 and WPEN-FM 98.1.However, the picture changed dramatically in 1946, when The Philadelphia Record folded. The Bulletin inherited the Record's "goodwill," along with the rights to buy WCAU-AM 1210 (now WPHT and WCAU-FM 102.9 (now WOGL) from their longtime owners, the Levy brothers. The Bulletin sold off the less-powerful WPEN-AM and WCAU-FM, with the latter being renamed WPEN-FM. The Bulletin kept its FM station, renaming it WCAU-FM to match its new AM sister. The newspaper also kept its construction permit for channel 10, renaming it WCAU-TV.
WCAU-TV went on the air on May 23, 1948 as Philadelphia's third television station. It was able to secure an affiliation with CBS due to the influence of the Levy brothers, who continued to work for the newspaper as consultants. WCAU-AM had been one of CBS' original 16 affiliates when the network premiered in 1927. A year later, the Levy brothers persuaded their brother-in-law, William Paley, to buy the struggling network. The Levy brothers had been shareholders and directors at CBS for many years. Under the circumstances, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that WCAU-TV would take the CBS television affiliation fromWFIL-TV (channel 6, now WPVI-TV).
Channel 10 was originally located at 1622 Chestnut Street in Center City along with its radio sisters. (The building now houses Teh Art Institute.) In 1952, the WCAU stations moved to a new facility in the Main Line suburb of Bala Cynwyd. The studio, located on Monument Road at City Line Avenue, was a state-of-the-art television center, and the first building in America constructed specifically for broadcasting. Channel 10 is still headquartered there today.
The Bulletin bought CBS affiliate WGBI-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1957, changing the calls of that station to WDAU-TV (now WYOU). Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission told the Bulletin that it couldn't keep both stations due to a large signal overlap which constituted a duopoly under FCC rules of the time. The Bulletin sold the WCAU stations to CBS in 1958. Ironically, CBS had to get a waiver to buy the WCAU stations. WCAU-TV's grade B signal overlapped that of WCBS-TV in New York City, while WCAU-AM and WCBS-AM were both clear channel stations; the FCC at the time usually did not allow common ownership of clear channel stations with overlapping nighttime coverage.
Aside from KYW-TV's brief ownership by NBC, WCAU-TV was the only O&O in Philadelphia until 1986, when Capital Cities Communications, owner of WPVI, merged with ABC. As such, it did not heavily pre-empt network programming, with the exception of an hour of Saturday morning cartoons in favor of the locally-produced children's program, The Gene London Show, which ended in 1979. (The pre-empted hour of cartoons were aired on Sunday mornings instead.) After CBS abruptly converted WCAU-AM from a talk station into an oldies station as WOGL-AM, it dropped the -TV suffix from channel 10's call sign. However, the station continued to call itself "WCAU-TV" on-air until 1995.
The switch from CBS to NBC
In 1994, CBS entered into a long-term affiliaton agreement with Westinghouse (Group W) Broadcasting, the owners of Philadelphia's longtime NBC affiliate, KYW-TV. Westinghouse converted three of its stations, KYW-TV among them, into CBS affiliates. KYW-TV had been a very distant third in the Philadelphia ratings for more than a decade, while WCAU was a solid runner-up to WPVI. Nonetheless, CBS decided to affiliate with channel three and sell channel 10, ending a 47-year relationship (including 37 years of ownership) with the network.
NBC and New World Communications then emerged as the leading bidders for WCAU. NBC's motivation was obvious -- though they were losing KYW-TV, the network also saw a chance to get an O&O in Philadelphia, the largest market where it didn't own a television station. It also saw a chance to move up in the ratings. Meanwhile, New World had recently partnered with Fox and planned on turning WCAU into a Fox affiliate, as it was doing with most of its other stations. New World found the opportunity to win its new partner a VHF station in the nation's fourth-largest market too much to resist.
Even before CBS put WCAU on the market, rumors abounded that Fox was about to lose its original Philadelphia affiliate, Viacom/Paramount-owned WTXF-TV (channel 29), to the new United Paramount Network. Fox later cancelled its plans to buy WGBS-TV (channel 57) and entered the WCAU bidding in case New World's bid fell through. Fox and New World each had different plans for the station. New World intended to leave Fox Kids on WTXF, while Fox intended to move all of its programming to WCAU. Either way, WCAU would have retained its status as the "home" station of the Philadelphia Eagles. The station had carried most Eagles games since CBS won rights to NFL games in 1956, but CBS had recently lost the rights to the National Football Conference (where the Eagles played) to Fox. In the end, Viacom/Paramount opted to sell WTXF to Fox and buy WGBS (now WPSG), leaving NBC as the de-facto buyer of channel 10.
As an NBC-owned station
On September 10, 1995, KYW-TV and WCAU-TV swapped network affiliations, part of a more complex affiliation/ownership deal involving NBC and a new CBS/Group W partnership. CBS traded its full ownership of WCAU for a minority share of KYW-TV, while NBC-owned stations in Denver and Salt Lake City became CBS stations, with Group W assuming majority ownership. NBC and Group W/CBS also traded broadcasting facilities in Miami. CBS kept its Philadelphia radio stations. Group W's parent, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, merged with CBS in 1996, making its Philadelphia radio stations sisters to 1210 AM's longtime rival, KYW radio.NBC had wanted to own a station in Philadelphia for many years. It briefly succeeded in 1956, when it used extortion to force Westinghouse into exchanging channel three (then called WPTZ-TV) and KYW radio for NBC's Cleveland cluster, WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television. NBC threatened to yank its affiliation from both of its Westinghouse-owned affiliates -- WPTZ and WBZ-TV in Boston -- if Westinghouse didn't agree to the deal. When the FCC approved the swap, the Philadelphia stations became WRCV-AM-TV, while the Cleveland stations became KYW-AM-FM-TV. However, the FCC and the U.S. Justice Department forced the reversal of the swap in 1965. The Philadelphia stations then became KYW-AM-TV, while the Cleveland stations became WKYC-AM-FM-TV. KYW-TV in Philadelphia had been NBC's lowest-rated major-market affiliate through much of the 1980s and 1990s. NBC found this highly embarrassing, since Channel 3 was the largest affiliate not owned by the network. KYW also pre-empted large amounts of network programming, which didn't help in its relationship with NBC.
Logos and idents
News operation
WCAU's news operation was the ratings leader in Philadelphia for most of the time from the 1950s through the 1970s. Charles Shaw, who had worked with Edward R. Murrow as a CBS correspondent in London during World War II, was the station's news director from 1948 until he left the station in the early 1960s. John Facenda, who later gained fame as the voice of NFL Films, was the station's main anchorman from shortly after it signed on until 1973.
WCAU remained unchallenged until the 1970s, when first KYW-TV and then WPVI passed it. The station struggled through the late 1970s while most of its CBS sisters dominated the ratings, but has since recovered and has been runner-up to longtime leader WPVI for most of the last 25 years. WCAU did manage to pass WPVI in the 5 p.m. time slot for a time in the early 1980s with its original "Live at 5," anchored by Larry Kane and Deborah Knapp (now at KENS-TV in San Antonio). In 2001, WCAU made national news when its 11 pm news (anchored by Larry Mendte and Renee Chenault-Fattah) knocked WPVI from the top slot for the first time in decades. Since 2003, after Mendte was hired away by KYW-TV, WCAU has had to fend off a spirited challenge from a resurgent KYW for second place in the Philadelphia ratings.
Shortly after CBS agreed to sell the station to NBC, WCAU dropped its longtime moniker of Channel 10 News in favor of Newscenter 10. After the sale closed, NBC changed the newscast name to News 10. It became NBC10 News in 2000.
WCAU used music based on "Channel 2 News," written for WBBM-TV in Chicago (the de facto official music for CBS' owned-and-operated stations) and variations on it from 1982 to shortly after NBC bought the station. It used the original 1975 version from 1982 to 1985, a synthesized version written by a local composer during the 1985-86 season, and the Palmer News Package from 1986 to 1995. Ironically, KYW-TV has used variants on this theme in recent years.
However, in the past few years the newscasts have been becoming what some media watchers call "tabloid television"; adopting a newscast with some of the same features as many Fox affiliates. Critics say that such newscasts incorporate flashy graphics with sensationalistic stories, some with little or no local relevance. Additionally, the station places great emphasis on weather and has a very dramatic presentation, which to some observers almost borders on self parody.
Chris Blackman, the current news director, took over the job from the well-liked Steve Schiwald, who got the station to come closer to WPVI than it ever had in a long time. Blackman does not seem to have the favor among this employees as his predecessor - the fact that his name was used alongside a picture of The Grinch during a Christmas newscast seems to support this (other staffers were simply pictured among objects such as holly).
The station's weekday 5 p.m. newscast, which is part of a 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. news block (and revives the "Live at 5" moniker), has a more "active" approach to presentation - anchors Tracy Davidson and Vince DeMentri present the newscast from a variety of locations, including a chroma-key wall. They are never seen seated at the news desk. The weather is reported by Doug Kammerer on Thursdays in the summer, the weather is given in a viewer's backyard. This is known as "Backyard Weather". Traffic reports are given by John Ogden. Tracy Davidson also gives special Consumer Alert reports, while Cherie Bank gives health reports.
Newscast Lineup
In order to distinguish itself from WJAR, WCAU's weather department is called "NBC 10 EarthWatch Weather Plus". The station's radar is called "EarthWatch Doppler 10,000".
Weekdays
- NBC 10 News Today - 5:00-7:00 a.m. (anchored by Terry Ruggles and Dawn Timmeney, John Ogden with traffic, and Bill Henley on weather)
- 10! - 10:00-11:00 a.m. (hosted by Bill Henley and Lori Wilson)
- NBC 10 News at Four - 4:00-5:00 p.m. (anchored by Renee Chenault-Fattah and Tim Lake with Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz on weather and Vai Sikahema with sports)
- NBC 10 News Live at 5 - 5:00-6:00 p.m. (anchored by Tracy Davidson and Vince DeMentri with Doug Kammerer on weather and Vai Sikahema with sports)
- NBC 10 News at Six - 6:00-6:30 p.m. (anchored by Renee Chenault-Fattah and Tim Lake with Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz on weather and Vai Sikahema with sports)
- NBC 10 News at Eleven - 11:00-11:35 p.m. (anchored by Renee Chenault-Fattah and Tim Lake with Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz on weather and Vai Sikahema with sports)
Saturdays
- NBC 10 News Today Weekend - 6:00-7:00 and 9:00-10:00 a.m. (anchored by John Blunt and Denise Nakano with Dave Warren on weather)
- NBC 10 News Midday - Noon-12:30 p.m. (anchored by John Blunt and Denise Nakano with Dave Warren on weather)
- NBC 10 News at Six - 6:00-6:30 p.m. (anchored by Lauren Cohn with Amy Freeze on weather and John Clark with sports)
- NBC 10 News at Eleven - 11:00-11:30 p.m. (anchored by Lauren Cohn with Amy Freeze on weather and John Clark with sports)
Sundays
- NBC 10 News Today Weekend - 6:00-8:00 and 9:00-10:00 a.m. (anchored by John Blunt and Denise Nakano with Dave Warren on weather)
- NBC 10 News Midday - Noon-12:30 p.m. (anchored by John Blunt and Denise Nakano with Dave Warren on weather)
- NBC 10 News at Six - 6:00-6:30 p.m. (anchored by Lauren Cohn with Amy Freeze on weather and John Clark with sports)
- NBC 10 News at Eleven - 11:00-11:35 p.m. (anchored by Lauren Cohn with Amy Freeze on weather and John Clark with sports)
WCAU also produces a newscast for WPHL-TV, called WB 17 News at Ten Powered by NBC 10, nightly from 10:00 to 10:30 PM.
See also
External links
- WCAU website
- WCAU Wireless
- City Declares 'Bill Baldini Day' To Honor Reporter's 40 Years
- WCAU: A History Of Firsts
- Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia
Registered Historic Places in Pennsylvania | Channel 10 TV stations in the United States | WCAU | 1948 establishments
"WCAU"