WKPT-TV
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| WKPT-TV | |
|---|---|
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| Kingsport / Johnson City / Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia | |
| Branding | ABC19 WKPT |
| Slogan | ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source |
| Channels | 19 (UHF) analog, 27-1 (UHF) digital |
| Affiliations | ABC |
| Owner | Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation |
| Founded | August 20, 1969 |
| Call letters meaning | W KingsPorT, TN |
| Transmitter Power | 1260 kW (analog) & 5.38 kW (digital) |
| Website | www.wkpttv.com |
WKPT-TV is an ABC television affiliate station in Kingsport, Tennessee. It serves the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee and Virginia from a transmitter on Holston Mountain, on the Sullivan County - Carter County county line, near Elizabethton, Tennessee.
WKPT-TV is owned by the Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation, along with WAPK-CA channel 36, WKPT AM 1400, WOPI-AM 1490, WKTP-AM 1590 and WTFM-FM 98.5.
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[edit] History
WKPT-TV, Kingsport, Tennessee signed on the air August 20, 1969 as an ABC-TV affiliate, taking the ABC programs previously shown on WCYB-TV, Bristol, Virginia, the NBC-TV primary affiliate; and WJHL-TV, Johnson City, Tennessee, the primary CBS-TV affiliate. WKPT-TV also has the historic distinction of being the oldest UHF television station in Tennessee to have maintained continuous operation on the UHF band to the present. WKPT-TV was one of the first stations in the country to utilize a newly-adopted (at the time) FCC rule called "must-carry," that required local cable companies to black out other ABC-TV network signals from nearby stations that were carried on the local cable systems. As a result, the easily-picked-up network signal from ABC-TV affiliate WLOS-TV, Channel 13, Asheville, North Carolina, was always blacked out on cable and covered by the WKPT-TV signal, any time BOTH stations were broadcasting the network; local Channel 13 programming was not blacked out.
While both WCYB-TV and WJHL-TV received the ABC-TV network via traditional microwave links provided by American Telephone and Telegraph back in the 50's and 60's, when WKPT-TV signed on the air in 1969, station owners developed their own low-cost way of bringing ABC to upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. Before the advent of satellite technology, WKPT-TV utilized a series of microwave relay stations between Knoxville and Kingsport. As the ABC-TV signal was being transmitted via traditional microwave from American Telephone and Telegraph into then-ABC affiliate WTVK-TV, Channel 26 in Knoxville (now CBS-TV affiliate WVLT-TV, Channel 8), WKPT-TV would literally "grab" the Telco signal just as it was going into the WTVK-TV studios on Sharp's Ridge in Knoxville, then the shared ABC-TV signal bound for WKPT-TV was transmitted via a private microwave owned by the station, to a relay point 70 air miles east to Camp Creek Bald on the Tennessee-North Carolina border in southern Greene County, Tennessee. That same ABC-TV signal was then re-transmitted via another WKPT-TV microwave 33 air miles further east to the WKPT-TV transmitter site on Holston Mountain near Elizabethton, Tennessee. From the relay point there, it was transmitted via a THIRD WKPT-TV microwave 25 air miles down to the studios in downtown Kingsport, through the station's master control board, and then BACK to Holston Mountain via the station's regular studio-transmitter link, and then broadcast on Channel 19. If any part of the private microwave relay system malfunctioned, as it did periodically because of heavy snowfall or downed trees, the station was forced to temporarily broadcast ABC-TV through the off-air signal of either WTVK-TV, Channel 26, Knoxville or the off-air signal of WLOS-TV, Channel 13, Asheville, North Carolina, as long as those stations were in the same ABC-TV network broadcast. Occasionally, WKPT-TV accidentally aired those stations' ID's and had to cover them up quickly. When WTVK-TV swapped networks with WATE-TV, Knoxville and WATE-TV became the ABC-TV affiliate in 1979, WKPT-TV merely moved its permanent Knoxville microwave relay 800 feet west to WATE's transmitter site, also on Sharp's Ridge, and continued to receive ABC-TV via its privately-owned microwave relay system.
Many stations in their early years received their network signals in a similar way, among them WSMV-TV, Nashville which received the NBC-TV network back in the early 50's via a system of microwave relays that station constructed from Louisville, Kentucky; WHIS-TV Bluefield, West Virginia, which received its NBC-TV signal in the mid 50's via its own microwave relay from Roanoake, Virginia, and WSAZ-TV, Huntington, West Virginia, whose NBC-TV signal came via a system of microwave relays it built in the early 50's, first from Cincinnati, Ohio to Huntington, then aligned from Columbus, Ohio to Huntington.
WKPT-TV's first branding in the 70's was "WKPT, Tri-Cities' ABC," which featured the first musical station ID's in the area. That concept was later copied by WATE-TV, Knoxville when that station switched to the ABC-TV network in 1979.
In 1998, the station rebranded as ABC19 WKPT, which marked the first time the station's off-air channel number was actually mentioned on-air since the 80's.
[edit] Newscasts
WKPT-TV's first personalities in the early 70's included news anchor Bill Freehoff, and weather with Bill Trailer. The two distinguished broadcasters had been popular personalities on WKPT-AM1400, and had made the move to television.
Until February 2002, WKPT produced news in-house[1]; From February 2002 to September 2006, 6pm and 11pm newscasts originated from WJHL-TV and were simulcast on both WJHL and WKPT. In situations where one station was off time (due to network runover or other circumstances), the news was broadcast on the other station at the correct time. As of September 2006, WJHL's nightside broadcast is repeated on WKPT at or around 1:06 AM.
However, WJHL's 12pm weekday newscast is repeated on WAPK on a half-hour delay at 12:30 PM.
[edit] Weekdays
- ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source Nightside (1:06-1:36 AM)
[edit] Titles
- The Television 19 News (1969-1974)
- TV-19 News (1974-1981)
- Newswatch 19 (1981-1994)
- WKPT-TV News (1994-1999)
- WKPT-TV News on ABC 19 (1999-2002)
- ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source (2002-present)
[edit] Themes
- WNDU 1986 News Theme (Unknown; 1988-1993)
- Production Music: Intrepid (Network Music; 1993-1998)
- Bold Branding News (Joe Hogue Productions; 1998-2002)
- Counterpoint (Stephen Arnold Music; 2002-Present)
[edit] External links
| ABC Network Affiliates in the state of Tennessee | |
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WKRN 2 (Nashville) - WATE 6 (Knoxville) - WBBJ 7 (Jackson) - WTVC 9 (Chattanooga) - WKPT 19 (Kingsport) - WPTY 24 (Memphis) |
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| See also: CBS, CW, Fox, i, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS and Other stations in Tennessee | |
