WMTW-TV

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WMTW-TV
Poland Spring/Portland, Maine
Branding	News 8 WMTW
Slogan	Where The News Comes First
Channels	8 (VHF) analog, 46 (UHF) digital
Translators	26 W26CQ Colebrook, NH 27 W27CP White River Junction, VT
Affiliations	ABC
Owner	Hearst-Argyle
Founded	August 31, 1954
Call letters meaning	W MounT Washington
Former affiliations	DuMont (1954-1956)[1]
Website	www.wmtw.com/

WMTW-TV, channel 8, is the ABC affiliate for Portland and the rest of southern Maine as well as parts of New Hampshire. The station is licensed to the town of Poland Spring and broadcasts its digital signal on channel 45.

[edit] History

It signed on for the first time on August 31, 1954, from a transmitter located atop Mount Washington, New Hampshire--the highest peak in the Northeastern United States. This gave WMTW one of the largest coverage areas of any station in the United States. At one point, WMTW was seen as far away as Montreal, Quebec and many parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, eastern New York, and northern Massachusetts. The station carried programming from ABC and DuMont until 1956, when DuMont ceased operations. [2] It was considered Vermont's (and Montreal's) ABC affiliate of record until WVNY signed on in 1968. Even after WVNY signed on, WMTW still had a large audience in Vermont. Many Vermont viewers watched WMTW rather than WVNY even after WMTW began focusing more on Portland. It stayed on most Montreal cable systems until the early 1990s.

The tower had been originally been built in 1940 by Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of Frequency Modulation Radio, for one of the first FM stations in the country. WMTW built a new tower there in the 1960s, but the Armstong-built tower remained as a standby.

WMTW was forced to leave Mount Washington in 2002 due to the FCC's digital television mandate. Two FM stations currently occupy separate broadcast facilities on the top of the mountain as well as an observatory. All of the users use power generated by generators on the summit. The FCC requires analog stations to broadcast alongside their digital counterparts until 80% of the viewing audience can watch the digital signal. Had WMTW-DT been built on the mountain, it would have had to operate at low power to conserve the fuel drums that powered the transmitter. However, a low-powered signal would have resulted in an inadequate signal for Portland and the more populated areas of the market. WMTW built a new tower in Baldwin, Maine and signed off from Mount Washington for the last time on February 5, 2002. The new transmitter site does not serve nearly as large an area as the Mount Washington facility did, but provides a better signal to the more populated areas of the market.

WMTW station identification in 2005. Note the mention of the two translators WMTW signed on after leaving Mount Washington.

Jack Paar of Tonight Show fame, owned the station for a brief period in the 1960s after he left national TV. He hosted several programs on WMTW during that time.

In 2004, WMTW was sold to Hearst-Argyle. In 2005, it activated two translators: W26CQ on channel 26 in Colebrook, New Hampshire and W27CP on channel 27 in White River Junction, Vermont to make up for lost coverage when it signed off from Mount Washington. Under normal conditions, the translators should have been built before WMTW moved its transmitter to Baldwin in order to comply with FCC regulations. However, Canadian authorities had to agree to the proposed locations for the translators, and this delayed construction until after WMTW activated its new transmitter.

Colebrook is part of the Portland market, but White River Junction is part of the Burlington, Vermont-Plattsburgh, New York market. White River Junction is home base for NBC affiliate WNNE-TV, which is also owned by Hearst-Argyle. WNNE is a full-time a simulcast of WPTZ-TV. FCC regulations do not allow that two or more stations from two or more different markets to have coverage of the same location (in this case, White River Junction). This rule, however, doesn't apply to translators. Incidentally, White River Junction is within the fringes of WMUR-TV, another ABC affiliate owned by Hearst-Argyle.

[edit] Sister Radio Stations

There was also a WMTW-AM (870) in Portland, a news-talk station. It was sold by Harron Communications, the (now-former) owners of WMTW-TV to Nassau Broadcast Group in 2003. Today it is WLVP-AM and is an Air America Radio affiliate. This station, along with WLAM-AM 1470 WHXR-FM 106.7, were all branded as "Newsradio WMTW". This set of stations aired and produced local news and talk programs, as well as simulcasts of WMTW-TV's newscasts.

In addition, there have been several stations known as WMTW-FM co-owned with channel 8: the first became WHOM 94.9 (which continues to transmit from Mount Washington), and the second was the FM sister station to WMTW-FM, which was located on 106.7 MHz. It is also owned by Nassau, and is currently WHXR. An earlier WMTW-FM was not connected to any other WMTW apart from also transmitting from Mount Washington.

[edit] Newscasts

The station uses live NOAA NWS radar data from several regional sites in a forecasting system presented onscreen as "First Warning Live Doppler". The main signal comes from the NWS radar in Gray.

WMTW, in partnership with Time Warner Cable, also operates a 24-hour cable news station on channel 9 throughout the Portland market. The cable station airs rebroadcasts of newscasts from channel 8. There is no logo or website for the cable station.

[edit] Weekdays

• News 8 This Morning (5-7 AM)
• News 8 WMTW at Noon (12-12:30 PM)
  • Rachael Ruble
  • Meteorologist Matt Zidle

• News 8 WMTW at 6 (6-6:30 PM)
• News 8 WMTW at 11 (11-11:35 PM)
  • Tory Ryden
  • Jon Camp
  • Chief Meteorologist Tom Chisholm
  • Norm Karkos, Sports

[edit] Weekends

• News 8 WMTW at 6 (6-6:30 PM)
• News 8 WMTW at 11 (11-11:30 PM)
  • Jim Keithley
  • Tracy Sabol
  • Meteorologist Gray Stabley
  • Travis Lee, Sports

[edit] Reporters

• Steve Minich
• Lisa Gardner
• Jim Cyr
• Kathryn Sotnik
• Michelle Frey
• Dick Gosselin
• Marnie MacLean
• Danielle Strauss
• Ryan Welch, Sports

[edit] External links

• Station Website
• ABC Website
• ABC News Website
• TV Hat: Trivial Facts About Southern QC, Upstate NY, and VT TV Stations
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WMTW-TV
• Query the FCC's TV station database for W26CQ
• Query the FCC's TV station database for W27CP