WNYT
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| WNYT | |
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| Albany, New York | |
| Branding | NewsChannel 13 |
| Slogan | Live. Local. Late Breaking. |
| Channels | 13 (VHF) analog, 12 (VHF) digital |
| Translators | 7 W07AI Pittsfield, MA 7 W07AJ Gloversville 38 W38DL Adams, MA |
| Affiliations | NBC |
| Owner | Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. |
| Founded | February 17, 1954 (on channel 35, moved to channel 13 in 1958) |
| Call letters meaning | W New York Television |
| Former callsigns | WTRI (1954-1958), WAST (1958-1981) |
| Former affiliations | ABC (1954–1977) CBS (1977–1981) |
| Transmitter Power | 178.0 kW (analog) 9.10 kW (digital) |
| Website | www.wnyt.com/ |
WNYT is the NBC television affiliate for New York state's Capital District (Albany-Schenectady-Troy). It is licensed to Albany and its transmitter is located on Bald Mountain outside of Troy and its studios located in Menands, approximately one block north of the Albany city line. It is currently owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc..
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[edit] History
The station, originally licenced to Troy, first signed on February 17, 1954 as ABC affiliate WTRI (co-owned with WTRY radio) on channel 35 with studios right outside Troy near its transmitter on Bald Mountain in Spiegeltown. In 1958, it changed its city of license to Albany and moved to channel 13 with new call letters, WAST (for Albany-Schenectady-Troy); originally the station had wanted to take the calls WTAS (Troy-Albany-Schenectady), however the similarity of the "TAS" to the news agency of the Soviet Union led to the use of the WAST calls.
Shortly after the upgrade, WAST was sold to Sonderling Broadcasting which moved the studio to a warehouse on the Albany-Menands line which previously housed Selective Service records. Although improvements had been made, the station's signal was still significantly weaker than its rivals due to a sizeable short spacing to WNET in Newark, New Jersey and the differences of the Bald Mountain location vs. the tower farm in the Helderberg Mountains used by the other stations in the market.
In 1977, WAST switched affiliations with WTEN and became the Capital District's CBS affiliate, followed the next year by Viacom purchasing Sonderling, making WAST the company's first television station holding (ironically enough, Viacom had started as the syndication arm of CBS). Four years later, WRGB swapped affiliations with WAST, and WAST became the area's NBC affiliate. Seeking a fresh start and a new identity, Viacom decided to mark the affiliation change with new calls: WNYT. With the new affiliation and calls, Viacom expanded and modernized the studios, newsroom, offices (including the market's first modern computers) and made a significant investment in electronic equipment, including a satellite receiving news station. Investment in talent also increased with the station both building its own talent and taking key talent from other stations in the market. The big change made WNYT one of a handful of stations to have affiliated with every major network, ABC, CBS, and NBC. WNYT was a steady #2 by the late 1980s, and in 1992 scored its first #1 late news victory with a slow expansion into #1 in other timeslots. With the rebranding of the station's newscasts from News 13 to NewsChannel 13 in 1991, WNYT became the first station to use the "Live Local Late-Breaking" tagline, a slogan which is now commonplace throughout the country.
In 1994, after Viacom bought Paramount Pictures, Paramount became the parent for all of Viacom's television stations, including WNYT. Shortly thereafter, Paramount decided to divest itself of all non-UPN affiliates, which led to a deal in 1996 where Paramount traded WNYT and WHEC-TV in Rochester to Hubbard Broadcasting Corporation for UPN affiliate WTOG-TV in Tampa. In Viacom's last sweeps period owning WNYT, the station had its first solid book as the #1 station in the Albany market, a position which the station has maintained in the decade Hubbard has owned the station. Two years after Hubbard bought WNYT, it won the distinction of being the first (and, to date, only) station outside of New York City to win the regional Emmy award for best newscast in New York state.
In the mid-1990s, WNYT began an alliance with PBS station WMHT which has led to WNYT producing several programs for WMHT including semi-regular "Town Hall" meetings, the weekly call-in show "HealthLink", and for two years a 10:00 p.m. newscast on WMHT's then-secondary station WMHQ. From 2001 to 2004, WNYT also maintained a Joint Sales Agreement with Pax affiliate WYPX which included rebroadcasts of newscasts and local non-news programming.
In 2001, WNYT opened a bureau covering Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the first of its kind, in downtown Pittsfield; the current chief of that bureau is Subrina Dhammi. After forging an alliance with the Glens Falls Post-Star, a similar bureau (the "Saratoga-North Country Newsroom") was opened in Saratoga Springs in early 2004; former weekend sports anchor Mark Mulholland currently is chief of that bureau.
WNYT-DT began broadcasting in October of 2003 on channel 12; unlike the current signal, WNYT-DT is based off of a master digital television tower in the Helderbergs with the market's other stations. In December 2005, WNYT-DT began NBC WeatherPlus on channel 13.2 with a full launch coming two months later; this service is carried on the digital lineups of Time Warner Cable (channel 556), Adelphia Communications (channel 169), and Berkshire Cable Corp. in northwest Columbia County (channel 713).
[edit] Key Personalities
Current
- John Allen (Nightside reporter and key substitute anchor)
- Phil Bayly (Weekday morning anchor, previously had a long (1986-2003) career as WNYT's highly noted political reporter)
- Dan Bazile (Weekend morning anchor and political reporter, previously of WXXA)
- Abigail Bleck (Dayside Reporter)
- Jay Bobbin (Entertainment reporter, better known as a columnist for Tribune Media Services and namesake of the "Jay Bobbin Seven Questions Rule"
- Paul Caiano (Weekday morning meteorologist, was weekend meteorologist from 1993-2000)
- Andrew Catalon (Weekend sports anchor)
- Lee Copson (Weekend meteorologist)
- Dr. Alan Chartock (political commentator; is also Executive Publisher and Project Director of the Legislative Gazette)
- Subrina Dhammi (reporter)
- Jason Gough (Noon/fill-in meteorologist)
- Elaine Houston (5:30 p.m. anchor and education reporter)
- Jim Kambrich (5:00/6:00/11:00 p.m. anchor, previously anchored weekday mornings until being picked as Ed Dague's successor in 2003)
- Bob Kovachick (Chief Meteorologist since 1988 and arguably the best known weathercaster in the Capital District market)
- Lydia Kulbida (6:00/11:00 p.m. anchor and reporter of the station's "In Depth" features)
- Bill Lambdin (Key midday reporter and one of two news personalities dating back to the station's years as WAST)
- Kelly Lynch (Noon anchor and host of "Forum 13" on Sunday mornings; anchored weekends from 1998-2004 and is spouse to Rodger Wyland)
- Kumi Tucker (Weekend evening anchor and key nightside reporter)
- Matt McFarland (reporter)
- Rodger Wyland (Sports Director/host of "Big Board Sports" on Sunday evenings as well as a radio show of that name on WOFX; is spouse to Kelly Lynch)
- Benita Zahn (5:00/5:30 p.m. anchor/health reporter and longest tenured news talent at WNYT dating back to the station's late WAST years)
Past
- Howie Altschule (Fill-in, then noon, meteorologist from 1997-2004, now a notable forensic meteorologist)
- Gary Apple (Sports reporter in the mid 1980, now at SportsNet New York)
- Chris Brunner (Longtime reporter and later assistant News Director, left in 2002 to become News Director at Capital News 9)
- Nancy Cozean (First lead female weekday anchor in the Albany market, left in 1985 to co-anchor the evening newscast at upstart WTZA in Kingston, NY. Now the mayor of the City of Poughkeepsie)
- Ed Dague (Lead anchor and managing editor from 1984 to 2003; his arrival at the station is seen as the reversal of WNYT's fortunes)
- Josh Einiger (Original chief of the Berkshire Newsroom, now weekday morning anchor at WFTV in Orlando)
- John Gray (Left for WXXA at the end of 2003 after being passed up as Ed Dague's replacement, most notably anchored the 5:00/5:30 newscasts)
- Todd Gross (Chief meteorologist from 1980 to 1983, now at WWLP Springfield, MA)
- Wilson Hall (The longtime NBC news reporter joined the station as the main news anchor in the late 1970's. Hall died in 1991.)
- Brandon Hertell (Fill-in meteorologist, will be morning meteorologist at WXXA-TV starting in September )
- Chris Kapostasy (Now better known as Chris Jansing of MSNBC, started at then-WAST as a reporter in 1981 and was weeknight co-anchor from 1987 until her 1998 departure)
- Bob McNamara (Sports director from 1981-2001, the first talent WNYT acquired from another station (WRGB) and the only person to have on-air roles at all 3 of Albany's VHF's)
- Miles O'Brien (Now of CNN's American Morning, his first job as an anchor was weekends at WNYT for a time in the mid-1980s)
- Randy Salerno (Weekend anchor from 1988-93, now weekday morning/noon anchor at WBBM-TV in Chicago)
- Steve Scoville (Reporter and later contributor of "Capital Region Backroads", a longtime segment at the end of Wednesday and Friday night newscasts, 1982-2006)
- Norm Sebastian (Former weekend, then weekday morning/noon meteorolgist until his death in late 2000)
- Herb Stevens (Chief Meteorologist prior to Bob Kovachick's arrival, Stevens is known as the Skiing Weatherman of syndicated weekly ski forecast fame)
- John Wolf (Weatherman during the later WAST years)
- Julie Wilcox (staff reporter and occasional weekend anchor. Now with WVEC Hampton Roads, VA)
[edit] Newscasts
The station's radar is called "First Warning Live Doppler".
[edit] Weekdays
- NewsChannel 13 Early Today (5:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.)
- Anchored by Phil Bayly... and Weather with Paul Caiano
- NewsChannel 13 Today (6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.)
- Same as NewsChannel 13 Early Today
- NewsChannel 13 Live at Noon (12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.)
- Anchored by Kelly Lynch... and Weather with Jason Gough
- NewsChannel 13 Live at Five
- Anchored by Elaine Houston and Benita Zahn... and Weather with Bob Kovachick
- NewsChannel 13 Live at 5:30
- Same as NewsChannel 13 Live at Five
- NewsChannel 13 Live at 6
- Anchored by Jim Kambrich and Lydia Kulbida... Weather with Bob Kovachick... and Sports with Rodger Wyland
- NewsChannel 13 Live at 11 (11:00 p.m. to 11:35 p.m.)
- Same as NewsChannel 13 Live at 6
[edit] Weekends
- NewsChannel 13 Weekend Today (8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.)
- Anchored by Dan Bazile... Weather with Lee Copson
- NewsChannel 13 Live at 6
- Anchored by Kumi Tucker... Weather with Lee Copson... and Sports with Andrew Catalon
- NewsChannel 13 Live at 11 (11:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.)
- Saturday same as Live at 6, Sunday see below
- Big Board Sports (Sunday 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.)
- Anchored by Rodger Wyland
- Big Board Sports is currently on hiatus until early 2007 due to NBC Sunday Night Football and the overruns of that program. The program may or may not return after the end of the NFL regular season.
- Anchored by Rodger Wyland
[edit] Newscast titles
- 13 News (1977-1981)
- TV-13 News (1981-1986)
- During this period, the 6:00 newscast was known as "The 30-Minute News", a move to signify its length vs. the then-hour long newscasts on WRGB and WTEN
- News 13 (1986-September 1991)
- NewsChannel 13 (September 1991-present)
[edit] News Music
[edit] Outlying translators
Until the early 1990s, WNYT also maintained a translator in Kingston, first on channel 63 then moving to channel 36 in 1985. [edit] External links
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