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WPHL-TV (channel 17) is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW Television Network. The station also maintains a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV. Owned and operated by The CW's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, WPHL-TV has studios in the Wynnefield section of West Philadelphia; it maintains a channel sharing agreement with Vineland, New Jersey–licensed Univision station WUVP-DT (channel 65), under which the two stations transmit using WPHL-TV's spectrum from a tower in the Roxborough antenna farm.

History[]

WPCA-TV[]

Radio station WKDN of Camden, New Jersey, received a construction permit for channel 17 as WKDN-TV on January 27, 1954. After not building the facility, the station sold the permit to the Young People's Church of the Air, owned by Percy Crawford, for $40,000 in February 1959. The call letters were changed to WPCA-TV, reflecting both his initials and the name of his long-running broadcast ministry; the city of license was changed from Camden to Philadelphia in March 1960. Promising a lineup of religious programs and family entertainment, the station signed on July 17, 1960, making it Philadelphia's first commercial UHF station. WPCA-TV struggled amid the low penetration of UHF tuners prior to the 1964 passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act and Crawford's unexpected death in an October 1960 car accident. The station went silent August 1, 1962, having operated just two years.

The independent years[]

When channel 17 went silent, its sale was immediately announced to a consortium headed by attorney Aaron Jerome Katz and two real estate men. The station returned to the air on January 31, only to go dark again on June 14, when an application for the sale of channel 17 was finally filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The station's cameras were lent to WHYY-TV, the new public television station in Wilmington, Delaware, to allow that station to operate before a scheduled donation of equipment could be transferred and the station's own equipment did not function properly.

The Philadelphia Television Broadcasting Company, headed by Katz and advertising executive Len Stevens, was approved to purchase the station in mid-1964. After receiving approval to boost its effective radiated power from 12,000 to 626,000 watts, the new owners returned channel 17 to the air on September 17, 1965, as independent station WPHL-TV. It was the third UHF independent to sign-on in Philadelphia that year, two and a half weeks after WKBS-TV (channel 48) and four months after WIBF-TV (channel 29, later WTAF and now WTXF-TV). After merging with U.S. Communications Corporation in 1967 WPHL-TV became the flagship station for their station group. U.S. Communications also operated WATL in Atlanta, WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh, WXIX-TV in Cincinnati and KEMO-TV now (KOFY-TV) in San Francisco. The station produced and aired numerous local television shows over the years, including kids' favorite the Wee Willie Webber Colorful Cartoon Club and Dr. Shock's back-to-back shows Mad Theater and Horror Theater.

In the summer of 1975, WPHL-TV moved from its original studio facility at 1230 East Mermaid Lane in the suburb of Wyndmoor, which had been the station's base since its 1960 debut, to its current studio on Wynnefield Avenue in the Wynnefield suburb of West Philadelphia. The building had once been the location of an A&P supermarket. The station offered a schedule of off-network drama series, sitcoms, old movies, sports and religious programs. It also ran NBC and ABC programs that KYW-TV (channel 3, now a CBS owned-and-operated station) and WPVI-TV (channel 6) had respectively preempted until the fall of 1976, and again from the fall of 1977 to the summer of 1983. The Providence Journal Company bought channel 17 in 1979. At that point, WPHL sought a different programming strategy geared towards adults, gradually dropping children's programming and cartoons. It focused more on movies, off-network drama series, recent off-network sitcoms and sports. The station also aired several hours of religious programming each day.

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, WPHL was known on-air as "The Great Entertainer," with voiceovers provided by announcer Sid Doherty. The station positioned itself as an alternative to both WTAF and WKBS, as it programmed more towards adults with movies and other syndicated programs, while its competitors were heavy on sitcoms and children's cartoons. WPHL was also a station heavy on local sports, as it aired games featuring Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Phillies until 1982, the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers from 1982 to 1995 and the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers in the 1990s.

From October 1981 to August 1987, the WPHL studios hosted a weekday afternoon dance show called Dancin' On Air, hosted by Eddie Bruce, as well as a spin-off on the USA Network called Dance Party USA, whose host, Dave Raymond, was better known as the Phillie Phanatic mascot seen during Phillies games. Those shows marked the on-air debut of a young girl from nearby Voorhees, New Jersey named Kelly Ripa.

In the summer of 1982, WKBS went on the market after its owner, Field Communications, decided to exit broadcasting. The Providence Journal Company was among those who were bidding for channel 48's license. Had it won, Journal would have merged WPHL's and WKBS' schedules under the WKBS license and channel allocation, while selling the channel 17 license to either a religious or educational broadcaster. However, the Journal Company's bid was still far below Field's asking price. With no takers willing to give Field what it wanted for the station, WKBS-TV ceased operations one year later on August 29, 1983, and WPHL picked up various syndicated programs, cartoons, movies and production equipment from WKBS.

In 1987, the Providence Journal Company sold WPHL-TV to a consortium headed by Dudley S. Taft, a third-generation broadcaster from Cincinnati. Dudley Taft had left his family's namesake company following a corporate restructuring which resulted in the firm changing its name to Great American Broadcasting. He also brought along key personnel from Taft's former Philadelphia station, WTAF-TV (which Taft had sold to TVX Broadcast Group in early 1987), including general manager Randy Smith. The new ownership scrapped the "Great Entertainer" slogan and related logo for a new identity as "PHL 17", in an apparent attempt to counter WGBS-TV's (channel 57, now WPSG) "Philly 57" branding. The new owners restored some cartoons to the schedule. In 1991, the Taft group sold channel 17 to the Tribune Company.

The WB affiliation[]

On November 2, 1993, Tribune and the Warner Bros. Television division of Time Warner announced the formation of The WB Television Network. Due to the company's minority interest in the network (initially 12.5%, before expanding to 22%), Tribune chose to affiliate the majority of its independent stations with the upstart network, resulting in WPHL-TV becoming a network affiliate for the first time in its history upon The WB's January 11, 1995, debut. In September of that year, the station changed its on-air identity to "WB 17". For most of The WB's run, WPHL was one of the network's strongest affiliates.

Switch to MyNetworkTV[]

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom in December 2005) and Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment (the division that operated The WB) announced that they would dissolve UPN and The WB and merge both networks' stronger programming onto a newly created network, The CW. Concurrent with the announcement, it signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with 16 of Tribune's 19 WB-affiliated stations. However, in the case of Philadelphia, The CW's affiliation went to the city's UPN station, CBS-owned WPSG (which was part of an affiliation deal with 11 of CBS' UPN stations). It would not have been an upset had WPHL been chosen as the area's CW affiliate, however. The network's officials were on record as preferring The WB and UPN's "strongest" stations for their new network, and Philadelphia was one of the few markets where the affiliates of both networks were both relatively strong. WPHL was slated to revert to its previous independent status, but on May 15, 2006, Tribune announced that it would affiliate channel 17 (and two other WB affiliates that were not included in the CW affiliation deal) with MyNetworkTV, making WPHL the largest station in terms of market size affiliated with the network that was not owned by its then-parent company News Corporation (which became 21st Century Fox in June 2013 after spinning off most of its non-entertainment properties). It is also the only major station in Philadelphia that is not owned by its respective network. In July, WPHL rebranded itself as "MyPHL17", reviving the station's former "PHL 17" moniker. WPHL began airing MyNetworkTV programming on the day that the new service was launched, September 5, 2006. As a result, it did not air the final two weeks of The WB's programming.

On October 4, 2010, the station removed the "My" portion of the branding as many affiliates of the network began dropping references to MyNetworkTV due to it becoming more of a prime time programming service than a true television network. WPHL retains the multi-shaded 'blue TV' component of the network's logo as part of the station's own logo. Before the move of the broadcast rights of the Phillies in 2014 to WCAU-TV, another version of the logo was used where the "p" in "phl" was replaced with the hat insignia "P" from the logo of the Philadelphia Phillies. In addition, the Antenna TV subchannel the station carries is branded with a modified version of their 1970s/80s "Great Entertainer" logo; many other Antenna TV stations do this as well.

Aborted sale to Sinclair; sale to Nexstar[]

Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media on May 8, 2017, for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in Tribune debt. The deal received significant scrutiny over Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, prompting the FCC to designate it for hearing and leading Tribune to terminate the deal and sue Sinclair for breach of contract.

Following the Sinclair deal's collapse, Nexstar Media Group of Irving, Texas, announced its purchase of Tribune Media on December 3, 2018, for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

Switch to The CW[]

In May 2023, CBS News and Stations announced that its CW affiliates, including Philadelphia station WPSG, would cease their affiliation with the network in September 2023 and become independent stations. A month later, Nexstar Media Group announced that WPHL would take over the CW affiliation for the Philadelphia market on September 1. The station is set to continue airing MyNetworkTV programming on a digital subchannel as a secondary.


Gallery[]

TV stations in Pennsylvania
WPHL, Philadelphia

WHP-DT3, Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/Red Lion
WJAC-DT4, Altoona/Johnstown
WPNT, Pittsburgh
WSEE-DT2, Erie
WSWB, Hazelton/Pittston/Scranton/Wilkes-Barre

TV stations in Pennsylvania
WPHL-DT2, Philadelphia

WHP-DT2, Harrisburg
WHVL-LD, Altoona/Johnstown
WPNT, Pittsburgh
WQMY, Hazelton/Pittston/Scranton/Wilkes-Barre

TV stations in Philadelphia, including the Lehigh Valley and Tri State Area
WDPN 2 (MeTV)

KYW 3 (CBS)
WACP 4 (TCT)
WPVI 6 (ABC)
WEFG-LD 7 (Ind)
WPSJ-CD 8 (AZA)
WCAU 10 (NBC)
WHYY 12 (PBS)
WTSD-CA 14 (Ind)
WO7DC-D 16 (ABC)
WPHL 17 (CW)
WNJS 23 (PBS)
WPHA-CD 24 (Ind)
WPHY-CD 25 (SBN)
WFPA-CD 28 (UMas)
WTXF 29 (FOX)
WELL-LD 30 (DS)
WZPA-LD 33 (HSN)
WSJZ-LD 33 (Ind)
WQAV-CD 34 (Ind)
WPPT 35 (PBS)
W36DO-D 36 (Ind)
WLVT 39 (PBS)
WMGM 40 (Justice)
WDUM-LD 41 (Ind)
WMCN 44 (Ind)
W45CP-D 45 (Ind)
W48DP-D 48 (3ABN)
WGTW 48 (TBN)
WTVE 51 (Ind)
WNJT 52 (PBS)
WPSG 57 (Ind)
W43CH-D 58 (PBS)
WBPH 60 (Rel)
WPPX 61 (Ion)
WWSI 62 (TLM)
WUVP 65 (Uni)
WFMZ 69 (Ind)


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