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| City | Lancaster, Pennsylvania |
| Channels | |
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| Affiliations |
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| History | |
First air date | March 18, 1949 (75 years ago) (1949-03-18) |
Former call signs | WGAL-TV (1949–1991) |
Former channel number(s) |
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| [1] | |
Call sign meaning | from WGAL radio (nowWRKY) |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 53930 |
| ERP | 59kW |
| HAAT | 419 m (1,375 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°2′4″N76°37′7″W / 40.03444°N 76.61861°W /40.03444; -76.61861 |
| Translator(s) | 35 (UHF) Harrisburg |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WGAL (channel 8) is atelevision station licensed toLancaster, Pennsylvania, United States, serving theSusquehanna Valley region as an affiliate ofNBC. Owned byHearst Television, the station maintains studios on Columbia Avenue (PA 462) inLancaster Township. Its transmitter is located nearUS 30 north ofHallam.
Largely due to WGAL's licensing, it has been the market leader for most of the time since records have been kept. During the analog era, it was the only commercial VHF station in eastern Pennsylvania licensed outside of Philadelphia.
The station first signed on the air on March 18, 1949, originally broadcasting on VHF channel 4.[3] It was the fourth television station in Pennsylvania and the first to sign-on outside ofPhiladelphia, beating WDTV (nowKDKA-TV) inPittsburgh which began operations in November of that year.
It was founded by the Steinman family, owners of WGAL radio (1490 AM, nowWRKY, and 101.3 FM, nowWROZ) and Lancaster's two major newspapers, theIntelligencer Journal and theLancaster New Era. At the time, Lancaster was the smallest city in the country with a television station.[citation needed] The station's first formal program was shown on March 22 to a group ofRCA executives, television dealers, and radio station personnel at the Stevens House Hotel in downtown Lancaster.
WGAL was a major beneficiary of a quirk in theFederal Communications Commission (FCC)'s plan for allocating stations. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available and 69UHF channels (later reduced to 55 in 1983). The VHF bands were more desirable because they carried longer distances. Since there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced.
After the FCC'sSixth Report and Order ended the license freeze and opened the UHF band in 1952, it devised a plan for allocating VHF licenses. Under this plan, almost all of the country would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one noncommercial channel. Most of the rest of the country ("1/2") would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas would be designated as "UHF islands" since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" representednon-commercial educational stations, and "1/2" became ABC (which was the weakest network usually winding up with the UHF allocation where no VHF was available).
What would become theHarrisburg–Lancaster–Lebanon–York market, however, was sandwiched between Philadelphia (channels3,6,10, and12) to the east,Johnstown–Altoona–State College (channels6 and10) to the west,Scranton–Wilkes-Barre (a UHF island) to the north, andBaltimore (channels2,11, and13) andWashington, D.C. (channels4,5,7, and9) to the south. This created a large "doughnut" in South Central Pennsylvania where there could be onlyone VHF license.
In 1952, WGAL increased its power from 1,000 to 7,200watts. On December 31, 1952, the station moved to channel 8 as a requirement by the FCC in order to prevent interference with WRC-TV in Washington.
On January 1, 1954, WGAL presented its first color television broadcast of theTournament of Roses Parade. It has always been an NBC affiliate, but also carried some programs fromCBS,DuMont andABC until 1963 whenNielsen collapsed the Lancaster and Harrisburg–York areas into one largemarket. The Steinmans also launchedWDEL-TV inWilmington, Delaware, around the same time as WGAL's launch but sold that station in 1955.
Over the years, the family purchased three more television stations (KOAT inAlbuquerque, New Mexico, andKVOA inTucson, Arizona, both of which were sold toPulitzer Publishing in 1969, and WTEV-TV, nowWLNE-TV, inNew Bedford, Massachusetts) as well as several radio stations and newspapers. The Steinmans sold off the WGAL radio stations in 1976, but kept WGAL-TV until late 1978, when it sold channel 8 and WTEV to Pulitzer—in the process, earning a handsome return on the original investment they made when they signed on WGAL radio in 1922. The Pulitzer purchase reunited WGAL-TV and WTEV with KOAT (that company spun off KVOA in 1972).
Under Pulitzer's ownership, in 1985, WGAL became the first television station in Pennsylvania to broadcast in stereo, beating much larger stations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Although the radio and television stations had gone their separate ways 15 years earlier, channel 8 dropped the "-TV" suffix from its callsign in 1992. Pulitzer sold its entire television division, including WGAL and KOAT, to what was thenHearst-Argyle Television in 1998.
The station is known for being a community service leader in the market and holds theSalvation Army Coats For Kids drive andtelethon, and airs theChildren's Miracle Network telethon, and theJefferson Awards. Anchors and other on-air personalities are active in the community as well.
WGAL has also been known for installing numerous signs on area highways. Most of these signs consist of the WGAL logo used from 1969 to 1990, the phrase "Drive Carefully" and the borough or township where the sign is located. Although the logo is no longer used, the signs are still commonplace around the market, and are occasionally updated so as to be more visible to motorists.
On February 14, 2014, a portion of the roof at WGAL's Columbia Avenue studio facility collapsed due to heavy accumulations of snow and icecaused by a winter storm that moved through the Eastern United States earlier that week. This caused the newsroom on the second floor of the building to be evacuated, followed by the evacuation of the remainder of the station's 100 employees after Lancaster Township Fire Department officials examined the structural stability of the facility. Fire officials determined that a concrete support beam and slab in an adjacent studio that is no longer used by WGAL had shifted and dropped. As a result, with its master control unstaffed, the station went off the air, scuttling plans to broadcast its 5, 5:30 and 6 p.m. newscasts that evening out of a makeshift studio outside the building (the station was able to produce a live newscast that was streamed on its website). Area Comcast systems soon piped in either WGAL'sBaltimore sister stationWBAL-TV or NBC's PhiladelphiaO&OWCAU in order to restore NBC programming, including the2014 Winter Olympics.[4][5][6][7] WGAL staff members were allowed to re-enter its studios on the afternoon of February 15 after a steel column was installed in the room to prop up a sagging roof beam in the affected area of the building, following which the station resumed regular programming.[8]
WGAL presently broadcasts 39 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with6+1⁄2 hours each weekday,3+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays, and three hours on Sundays). In addition to its main studios, WGAL operates bureaus in Harrisburg (on Market Street) and York (on South George Street a.k.a.BL I-83/Susquehanna Trail). The station operates the area's only liveweather radar at its transmitter site known as "Super Doppler 8". As the only VHF station in the area, it has been the market leader for many years. This may also have to do with its newspaper roots, as is typical for many long-standing market leaders in the United States.[9]
As of 2013, WGAL's dominance is primarily inLancaster andYork counties, which contain the majority of the market's population. Starting in 2012, WGAL began experiencing declines in news viewership, the largest occurring in May 2013[10] That July, WHTM-TV beat WGAL for the first time at 5 p.m. among adults 25–54. WGAL lost ground in other time periods, including at 6 p.m., and fell to a virtual tie with WHTM at noon.
On September 30, 1995, weekend morning editions ofNews 8 Today premiered. In 2010, a 6 a.m. hour ofNews 8 Today was added. In February 2010, days before theWinter Olympics, WGAL began using updated tickers for weather warnings, school closings and breaking news to fit 16:9 screens, preventinghigh definition programming from reverting to 4:3standard definition when the tickers appeared. Around late October or early November 2010, WGAL's news set was modified with two new flat screen monitors to the left and right of the set, and an additional flat screen monitor was added to the front of the new anchor desk.
On December 13, 2010, starting with its 5 p.m. newscast, WGAL became the first television station in the Harrisburg–Lancaster–Lebanon–York market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts inwidescreen standard definition, and also introduced updated on-screen graphics.[11] Before WGAL's switch to widescreen newscasts, the market was the largest Nielsen television market in which all of its stations did not broadcast their local newscasts in eitherhigh definition or 16:9 widescreen.
On August 29, 2011, WGAL became the second station in South Central Pennsylvania (behindFox affiliateWPMT) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. The news open was modified to include the station's legacy logos, while the set remained unchanged until newscasts returned to Studio B with a new set on February 5, 2012. As of April 14, 2012, withWHP-TV's upgrade to HD newscasts, all four major stations in the Susquehanna Valley (WGAL, WPMT, WHP-TV andWHTM-TV) now air their local newscasts in HD; however, unlike the other three, WGAL airs only in-studio segments in the format (its field video continues to be presented in enhanced definition widescreen).
On February 4, 2013, WGAL debuted a nightly half-hour 10 p.m. newscast on its then This TV (now MeTV) affiliated second digital sub channel. On August 22, 2016, WGAL debuted an hour long newscast at 4 p.m. This coincided with the cancellation ofThe Meredith Vieira Show.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WGAL-TV | NBC |
| 8.2 | 480i | WGAL-Dt | MeTV | |
| 8.4 | STORY | Story Television | ||
| 8.5 | ION+ | Ion Plus | ||
| 8.6 | QVC | QVC | ||
| 8.7 | HSN | HSN | ||
| 8.8 | NOSEY | Nosey |
On January 1, 2009, WGAL began carryingThis TV ondigital subchannel 8.2.[16] On December 29, 2014, it switched toMeTV, which was previously a subchannel ofWGCB-TV.[17]
WGAL discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, overVHF channel 8, on June 12, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[18] The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transitionUHF channel 58, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 8 for its post-transition operations.[19][20]
WGAL is carried on cable providers far outside of the Harrisburg–Lancaster–Lebanon–York market includingFulton County (to the west), parts ofChester andBerks counties (to the east),Northumberland County (to the north), andCecil andHarford counties inMaryland (to the south).[21] In September 2017, Comcast began the practice ofblacking out all NBC network programming on WGAL in the Philadelphia market claiming they are complying with a request from WCAU (which is in fact also owned by Comcast through itsNBCUniversal subsidiary).
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