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WCAU, "NBC10" is a NBC owned and operated television station serving the Delaware Valley area, owned by a subsidiary corportation of NBC Universal, with its transmitter in Roxborough. Its signal covers the Delaware Valley area including Philadelphia, parts of central and southern New Jersey, and Delaware.
History
The station signed on in 1948 as Philadelphia's third television station. It was originally owned by the Philadelphia Bulletin and affiliated with CBS along with WCAU-AM 1210, one of CBS's charter affiliates when the network premiered in 1927. The station's headquarters, on Monument Road at City Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, has the distinction of being the first facility in the country built specifically to house a television station.
The Bulletin sold WCAU-AM-FM-TV to CBS in 1957. As the market's only longtime O&O, Channel 10 was the only Philadelphia-market station that did not heavily preempt network programming with the exception of an hour of Sunday morning CBS cartoons from 1977 to 1979. In 1990, after CBS abruptly dropped the talk format on WCAU-AM in favor of oldies under the calls WOGL-AM, WCAU-TV became simply WCAU.
In 1994, CBS made a deal with Westinghouse, owners of longtime NBC affiliate KYW-TV. Westinghouse converted all of its stations to CBS affiliates (and eventually merged with CBS in 1995). CBS decided to sell WCAU. NBC entered a bidding war for the station with Fox and New World Communications, which had recently partnered with Fox. Fox was about to lose its Philadelphia affiliate, Paramount-owned WTXF-TV, to the new United Paramount Network. New World and Fox both jumped at the chance of getting Fox programming on a VHF station in Philadelphia, but had different plans for the station. New World planned to keep Fox' kids programming on WTXF, while Fox intended to move all of its programming to WCAU. However, Paramount opted to sell WTXF to Fox, automatically giving WCAU to NBC. NBC had wanted an O&O station in Philadelphia, the nation's fourth-largest television market, since the 1950s. It briefly succeeded from 1956 until 1965, when it blackmailed Westinghouse into briefly selling what became KYW before the FCC forced the reversal of the swap. NBC was very annoyed at KYW's penchant for preempting its programming, which only made the network want to own a Philadelphia station even more.
On September 11, 1995, KYW and WCAU swapped network affiliations in a complex deal involving stations in Denver and Salt Lake City. This made KYW the third station in the city to affiliate with CBS (the first being WFIL-TV, now WPVI-TV) and gave NBC its coveted owned and operated station in the market. CBS kept the former WCAU radio stations, WPHT (the former WCAU-AM) and WOGL (the former WCAU-FM), which are now owned by CBS's sister company Infinity Broadcasting.
News operation
WCAU's news operation was the ratings leader in Philadelphia until the early 1970s. John Facenda, who later gained fame as the voice of NFL Films, was the station's main anchorman from shortly after it signed on until 1973. WCAU remained unchallenged until the 1970s, when it was surpassed by KYW and later WPVI-TV. The station dragged through the late 1970s while most of its CBS sisters dominated the ratings, but has since recovered and has been runner-up to WPVI for most of the last 20 years. WCAU did manage to pass WPVI in the 5 pm time slot for a time in the early 1980s with its original "Live at 5," anchored by Larry Kane and Deborah Knapp (now at KENS-TV in San Antonio). Since 2003, a resurgent KYW has battled WCAU for second place.
WCAU used music based on "Channel 2 News," written for WBBM-TV in Chicago (the de facto official music for CBS' owned-and-operated stations) and variations on it from 1982 until shortly after NBC bought the station. It used the original 1975 version from 1982 to 1985, a synthesized version written by a local composer during the 1985-86 season, and the Palmer News Package from 1986 to 1995. Ironically, a variant of that theme, News in Focus, is being used at KYW.
However, in the past few years the newscasts have been becoming what some media watchers call "tabloid television"; adopting a newscast with some of the same features as many Fox affiliates. Critics say that such newscasts incorporate flashy graphics with sensationalistic stories, some with little or no local relevance. Additionally, the station places great emphasis on weather and has a very dramatic presentation, which to some observers almost borders on self parody.
Chris Blackman, the current news director, took over the job from the well-liked Steve Schiwald, who got the station to come closer to WPVI than it ever had in a long time. Blackman does not seem to have the favor among this employees as his predecessor - the fact that his name was used alongside a picture of The Grinch during a Christmas newscast seems to support this (other staffers were simply pictured among objects such as holly). Many industry observers see Blackman as someone who can drive a station's news operations and ratings into the ground.
The station's weekday 5 PM newscast, which is part of a 4 PM to 6:30 PM news block (and revives the "Live at 5" moniker), has a more "active" approach to presentation - anchors Tracy Davidson and Vince DeMentri present the newscast from a variety of locations, including a chroma-key wall. They are never seen seated at the news desk. The weather is reported by Doug Kammerer, on Thursdays in the summer, the weather is given in a viewer's backyard. This is known as "Backyard Weather". Traffic reports are given by John Ogden. Tracy Davidson also gives special Consumer Alert reports, while Cherie Bank gives health reports. WCAU took over production of WPHL-TV's news operations on December 10, 2005.
See also
External links
- NBC 10 website
- City Declares 'Bill Baldini Day' To Honor Reporter's 40 Years
- WCAU: A History Of Firsts
- Template:TVQ
