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| Channels | |
| Branding | Pittsburgh's Fox 53 |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WPNT | |
| History | |
First air date | August 1, 1953[a] |
Former call signs |
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Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Pittsburgh |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 73875 |
| ERP | 800 kW |
| HAAT | 302.8 m (993 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°29′43″N 80°0′16″W / 40.49528°N 80.00444°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | wpgh53 |
WPGH-TV (channel 53) is a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside dual CW and MyNetworkTV affiliate WPNT (channel 22). The two stations share studios on Ivory Avenue in the city's Summer Hill neighborhood, where WPGH-TV's transmitter is also located.
Channel 53 was the second TV channel to be activated in Pittsburgh, but the history of this station is discontinuous. It first emerged as WKJF-TV with commercial programming beginning on August 1, 1953. Owned by Agnes Jane Reeves Greer, it had second-choice rights to NBC programming and operated from a site shared with sister FM station WKJF-FM. Like many other ultra high frequency (UHF) TV stations, it struggled economically because not all homes could receive it and its signal was comparatively weak. It left the air on July 2, 1954, but the permit remained alive; the call sign was changed to WAND-TV in 1961, and the antenna was not dismantled until 1962. After federal authorities pushed holders of inactive UHF TV permits to build them, sell them, or forfeit them, Daniel H. Overmyer acquired the station in 1965 as part of a projected independent station group. He was unable to build what he called WECO-TV because of unexpected problems in transmitter site construction and financing difficulties. The independent stations were sold to U.S. Communications, a unit of American Viscose Corporation, which completed construction and put WPGH-TV on the air on February 1, 1969. U.S. Communications struggled with all of Overmyer's permits amid a soft advertising market; WPGH-TV was the third to leave the air on August 16, 1971, and was placed into bankruptcy.
Leon Crosby of San Francisco led an investor consortium named Pittsburgh Telecasting, which bought WPGH-TV out of bankruptcy and returned it to the air, this time for good, on January 14, 1974. Under Crosby and the successive ownerships of the Meredith Corporation, Lorimar-Telepictures, and Renaissance Broadcasting, WPGH-TV endured as Pittsburgh's leading independent outlet. In 1986, it affiliated with Fox at the new network's launch; the Fox affiliation improved the station's ratings and advertising sales.
Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired WPGH-TV in 1991, selling the underperforming channel 22 (then WPTT) to Edwin Edwards in a move that in reality created a local marketing agreement. WPGH-TV started a 10 p.m. newscast, the Fox 53 Ten O'Clock News, in January 1997. It was the first such newscast on a broadcast station in the Pittsburgh market, but it was a ratings underperformer relative to similar newscasts in similarly sized markets. In 2003, Sinclair converted it to its News Central hybrid format, which led to ratings declines. The standalone news department was dissolved in January 2006, and WPGH-TV began airing newscasts produced by Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI (channel 11).
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- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WPGH-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.