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WGNT, channel 27 (digital 50), is The CW-owned and operated station for the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia (known collectively as Hampton Roads) television market. WGNT is licensed to Portsmouth, Virginia and owned by the CBS Corporation, which also owns a 50-percent share of The CW. The station's studios are located in Portsmouth, and its transmitter is located in Suffolk, Virginia.
[edit] Digital televisionThe station's digital channel. In 2009, WGNT left channel 27 and moved to channel 50 when the analog to digital transition completed.
[edit] HistoryWGNT is one of the oldest surviving UHF licenses in the country. It first appeared on December 6, 1953 as WTOV-TV, a commercial independent owned by Commonwealth Broadcasting. It was the third television station in the Hampton Roads area, and the second on UHF (WVEC-TV signed on over channel 15 three months earlier). WTOV later became an affiliate of the DuMont network. Channel 27 was on the air for limited hours, and had very limited viewership because it was impossible at the time to watch UHF stations without buying a converter. Even with a converter, WTOV's picture wasn't very clear. It was never a factor in the Hampton Roads market. The death knell for channel 27 sounded when the owners of WAVY radio (AM 1350, now WGPL) won a construction permit for the area's second VHF station, WAVY-TV (channel 10). Combined with dwindling revenues and the impending loss of DuMont programming, WTOV went dark in 1956. [edit] The CBN YearsIn 1961, M.G. "Pat" Robertson, an attorney, Southern Baptist minister (though with a strong Pentecostal orientation), and son of Virginia U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, purchased the license for channel 27. Under the ownership of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, the station returned to the air as WYAH-TV in October, with "YAH" standing for "Yahweh" according to some sources (including Pat Robertson's autobiography, "Shout it From the Housetops") and "You are Holy" according to others. Pat Robertson's first choice for call letters was WTFC ("Television for Christ"). Those call letters were announced by Robertson to local media, before the FCC informed him that they were unavailable. At first WYAH was on the air eight hours a day, several of which were occupied by a locally produced program which was the ancestor of what would become The 700 Club, with Pat Robertson as the host. The rest of the day was occupied by teaching programs produced by local churches and some syndicated TV evangelists repeats of Sunday programs. The station almost went dark in 1963 and so it conducted a special telethon urging 700 people to donate 10 dollars a month. It held such telethons bi-monthly. A few years later the locally-produced daily talk program would be named for the telethons, The 700 Club. Beginning in 1966, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker hosted and produced a local children's program called "Come On Over" (later called "Jim and Tammy"). This consisted of puppet shows, skits, prayers, singalongs, games, stories and religious short films such as Davey and Goliath and JOT. The program was eventually seen in Canada, and achieved widespread syndication throughout the United States until the Bakkers abruptly departed. Pat Robertson also appeared on-camera as well as host of additional Bible-teaching programs. Weekends consisted of televangelists such as Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, local church services. WYAH was one of the first Christian television stations in the United States and was a viewer-supported non-commercial station, though it sold blocks of time to other ministries. By 1964, the station was solvent. In 1966, WYAH expanded to 10 hours a day, signing on at 4:00 p.m., and begun construction of a new tower boosting its coverage area to, as far as, parts of the Richmond, Virginia market. The station also began color transmissions of shows produced in color. In mid-1967, WYAH began producing all its programs in color as well. In September 1967, WYAH began commercial operation part-time about four hours a day. Initial syndicated fare consisted of reruns of sitcoms (Mister Ed and Leave it to Beaver among them), westerns (such as The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid) and a syndicated version of Queen for a Day. The station moved the Christian programming up to 1 or 2 pm and began signing on earlier to make room for commercial operations. In 1968, WYAH began signing on at noon and began secular shows at 3 pm. The other secular shows aired until 8 pm. Saturdays consisted of mostly old movies and westerns, and Sundays remained excusively filled by Christian programs. In June of 1970, the newly completed transmitter boosted WYAH's effective radiated power to 2,250,000 watts, making it the most powerful television station in Virginia at the time, according to Pat Robertson, in a newsletter that had been sent to donors. At that point, WYAH began to sign on at 10 am. On weekdays, the station ran Christian programs from 10 am to Noon, secular programming from noon to 9 pm, Christian programming from 9 pm to 2 am. The station was secular most of Saturdays and still all Christian and non commercial on Sundays. In 1972, WYAH had expanded its broadcast day to 19 hours, signing on at 6:30 am. By then, WYAH was a traditional independent station running children's shows, off-network sitcoms, and religious programming, including airings of the 700 Club three times a day. Sundays were still devoted entirely to religious programs. About this time, the Bakkers left for the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network before going on their own in 1975. By that point, Hampton Roads was one of the smallest markets in the U.S. with a commercial independent station. WYAH's programming policy was decidedly conservative, in keeping with Robertson's religious views. For many years, it muted any dialogue containing profanity, and a hand-full of episodes of syndicated series were not seen at all on WYAH. For example, at least two episodes of Gilligan's Island never aired on the station, because of content centering (albeit in a comical fashion) around ghosts and vampires. However, WYAH offered a wide variety of programming and was a stronger independent than many secular-owned independent stations at that time. Still, Hampton Roads viewers got other choices once cable arrived in the area in the late 1960s, as WTTG and WDCA from Washington, D.C. became available on cable systems as well. With WYAH's growth and profitability, CBN began expanding to other markets. In June 1971, CBN began WHAE-TV (now WGCL-TV) in Atlanta, followed with the January 1973 purchase of KBFI-TV (now KDAF) in Dallas. CBN later changed the calls of that station to KXTX-TV and, in April 1973, merged it with KDTV (the current KXTX-TV). The 700 Club aired on those stations as well and in 1973, was syndicated in several other test markets. In the fall of 1974, the 700 CLub became syndicated nationwide (the full hour and a half version on many stations, the hour long edition on stronger stations). CBN's fourth station, WXNE-TV (now WFXT) in Boston was started in October 1977. These stations formed the Continental Broadcasting Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of Christian Broadcasting Network, and of which WYAH was the flagship station. In the late 1970s, WYAH continued to acquire off-network sitcoms and more movie packages. In 1980 WYAH, along with the rest of the Continental stations, began eight hours of general entertainment programming on Sunday afternoons, mostly extending the non-religious programming to syndicated theatrical shorts from Warner Bros., MGM, and Paramount and weekly "theaters" dedicated to Shirley Temple, Abbott & Costello, and Blondie and Dagwood movies. However, channel 27 lost some ground locally to WTVZ (channel 33), which was launched in 1979 and aired programming that was too racy for Robertson's liking -- mostly uncensored off-network programming and syndicated fare. At this point, WYAH was far more of a general entertainment station than a Christian station. In the late 1980s, Robertson began selling off the over-the-air stations that he owned. In 1989 WYAH was sold to Centennial Broadcasting. The new owners renamed the station WGNT, which calls stand for Greater Norfolk Television. [edit] After CBN: WGNT TodayAfter Centennial took control, WGNT initially ran shows inherited from the CBN days, but ended the station's decades-long practice of censoring the small amount of profanity from off-network syndicated programming. However, Centennial gradually began mixing in racier programming than had previously aired on the station, leading to talk that its call letters stood for God's Not There. As the 1990s began, WGNT began showing controversial talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, The Ricki Lake Show and The Jerry Springer Show and syndicated fare like the Universal Action Pack , PTEN and Baywatch, and dropped the 11 p.m. repeat of the 700 Club in 1991. By 2003, the series was completely off the air on WGNT, though it aired on numerous outlets in the area in the years since. (The 700 Club currently airs on two stations in the area: NBC affiliate WAVY-TV and TBN affiliate WHRE.) In 1995, WGNT became a charter UPN affiliate and branded itself as "UPN 27". In 1997, Paramount Stations Group bought WGNT, making it a UPN owned-and-operated station. Viacom, Paramount's owner, later bought CBS as well. When Viacom spun off its broadcasting properties into CBS Corporation at the end of 2005, WGNT and the other UPN O&Os became part of the new company. Through the existence of UPN and The CW, WGNT has been the only network O&O station in the Hampton Roads market. On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge into a new service, the CW Television Network, jointly owned by CBS and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. WGNT became the Hampton Roads area's CW affiliate on September 18, 2006. On January 1, 2007, WGNT began hosting the master control operations of sister stations WTOG in St. Petersburg, Florida and WUPA in Atlanta, Georgia, despite the fact that Tampa/St. Petersburg is market #13 and Atlanta is market #8, while Hampton Roads is market #43. [edit] Local programmingIn 1995, WTKR produced "TV3 News"/"NewsChannel 3 News at 10 on UPN 27," the area's first 10 PM newscast [1]. The newscast was short-lived and cancelled in late 1997. Since then, the time period has been used for off-network repeats such as Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, Becker, and The Cosby Show, among others. Currently WGNT airs the syndicated weekday morning program, The Daily Buzz. The station also produces a public affairs program, called Here and Now on The CW, airs every week on Sunday at 7 AM. Kafi Rouse, the program's host, is also the marketing and public affairs director for the channel 27. The program covers topics including community affairs, politics, government, social issues, and business that affects the Hampton Roads area. [edit] Trivia
[edit] External links
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