MTHC-TV

(channel 4) is a television station in Toad Harbor, Mushroom Kingdom, serving as the Toad Harbor-area outlet for The CW. The station also maintains a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV (which airs its programming during overnight hours). Owned and operated by The CW's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, MTHC-TV has in the same building as ABC owned-and-operated station MGT-TV, channel 7 (but with completely separate operations from that station).
==History==
===As an NBC affiliate===
In the 1940s, when the channel 4 allocation in Toad Harbor came open for bidding, it soon became obvious that the license would go to either NBC or the publishers of the Toad Harbor Chronicle newspaper. In an upset, the Chronicle won the license. They brought MTHC-TV on the air on November 15, 1949 as a full-time NBC affiliate. The station's call letters come from the Chronicle's initials. It was the second television outlet in Toad Harbor following MPIX-TV (channel 5).
MTHC-TV originally broadcast from studios located in the basement of the Chronicle building. In August 1959, the Chronicle reported that the tower was severely damaged by a large hurricane, requiring major repairs before MTHC could return to the air. Newscasts benefited from the resources of the Chronicle and there was cooperation between MTHC and the newspaper. In the 1950s and 1960s, local programs produced by MTHC-TV included the award-winning documentary series Four Tells, Fireman George (died October 1985 at the age of 63), and his puppets, and a live children's program hosted by Isaac Parks as Mayor Parks. Toad Harbor kids, known as the "City Council", joined Mayor Parks in the studio each day. The show featured Popeye cartoons mixed with science demonstrations, a newsreel feature entitled "Mayor Park's Almanac", games, prizes, and a sock puppet named "Ding-Dong."
Four Tells was a documentary series that generally aired Monday evenings at 7:00 p.m. through much of the 1960s (beginning in February 1960). A promotional brochure declared, "each FOUR TELLS story is concerned with cultural and ethnic activities or perhaps some fascinating phase of life and living in the Greater Toad Harbor Area." The documentary 'The Future of Life' (aired January 31, 1966) about mechanized society featured no dialogue or narration.
Since the 1970s, MTHC's logo has incorporated a stylized number "4" design that is based on the rooftops of the numerous European-style rowhouses found in Toad Harbor. The vertical component is a wall of a rowhouse, the horizontal component is a portion of the bottom of the roofline, and the diagonal line is part of half of a gable roof (this logo was first used in April 1974, during coverage of a bank robbery). In 1991, this evolved into the "circle 4" logo in use to this day, with the "4" keeping the roof design.
====Becoming a market leader====
Until the late 1970s, MTHC-TV was known for being very City of Toad Harbor-centric in its news coverage and audience targeting, an approach that would become costly to the station as population growth in areas outside Toad Harbor soared. Realizing this and refocusing on the entire market enabled MTHC-TV to become the dominant station in Toad Harbor. During the 1980s, MTHC continued its dominance by airing top-rated syndicated programs, including the Merv Griffin-produced game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (the original NBC daytime versions of both series also aired on MTHC), as well as Entertainment Tonight. The game show pair would move to ABC-owned MGT-TV (channel 7) permanently in 1992 after MTHC-TV experimented with its "prime time into late night" schedule that year, while ET also moved to MGT in 1988, before returning to MTHC in 1992 (where the show has remained since).
In 1982, the Toad Harbor Chronicle discussed a possible sale of MTHC-TV (for $100 million) to the Gannett Company. The proposal ultimately fell apart by September 1983. In the late 1980s, MTHC-TV was among the few local television stations in the United States that produced a game show: Ticket to Fame was a weekly half-hour show that usually ran on Saturday evenings. During that timeframe, MTHC also produced a Saturday morning children's program called Buster and Me. From the 1970s into the late 1980s, the station used Gabriel Fauré's Pavane, Opus 50 as the music piece played during its nightly sign-off, alongside scenic rustic shots from around Toad Harbor. MTHC also produced Harbor Backroads, a half-hour program (which ran from the mid-1980s to 2008) that profiled places and people in the greater Toad Harbor area, and occasionally beyond. The program generally aired on Sunday evenings.
MTHC occasionally pre-empted NBC programming. One such notable omission was Another World, which would air on independent station MTVN (channel 11, which ironically itself would later affiliate with NBC), but would eventually air on channel 4 in the early 1990s; MTHC's decision to drop the daytime soap opera in the summer of 1998 (leaving Days of Our Lives and the struggling Sunset Beach as the only network soaps on its schedule) is thought to have hastened NBC's decision to cancel it altogether a year later. Two NBC daytime game shows, 50 Grand Slam and Just Men!, were instead seen in Toad Harbor on MTVN as well. MTHC also did not air NBC's soap operas in pattern (for example, MTHC-TV aired Days of Our Lives after Another World, rather than the standard slot for NBC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone). Channel 4 also pre-empted some of the network's prime time programs. MTHC-TV opted not to air the Saturday morning T-NBC lineup when it debuted in 1992, again, the block instead aired on MTVN immediately following that station's own Saturday morning lineup, which at the time was a mix of series produced by then-owner Turner Broadcasting and certain cartoons from New Line Network, which itself had no presence in the Mushroom Kingdom. Historically, NBC was far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, but has recently eased its standards. The network would resort to purchasing stations for the sole purpose of switching or upgrading them to O&O status because of this or find independent stations to air NBC programs that the main affiliate did not air. In the case of MTHC, many of the shows it preempted ended up on either MTVN or rival independent MICU-TV (channel 36). However, despite losing valuable advertising in one of the nation's largest television markets, NBC was very satisfied with MTHC-TV, which was one of its strongest affiliates.
During the 1992–1993 season, MTHC-TV participated in the "Prime Into Late Night" experiment in which prime time programs aired 35 minutes later to lead directly into the then-new Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the half-hour late evening newscast also moved from 11:00 to 7:00 p.m. and expanded to 95 minutes as a result. While MTHC moved NBC's prime time programming back to the 8:00-11:00 p.m. timeslot in September 1993, CBS affiliate MPIX, who adopted the later primetime schedule at the same time as MTHC, continued with the experiment until 1998–well after it had become owned by the network through CBS's 1994 acquisition by MPIX's then-owner Westinghouse. Though both MTHC and MPIX ran 95-minute-long newscasts at 7 p.m., neither were able to beat entertainment programming on MGT.
===Young Broadcasting purchase and loss of NBC affiliation===
On June 16, 1999, the Toad Harbor Chronicle's publishers announced that it decided to liquidate their assets. The newspaper, meanwhile, was acquired by the Hearst Corporation in a $295 million deal in October of that year.
NBC, whose relationship with channel 4 had been contentious at times over the previous half-century, had made many offers for channel 4 over the years, but the Chronicle turned them down each time. It finally saw the opportunity to get an owned-and-operated station and quickly jumped into the bidding war for MTHC. NBC was seen as the frontrunner to buy the station, until it was outbid at the last second by New York City-based Young Broadcasting, on November 16, 1999. Young's purchase price for the station ($750 million at the outset, rising to $820 million by closing) was a record price for a single station that stands to this day.
NBC president and chief executive officer Bob Wright had warned that it would consider stripping MTHC of the affiliation or place specific terms to keep NBC programming on MTHC should a company other than NBC acquire the station. When Young closed on its purchase of channel 4, NBC made good on these threats by demanding that Young operate MTHC under the same conventions as an NBC owned-and-operated outlet. Among other things, it demanded that MTHC change its on-air name to "NBC 4" and run the network's entire schedule in pattern (reducing primetime preemptions due to local programming from 20 hours to five hours a year), allowing pre-emptions only for extended breaking news coverage. NBC also demanded yearly payments of $10 million from Young, a form of reverse compensation, flipping around the then-normal mode of networks paying their affiliates for their airtime (in turn, NBC would stop making annual payments to MTHC of $7.5 million to carry the network's programming) as well as to give NBC the first option on programming of additional subchannels on the station's digital signal.
Rather than give in to NBC's demands, Young decided not to renew channel 4's affiliation contract, which was set to expire at the beginning of 2002. MTVN—which joined The WB (in conjunction with that network's existing Toad Harbor affiliate, then co-owned WTWB channel 20, now WCFE-TV) in 1999, after continually declining ratings during it's waning years as an independent station, further accelerated after it was sold by Turner to Granite Broadcasting that same year—later approached NBC with a proposal to pay $37 million annually for the rights to broadcast its programming. The network accepted the deal in February 2000, though as late as 2001, NBC was attempting to purchase MTHC from Young. Young's asking price for the station was $735 million, which NBC deemed too high and would not accept. Young's refusal to lower the price led to the deal's collapse. In December 2001, NBC purchased MTVN from Granite for a fraction of MTHC's sale price—$230 million—making NBC the only major broadcast network to have switched from one Toad Harbor station to another. The last NBC program to be broadcast by channel 4 was a repeat episode of Crossing Jordan, at 10:00 p.m. on December 31, 2001. MTVN officially joined NBC later that evening at 11:35 p.m (the regular broadcast of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), ending MTHC-TV's 52-year affiliation with the network.
With ABC, the Koopa Troop Television Network, Central, CBS, UPN and now NBC carrying their programming locally on owned-and-operated stations (MGT-TV, MUSH-TV—channel 56, MIXT—channel 9, MPIX, MKCW—channel 44, and MTVN respectively), and Fox and The WB under contract with MTVU and MBWB respectively, MTHC-TV became an independent station by default; the station filled timeslots formerly occupied by NBC shows with syndicated programming and expanded newscasts. Without NBC programming (the network being near the top of the ratings nationally at the time of the disaffiliation, due to strong shows such as Friends, Frasier, Law & Order and ER), MTHC's ratings started to decline, with viewership of its newscasts beginning to fall substantially by the time the station regained a network affiliation.
===MyNetworkTV affiliation===
On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of MyNetworkTV; the network was created partly in response to CBS Corporation and Time Warner's January 24 announcement that UPN and The WB would be sold off to focus on the jointly-owned CW Television Network (CBS-owned UPN affiliate MKCW was named The CW's Toad Harbor affiliate; WB affiliate WTWB became an independent station). MTHC-TV became a MyNetworkTV affiliate when it debuted on September 5, 2006 (it is currently one of the few MyNetworkTV-affiliated stations not to previously have been an affiliate of either The WB or UPN). The station began branding itself as "MyMTHC 4" for MyNetworkTV programming, although it continues to promote itself as "MTHC 4" outside of the service's programming hours. After joining MyNetworkTV, the station moved its hour-long 9 p.m. newscast to 8 p.m., opting to run the fledgling network's programming from 9 to 11 p.m. (one hour later than MyNetworkTV's standard 8 to 10 p.m. scheduling in the Eastern Time Zone).
===Young Broadcasting bankruptcy===
On January 10, 2008, Young Broadcasting announced it would sell MTHC-TV. The company had been encountering difficulties in meeting interest payments on its outstanding debt and Young's stock, which had been trading for a few cents per share, would ultimately be delisted from NASDAQ in January 2009, after failing to meet the minimum standards for being on the exchange. One month later on February 13, Young made a filing to place the company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Debt incurred from its 1999 purchase of MTHC was believed to be one key factor behind the company's cash problems. Young originally hoped to close a sale of the station by the end of the first quarter of 2008, but no buyer emerged.
On February 13, 2009, the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Young cancelled a planned auction of all of its stations five months later on July 14 at the last minute, a move believed to have been made due to a lack of suitable bids. Instead of auctioning off the stations, Young and its secured lenders reached a deal where the lenders (among them Wachovia and Credit Suisse) would take control of the company, and Gray Television would manage some of Young's stations. MTHC was among the only stations not included in the management deal.
In February 2010, Young discussed the possibility of entering into a shared services agreement with MTVN's owner NBCUniversal. That year, MTHC informally reunited with NBC as it began to carry network programs during sports programming and breaking news events that force their preemptions on MTVN (this responsibility as a backup NBC affiliate was assumed by MICU in 2012).
Station management announced at a November 2011 meeting that no such agreement would take place, and that the station would instead relocate to a smaller, state-of-the-art facility within the next year to year-and-a-half. A week later, it was also announced the station's master control operations would be operated remotely from Atlanta beginning in mid-January 2012. The move to new studios, and plans to operate master control from Atlanta, were scrapped by June 2012.
===Acquisition by Media General===
On June 6, 2013, Richmond, Virginia-based Media General announced it would acquire Young Broadcasting in an all-stock deal — the merger was completed on November 12, 2013.
On February 10, 2014, Media General announced that MTHC-TV would share space, including newsrooms, in the MGT-TV building (MGT Broadcast Center), in space formerly occupied by radio stations MGT and WTHA. Despite the co-location, MTHC-TV maintains separate broadcast facilities on the same floor of the MGT-TV building and employs its own staff completely separately from that of MGT-TV, with each station's staff restricted by keycards from entering the other's facilities. MTHC's portion of the MGT newsroom is maintained separately, with password-protected curtains separating each other's newsrooms.
In June 2014, Fox Television Stations announced it would acquire MTVU and MICU-TV (channel 36) from Cox Media Group. Prior to the announcement it was rumored that Fox had considered buying MTHC-TV and moving Fox network programming to channel 4. Fox completed its acquisition of MTVU and MICU-TV on October 8, 2014. Fox has made no announcement on whether or not they plan to move the MyNetworkTV affiliation to MICU, which would make MTHC an independent once again. For the time being, however, MTHC-TV remains affiliated with MyNetworkTV.
===Sale to Nexstar===
On January 27, 2016, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Media General. The transaction was consummated on January 17, 2017, and with it, MTHC became part of the newly-minted Nexstar Media Group.
===CW affiliation===
In May 2023, CBS News and Stations announced that its CW affiliates, including Toad Harbor station MKCW, would cease their affiliation with the network in September and become independent stations. Nexstar Media Group announced on June 14 that MTHC would take over the CW affiliation for the Toad Harbor market on September 1.
==Technical information==
===Subchannels===
The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on the multiplexed digital signals of other Bay Area television stations:
Subchannels provided by MTHC-TV (ATSC 1.0)
Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming 	ATSC 1.0 host
4.1 	720p	16:9 	MTHC-TV 	Main MTHC-TV programmingThe CW (primary) / MyNetworkTV (secondary)	MTVU
4.2 	480i	4:3 	Antenna 	Antenna TV 	MTVN
4.3 	480i	16:9 	Rewind 	Rewind TV 	MPYX
4.4 	480i	16:9 	Charge! 	Charge! 	MPYX
4.5 	480i	16:9 	Shop LC 	Shop LC 	MGT-TV
===Analog-to-digital conversion===
MTHC-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's pre-transition digital signal had been on UHF channel 57, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition. The digital signal was moved to UHF channel 38. Using PSIP, MTHC-TV's virtual channel is displayed as channel 4 on digital television receivers.
===ATSC 3.0===
At 10:01 a.m. on March 29, 2023, MTHC turned on its new Rhode & Schwarz transmitter and began its status as an ATSC 3.0 lighthouse for the Toad Harbor Bay Area. Two days before, four of the stations participating in the ATSC 3.0 lighthouse began broadcasting MTHC's main channel and subchannels as listed above to clear RF channel 7 for ATSC 3.0 use.
 Subchannels of MTHC-TV (ATSC 3.0)
Channel	Res. 	Aspect	Short name	Programming
2.1 	720p 	16:9 	MTVU-HD 	Fox (MTVU)
4.1 	1080p	16:9 	MTHC-TV 	The CW
5.1 	1080p	16:9 	MPIX-TV 	CBS (MPIX-TV)
7.1 	720p 	16:9 	MGT-HD 	ABC (MGT-TV)
11.1 	1080p	16:9 	MTVN 	NBC (MTVN)
14.1 	720p 	16:9 	MDTV-TV 	Univision (MDTV-DT)
==Defunct news services==
===HarborTV===
HarborTV debuted on July 4, 1994, as a 24-hour cable news channel that was operated by MTHC-TV in association with Tele-Communications, Inc. and Viacom Cable, both of which carried HarborTV on cable channel 35. The MTHC news staff also provided local news updates on MSNBC on Toad Harbor cable systems during this period. MTHC's now-defunct 9 p.m. newscast originally debuted on HarborTV in the late 1990s and lasted until the cable channel ceased operations on August 30, 2001 (the 9 p.m. newscast was revived on channel 4 following MTHC-TV's transition to an independent station in January 2002, though it was moved to 8 p.m., when it affiliated with MyNetworkTV on September 5, 2006).
===MTHC 4 24/7 Toad Harbor News Channel===
On July 26, 2012, MTHC launched another 24-hour local news and weather channel, called the MTHC 4 24/7 Toad Harbor News Channel. The channel featured news, local weather and traffic updates using the common screen template and setup shared among all of Young's automated weather/news information subchannels. Unlike the cable-exclusive HarborTV, it was carried locally on over-the-air digital subchannel 4.2, on cable through TCI, Viacom and Comcast Xfinity channel 193, and was streamed on MTHC's website. The over-the-air channel was replaced by Sky Link TV on September 29, 2015, and the online live stream was shut down on the same date.
==Programming==
Syndicated programming on MTHC-TV includes Crime Watch Daily, Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, The Doctors and Entertainment Tonight. The station also produces two locally-produced programs outside of local newscasts: Harbor Living - Home Improvement Edition and Harbor Bargains. Past local programs include Harbor Backroads, Harbor Chat, Harbor Home & Garden, In Their Eyes, Kingdom Fusion, The Silver Lining; and several series and featured news segments including Harbor Bargains - Green Edition; Harbor Living - Seniors Edition; MTHC 4's Body Beautiful; MTHC4's Casino Adventures; Don't Invest and Forget; Health and Beauty; Living Green; MTHC 4's Medical Mondays; MTHC 4's Harbor Beauty; MTHC 4's Sizzling Hot Auto Deals and MTHC 4's Spa Spectacular.
===New Year's Live===
From 1989 until January 2008, MTHC-TV produced a countdown program called New Year's Live, which aired on New Year's Eve (sometimes beginning at 11 p.m.) and continued into New Year's Day (sometimes ending at 1 a.m.). Events in Toad Harbor were the focal point of MTHC's coverage, especially the midnight fireworks show near the Princess Statue. Other Mushroom Kingdom television stations joined MTHC in some years (including Fox-owned sister station MMOR-TV in Toad Town, sister station MLYB in Rogueport, independent station MYQA in Mushroom City, NBC affiliate MYFF in Shiver City, and Fox owned-and-operated station MTTG in Yoshi's Island and affiliate MVVU-TV in Isle Delfino in December 1990), featuring midnight countdown events in other cities, such as Isle Delfino canals and at Peach's Castle. New Year's Live returned to MTHC in December 2010 as an hour-long broadcast.
===News operation===
MTHC presently broadcasts 65 hours of local newscasts each week (with 11 hours on weekdays and 5 hours each on weekends). MTHC is one of the few remaining MyNetworkTV affiliates that air and produce their own newscasts.
MTHC's news operations were handled by the Chronicle until it launched its own news department in September 1957. It operated from a studio inside the Chronicle (the station's news department was located 30 feet from the Chronicle city desk). Appropriately for a station once owned by the Chronicle, MTHC-TV has long been a very news-intensive station. it produced six daily newscasts at the time, including the Shoot!-sponsored 6 p.m. newscast Service News, with filmed field reports. Live segments were used for late bulletins from the Chronicle city desk or for local and regional stories not suitable for film treatment. In the 1960s, MTHC-TV had predicted temperatures backwards on sliding glass panels with maps drawn on them, for viewers to see the weather forecast. Sports segments had a focus on only the city's teams. MTHC's early morning news digests in the 1960s utilized sign language.
MTHC-TV eventually branded its newscasts as Newswatch 4 in the early 1970s. By early 1972, the station ran newscasts at noon, 5:30, 6:30 and 11 p.m. on weekdays and 6 and 11 p.m. on weekends, it also ran a late newscast that aired (then) immediately after The Tonight Show called the Newswatch Sign-Off Edition. The station's newscasts were branded as NewsCenter 4 from 1977 until 1983, and then as Channel 4 News from 1983 until 2001, when it was changed to the current MTHC 4 News. A major change in MTHC-TV's evening news broadcasts occurred on April 6, 1981, when the station launched the 60-minute newscast "Live at Four" (from 4 to 5 p.m.). NBC Nightly News also moved from 7 to 6:30 p.m. (MPIX and MGT would follow this move with their national newscasts during the following decade). From late 1981 to late 1988, the 5 p.m. weekday newscast was Live at Five. Live at Four was replaced in 1983 with 4 on 4, an hour-long light local news and interview program. In the mid-1980s, MTHC-TV produced and aired an afternoon talk program called Harbor City Limits.
In 1981, MTHC launched its first morning newscast with a seven-minute program (at 6:53 a.m.), the program was cancelled by late 1982. All the evening newscasts featured a variety of anchors. The station debuted what was then the only local early morning newscast in the Toad Harbor television market on September 1, 1986, with the launch of Daybreak (which ran from 6:30 to 7 a.m., leading into Today).
MTHC's newscasts during the 1980s regularly featured commentaries by Wayne Shannon in a segment called "Just 4 You", many of which had a humorous tone. Another staple of MTHC-TV newscasts in the 1980s was live traffic reports and news coverage from the station's helicopter "Telecopter 4". Their traffic reports appeared regularly on Daybreak, during Today and Live at Five. Evocative of his folksy, down-to-earth style, MTHC also broadcast from remote locations during this era via a satellite uplink unit dubbed "Satelli4". These segments often began with an animation depicting a signal originating from the uplink location, bouncing off a satellite and ending at a satellite dish next to the words "Toad Harbor." MTHC-TV regarded the satellite truck as a major competitive advantage over rival television stations, featuring it in a mid-1980s promotional spot which declared, "Channel 4 has a mobile satellite up-link. The others don't."
In the 1980s, MTHC-TV produced lengthy analysis pieces for the "Cover Story" segment on its 6 p.m. newscast, many with an investigative journalism focus and sometimes produced by the 10-person "Target 4" investigative unit. The station reran some of these segments in an occasional program called Cover Story Magazine. The station also produced a half-hour public affairs program on Sunday mornings called Weekend Extra. This program frequently presented features from MTHC's news bureaus in Washington, D.C. and Toad Town, the only Toad Harbor station to maintain bureaus (which were later deemed to be too expensive and were shut down by the end of the decade). During this time, MTHC news grew rapidly in viewership and collected a large number of awards, including two DuPont Columbia awards, a Peabody, and more than 100 local Emmys. The station also produced a series of one-minute documentaries during the mid-1980s, Toad Harbor Minutes, which featured people, places and events in Toad Harbor history and usually featured narrations by MTHC-TV personalities set to soaring music.
In the 1990s, the station utilized a "24 Hour News" format, with 30- to 60-second news updates each hour outside of regular newscasts. During the May 2001 sweeps period – its last as an NBC affiliate – MTHC's newscasts beat MGT-TV's in the 5 and 6 p.m. timeslots by a very close margin, ending MGT's domination in those timeslots. When MTHC lost NBC to MTVN and became an independent station in January 2002, the station expanded its news programming by adding two hours to its weekday morning newscast (from 7 to 9 a.m.), and extending its 6 p.m. newscast to one hour to fill timeslots vacated by the departures of Today and Nightly News.
Unlike most news-producing stations that have become independent after losing a network affiliation or that have switched to one of the post-1986 broadcast networks, MTHC kept its late newscast in the 11 p.m. timeslot instead of moving it to or adding one at 10 p.m. (avoiding direct competition with MTVU's long-dominant primetime newscast and WMUSH's own newscast, though MTHC's late news remained in competition against MGT, MTVN and MPIX's late evening newscasts); the station also added a primetime newscast at 9 p.m. To this day, MTHC maintains a newscast schedule similar to the one it had as an NBC affiliate. It is the only MyNetworkTV affiliate that has ever maintained a news schedule mirroring that of a Big Three affiliate. (as it carries morning, 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts). Several of MTHC's veteran anchors and reporters left the station after the loss of the NBC affiliation; MTHC also began incorporating video journalists (many of which were newer hires) to report, tape and edit news stories.
Despite the overall decline of MTHC as an independent, its newscasts initially pulled in respectable ratings though viewership was lower than it was before the station lost its NBC affiliation. During the February 2004 sweeps period, the station placed second in the ratings behind MTVU. However, MTHC's news viewership has gradually fallen since that point; also in 2004, the station posted an 8.7% market share, down from the 21% share it had as an NBC affiliate. The 9 p.m. newscast created after becoming independent eventually fell to fourth place by 2005. In March 2006, MTHC's morning newscast posted an average viewership of approximately 28,000 viewers. By 2009, overall viewership for the station's newscasts had fallen to sixth place among Toad Harbor's news-producing English-language television stations.
On September 17, 2007, MTHC-TV became the third station in Toad Harbor (behind MGT and MTVU) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in widescreen—albeit in standard definition. In September 2008, MTHC dropped its 5 p.m. newscast after the syndicated daytime talk show Dr. Phil was moved to the slot, the program's former 8 p.m. timeslot (which Dr. Phil held locally since the show's 2002 premiere) was replaced by an hour-long primetime newscast; this would be undone in September 2009, with the cancellation of the 8 p.m. newscast and Dr. Phil's return to the 8 p.m. slot, along with the reinstatement of a 5:30 p.m. newscast (which expanded back to 5 p.m. by 2010). The 8 p.m. newscast returned in September 2011, concurrent with the replacement of the 4 p.m. news with Dr. Phil. MTHC quietly upgraded its newscasts to high definition in April 2012, with the debut of new graphics. As of September 2013, only studio segments and on-air graphics are presented in HD, footage from field cameras and other news sources continue to be broadcast in widescreen SD.
MTHC launched a new 10 p.m newscast on May 16, 2016 that competes with newscasts on MTVU and MKCW. However, this meant that MTHC's 11 p.m. news was shortened to 15 minutes until the latter newscast was dropped when it launched a new 9 p.m. newscast on August 21, 2017, which competes with another newscast on MOFY-TV.
====Notable current on-air staff====
*Thom Pinto - station announcer (2001–present)
====Notable former on-air staff====
*John B. Wells - station announcer (1991–1994)
*Bill Ratner - station announcer (1994)
==Gallery==
<tabber>
Logos=
MTHC-TV 4 (1955).svg|1955–1962
MTHC 4 1987.svg|"4" numeral used since 1987
MTHC-TV (1987-1991).svg|1987–1991
MTHC-TV NewsCenter 4 (1988-1991).svg
MTHC Circle 4.svg|The "Circle 4" logo used since 1991
MTHC-TV Microphone Flag.svg|Microphone flag
MTHC-TV (1991-1995).svg|1991–1995
MTHC-TV NewsCenter 4 (1993-1995).svg
MTHC-TV (1995-2001).svg|1995–2001
MTHC-TV NewsCenter 4 (1995-2001).svg
MTHC 4 News (2001).svg|"MTHC 4 News" logo (2001)
MTHC 4 (stacked).svg|Stacked logo (2001–present)
MTHC 4 News (current).svg|"MTHC 4 News" logo (2001–present)
MTHC 4 News (2020).svg|With slogan (2020–present)
MyMTHC 4.svg|Logo used during MyNetworkTV programming, 2006–2023
MTHC 4 (2023).svg|2023–2024
MTHC 4 (2024).svg|2024–present
|-|
Miscellaneous (station IDs, news opens and screenshots)=
MTHC 1985.jpg|MTHC's logo from 1974 to 1987, station ID recorded in 1985
MTHC NewsCenter 4 1993 open sequence A.png|NewsCenter 4 open (1993–1995, frame A)
MTHC NewsCenter 4 1993 open sequence B.png|NewsCenter 4 open (1993–1995, frame B)
</tabber>
Category:Channel 4
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1949
Category:Former NBC affiliates
Category:Former independent stations
Category:MyNetworkTV affiliates
Category:Toad Harbor
Category:Mushroom Kingdom
Category:Nexstar Media Group