WPTT

**WPTT**, virtual channel 36 (UHF digital channel 49), is a New Line Network-affiliated television station serving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting.

## History

### Initial decades

The station originally signed on the air on October 9, 1969. It was originally owned by Storer Broadcasting and has been a New Line affiliate since sign-on.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought WPTT and some of Storer's other stations in 1985. At this time, ownership was officially under the KKR subsidiary of TV36 Communications, LLC, although Storer was still referenced on-air as being the parent company of WPTT. KKR later sold most of its stations to Gillett Communications. When Gillett defaulted on some of the financing agreements in the early 1990s, the ownership was restructured and the company was renamed SCI Television. Eventually, SCI ran into fiscal issues, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993. As a result, WPTT was sold in a group deal to New World Communications that year.

### Failed sale to New Line Stations, then successful sale to Reverend Travis Hanson

In 1994, New World made a landmark deal with Fox to switch most of its CBS-, ABC- and NBC-affiliated stations to Fox. WPTT remained a New Line affiliate and was eventually put up for sale again to protect existing Fox charter owned-and-operated station WJKF (channel 26) (WPTT would not have been beneficial to Fox, as it was a UHF station – the New World stations that switched to Fox had broadcast on VHF channels between 2 and 13 – and the Pittsburgh market's lone NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, were in the AFC).

New World then attempted to sell channel 36 to New Line Stations, then a subsidiary of the Turner Broadcasting System (which had acquired the New Line company earlier that year); if the deal went through, it would have become a New Line owned-and-operated station under the call letters WNLT. However, New Line chose instead to acquire its Milwaukee affiliate, WISV-TV, from the Paramount Stations Group, which would become a New Line owned-and-operated station as WNMW. New World then took the unusual step of selling WPTT to Reverend Travis Hanson, a prominent Pittsburgh evangelist who was based at St. Paul's Church in nearby Greensburg, this transaction was successful, and was completed on August 18, 1994. Immediately afterward, Rev. Hanson shut down WPTT's news department and added religious programming in timeslots normally used for local newscasts.

By the spring of 1995, channel 36 refused to carry several of the network's programs because of views by management that felt the network's series and advertisements were offensive, and had even refused to sell local advertising during the *New Line Toons* Saturday block amid internal objections to the content of the programs and the accompanying national advertising aired during its commercial breaks. Ad slots that would normally be allocated to local commercials were instead occupied by public service messages from Rev. Hanson's ministry that discussed various controversial moral issues such as the death penalty, same-sex marriage and abortion, a move that was opposed by New Line network management, which felt that its children's programs were not the appropriate place for such subject matter to be discussed upon. The station also had an additional issue in that the market was the second-largest in the country in terms of viewership and ratings of one of the block's programs, *The Mixels Show*, second only to viewership on Cleveland owned-and-operated station WCON, resulting in WPTT management being unable to cope with the resulting flood of mail from fans.

### Sale to Weigel Broadcasting

By this point regretting his decision to purchase a major network affiliate as a result of the controversy with network management, Rev. Hanson put WPTT up for sale once again, this time selling it to Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, this transaction was completed on September 2, 1996; that November, the longtime "TV 36" branding was retired and changed to "New Line 36". Under Weigel ownership, the station began airing New Line programs that Rev. Hanson had preempted and also resumed selling local ad slots during *New Line Toons*. Weigel also began reconstructing the station's news department, culminating in the first airings of the relaunched *New Line 36 News* on January 1, 1997.