WPSI-TV

**WPSI-TV**, virtual channel 57 (UHF digital channel 38), is an Ion Television owned-and-operated television station licensed to Possum Springs, Pennsylvania. The station is owned by Ion Media Networks.

On cable, the station is carried on Comcast Xfinity channels 4 (WPSE, which broadcasts over-the-air on channel 4, is instead carried on channel 9) (standard definition) and 807 (high definition), and on Verizon FiOS channels 7 (SD) and 507 (HD).

## History

### As WFSV-TV

#### As an ABC affiliate

Channel 57 in Possum Springs started as **WFSV-TV** on August 31, 1953. The station was Possum Springs' first ABC network affiliate, using a transmitter site now used by WPOS-TV.

In a market that was dominated by DuMont O&O WDPS by default, WFSV-TV got off to a great start, even fending off original channel 23 broadcaster WRGB-TV. However, it wanted to broadcast on the more lucrative VHF band since it had longer range, and competed with several local broadcasters for the channel 13 license that would eventually be awarded to WTHT Incorporated. Even after the channel 13 license was awarded, WFSV-TV contested the FCC's original decision. Additionally, a storm had damaged the tower on March 11, 1955, leading to a channel sharing agreement with WPSE until the tower could be fixed.

The lawsuits against WTHT Incorporated combined with the aforementioned tower problems proved to be too costly for WFSV-TV, forcing the station to dump its locally produced programming and only operate for about six hours daily, airing only its network programming in pattern before leaving the air completely on August 31, 1957. By that point, the FCC reaffirmed the channel 13 license to WTHT Incorporated and they would sign the station on that year as WTHT-TV, now WNPS.

WFSV-TV's fight with the FCC proved to have a major impact on the major network affiliations in Possum Springs. WTHT-TV was planning to affiliate with CBS while the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which had purchased WDPS from the ailing DuMont Network in late 1954, was planning to affiliate the renamed KAKD-TV with NBC due to Westinghouse Broadcasting's strong ties to that network as well as KAKD radio's decades-long affiliation with NBC Radio. (Westinghouse had been a co-founder of NBC in 1926.) However, WTHT-TV's delayed sign-on due to WFSV-TV's appeal to the FCC led to Westinghouse clearing the higher-rated CBS programs on KAKD-TV instead and eventually signing on as that network's primary affiliate in Possum Springs. One year after WFSV-TV shut down, WPCN-TV signed on and took the ABC network affiliation. It is possible that had WFSV-TV survived and had moved to the channel 13 allocation that WPCN-TV would have affiliated with NBC or CBS instead, depending on which network Westinghouse affiliated KAKD-TV with.

#### As an independent station

The station returned to the air in March 1959 after local retired trolley car operator Willard Wayne acquired the station. It was the first independent station in the Possum Springs market. It initially had a programming format of very old movies, westerns, some comedy shows from the late 1940s and early 1950s, and public affairs shows.

WFSV-TV went dark again in November 1961, but returned to the air over a year later, in January 1963. For much of its early years, owing in part to the experimental nature of UHF television, the station was plagued by a weak signal, operating at 171 kilowatts visual, and 34.2 kilowatts aural, resulting in a Grade B signal over most of Possum Springs. A power increase in the 1970s to 264 kW visual and 52 kW aural did finally provide a city-grade signal to the city of Possum Springs. However, the city's outlying suburbs that were unable to receive the station clearly on cable received a spotty to non-existent signal.

In 1967, Wayne invested in better production facilities and purchased the equipment to broadcast some shows and movies in color. However, this put major budget strains on the station. Almost on the brink of bankruptcy, WFSV was sold to Ted Turner in 1970. Turner significantly expanded and upgraded the station's programming and made it profitable almost eventually, as he did in Atlanta with what later became WTBS and in Toad Harbor with WNTV.

Beginning in the early 1970s, many cable systems in central and western Pennsylvania and surrounding states—namely New York, West Virginia and Ohio—along with parts of the Canadian province of Ontario—began receiving the WFSV-TV signal via microwave relay, enabling the station to reach far beyond the Possum Springs television market. Ted Turner decided to uplink the station's signal, becoming one of the first television stations to be transmitted via satellite; its signal was transmitted to about 600 cable systems and to C-band satellite subscribers across the country, mainly in the Northeastern U.S., where it mainly competed with such fellow independent stations as WOR-TV (now the flagship station of the Rainbow Dash Network) in New York City, WKGC (now a CW affiliate) in Gotham City, and WXYT (now an RDN O&O) in Detroit. At its height, the station was available on nearly every cable television provider in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as well as large swaths of Ontario, New York state, Maryland, and Ohio, and even as far east as Vermont, as far south as Virginia, and as far west as Michigan.

As WFSV-TV gained regional exposure, the station became vulnerable in the Possum Springs area and underestimated the ability of competitors WPOS-TV, WTYN-TV and WFEP to acquire top-rated syndicated programs. Out of the companies that owned the market's independents, the groups that respectively owned WPOS, WTYN and WFEP at the time; Meredith Corporation, RKO General and Chesapeake Television Corporation, were each particularly aggressive in their programming acquisitions by leveraging its stations elsewhere around the country for the strongest programs that were entering into syndication; as a result, WPOS-TV edged ahead of WFSV-TV in the ratings by the fall of 1984.

WFSV-TV was one of the few long-tenured major market independents that did not align with the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company in the run-up to the network's launch in October 1986. This was due to the fact that most of the smaller markets that were within WFSV-TV's vast cable footprint had enough commercial television stations to allow Fox to maintain an exclusive affiliation, meaning that it would have made little sense to have the station relay the network's programming to multiple markets located beyond the reach of its broadcast signal.

In 1986, WFSV-TV was one of the most automated stations in the world. It was the first station to adopt the then-state-of-the-art Beta tape technology and the Betacart player for airing all of its programs. Local programming by its competitors had been delivered on film, reel videotape and U-matic videocassettes. The Betacam professional format, which is different from the failed Betamax consumer format, produced a high-quality picture with crisp on-air resolution. The tape gained popularity among television stations not only because of its quality, but also because of its smaller size and ease of storage. In addition, the station designed a database system for managing the program playout. It was this list which told the Betacart machine what to do.

WFSV-TV even had on-camera hosts. Fred Chambers was one several personalities who introduced the programs, similar to what was done on MTV and Britain's ITV. From 1986 through to 1990, the station's quirky persona stayed intact. It produced a 10 p.m. news program from Monday through Friday. Reporters, in a deadpan fashion, were debriefed about their stories. These video clips were then played back in the Betacart automation system as a complete program. This program was similar to WNTV's own *11 Update Early in the Morning* newscasts that ran from 1975 to 1979.

On May 19, 1988, the FCC passed the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule (or "SyndEx"), a law that required cable television providers to black out syndicated programs aired on any out-of-market stations carried on their systems (either stations from nearby markets serving as default network affiliates or superstations), if a television station has obtained the exclusive rights to air a particular program in a given market. Turner was not willing to create a dedicated feed that included substitute programs that would replace shows aired on WFSV-TV locally in certain time slots that could not air outside of its primary viewing area due to market exclusivity claims by various stations (as Turner's other fellow superstations, WTBS and WNTV, did at the time the law became official); as such, when the law went into effect on January 1, 1990, cable providers in areas outside of Pennsylvania chose to drop WFSV-TV from their lineups.

After Time Warner (which, ironically, purchased Turner Broadcasting in 1996) announced the launch of The WB on November 2, 1993, the network had entered into discussions with WFSV-TV to become the network's Possum Springs affiliate. However, in a surprising move, upstart independent station WXLS-TV (channel 40, now WPSW) immediately signed a deal to affiliate with The WB after that station signed on in 1994, keeping WFSV-TV a true independent station.

From 1993 to 1997, WFSV-TV aired the locally-acclaimed late-night talk show *Garbo & Malloy* at 11:30 p.m. WFSV-TV took over production of the show from KAKD-TV, but in 1997 production and broadcasts moved to WFEP, where it has aired since.

Due to declining ratings, Turner had planned to put the station up for sale multiple times as early as 1996. The closest Turner came to selling the station in this timeframe was when Time Warner, which by that point had acquired Turner Broadcasting, almost sold WFSV-TV to Paxson Communications in 1999. Had this sale been successful, the station would have been converted into a Pax TV affiliate with the call letters WPPX-TV. This sale was called off by the Federal Communications Commission in 2000.

In 2004, Turner Broadcasting abruptly dropped all programming from WFSV-TV and converted it into an affiliate of America's Store, a discount shopping channel from the Home Shopping Network. In January 2007, America's Store announced it would cease operations on April 3 of that year; WFSV-TV switched its programming to ShopNBC on March 26. Rumors and actual proposals of a sale of WFSV-TV continued during this period.

### Sale to Ion Media Networks

On November 8, 2010, Time Warner entered into another deal with Ion Media Networks (the former Paxson Communications) to sell WFSV-TV to Ion, this time for $3 million. The sale was consummated (after FCC approval) on May 2, 2011, at which time the station's call sign changed from WFSV-TV to **WPSI-TV**, making it one of a few Ion-owned stations without the Pax-era "PX" in its call sign (the calls stand for **P**ossum **S**prings **I**ON). WPSI-TV continued to carry ShopNBC programming to fill their contractual obligations; however, on October 1, 2011, it began carrying Ion Television on its main channel, with Ion Life and Qubo on subchannels. This is the network's first over-the-air presence in Possum Springs, one of the largest media markets in which Ion and its predecessors had never had an over-the-air signal.

**KAKD-TV** 2 (CBS)
WPSE 4 (PBS)
WPCN-TV 9 (ABC)
WNPS 13 (NBC)
WPOS-TV 23 (FOX)
**WTYN-TV** 29 (RDN)
WTHT-LD 31 (Bounce)
**WPSW** 40 (CW)
WFEP 48 (MNTV)
****WPSI-TV**** 57 (ION)
WVDO-CD 69 (HSN)