WJZ-TV
WJZ-TV is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, serving as the market's CBS outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios and offices on Television Hill in the Woodberry section of Baltimore, adjacent to the transmission tower it shares with several other Baltimore broadcast outlets.
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on November 1, 1948, as WAAM, becoming the third television station in Baltimore behind WBAL-TV and WMAR-TV, all within just over a year. The station was originally owned by Radio-Television of Baltimore Inc., whose principals were Baltimore businessmen and brothers, Ben and Herman Cohen. Channel 13 was originally an ABC affiliate, the network's fifth outlet to be located on the East Coast. It carried a secondary affiliation with the DuMont Television Network until its closure in 1956. Both affiliations moved from WMAR-TV, which became an exclusive CBS affiliate.On the station's second day of operations, WAAM broadcast the 1948 presidential election returns and various entertainment shows, remaining on the air for 23 consecutive hours. Channel 13 has been housed in the same studio facility, located near Druid Hill Park on what was then known as Malden Hill, since the station's inception; the building was the first in Baltimore specifically designed for television production and broadcasting. As a DuMont affiliate, WAAM originated many Baltimore Colts games for the network's National Football League coverage.
Purchase by Westinghouse, becoming WJZ-TV
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation purchased WAAM from the Cohen brothers in May 1957. Westinghouse then took control of the station in August of that year, and the following month, the station changed its callsign to WJZ-TV. The WJZ call letters had previously resided on ABC's flagship radio/television combination in New York City, which changed its calls to WABC-AM-FM-TV in 1953. However, Westinghouse's history with that set of call letters went back even further, as it was the original owner of WJZ radio, the flagship station of NBC's Blue Network, which would eventually become ABC.All of Baltimore's television stations at the time had fairly short transmission towers in the medium's early years; channel 13's original tower was located next to the station's studios. In 1959, WJZ-TV collaborated with WBAL-TV and WMAR-TV to form a joint venture to build the world's first three-pronged candelabra tower. Constructed behind the WJZ-TV studios and opposite the original channel 13 tower, it was the tallest free standing television antenna in the United States at the time of its completion. The new tower significantly improved channel 13's signal coverage in central Maryland, and also added new viewers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
WJZ-TV nearly lost its ABC affiliation in 1977, when the network briefly pursued WBAL-TV just as ABC became the most-watched broadcast network in the United States for the first time. However, WBAL-TV declined the ABC affiliation offer due to ABC's last-place network evening newscast offerings of the time, keeping ABC on channel 13.
Switch to CBS
In June 1994, ABC agreed to an affiliation deal with the broadcasting division of the E. W. Scripps Company, which resulted in three of Scripps' television stations—WMAR-TV in Baltimore, WFTS-TV in Tampa and KNXV-TV in Phoenix—becoming ABC affiliates. ABC agreed to the deal as a condition of keeping its affiliation on Scripps' two biggest stations, WXYZ-TV in Detroit and WEWS in Cleveland. Both stations had been heavily courted by CBS, which was about to lose two of its longtime affiliates—WJBK and WJW—to Fox. ABC was reluctant to include WMAR, then an NBC affiliate, in the deal; it had been a ratings also-ran for over 30 years while WJZ-TV was one of the strongest ABC affiliates in the nation. However, not wanting to be relegated to UHF in two markets with few viable choices for a new affiliate, ABC opted to end its 46-year affiliation with channel 13 and move its affiliation to channel 2.Group W felt betrayed by ABC after so many years of loyalty, as channel 13 had been ABC's longest-tenured affiliate at the time. As a safeguard, it began to shop for an affiliation deal of its own. In the early summer of 1994, the station was approached by NBC to negotiate an affiliation agreement with the network to replace WMAR as its Baltimore affiliate. Channel 13 station management would later turn the offer down. Instead, one month later, Westinghouse agreed to a long-term affiliation contract with CBS, resulting in WJZ-TV, as well as WBZ-TV in Boston and KYW-TV in Philadelphia, switching to CBS. The affiliation switch, the second in Baltimore television history, occurred early on the morning of January 2, 1995. Though ABC's affiliation contract with channel 13 did not expire until January 1995, starting in 1994, all CBS programs preempted by WBAL-TV would air on WJZ-TV. The last ABC prime time program to air on channel 13 was the made-for-TV movie A Dangerous Affair, which was broadcast at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on January 1, and the final overall ABC program to air on channel 13 was the January 2 edition of ABC World News Now. As a result, channel 13 became the third station in Baltimore to affiliate with CBS. The network had originally affiliated with WMAR-TV in 1948 before moving to WBAL-TV in 1981. Almost by default, the 1995 switches saw the NBC affiliation return to WBAL-TV after a 14-year absence.
CBS' move to WJZ immediately resolved several scheduling issues the network had with WBAL-TV. The station had picked up half of its Saturday morning programming, as well as an hour of daytime programming. WJZ-TV also picked up the Late Show with David Letterman, which had aired on WNUV after WBAL passed on it. Westinghouse then bought CBS on November 24, 1995, making WJZ-TV a CBS owned-and-operated station. Notably, this marked the first time that CBS had wholly owned a television station in the Baltimore/Washington corridor; it had been minority owner of WTOP-TV in Washington from 1950 to 1955.
WJZ-TV used a stylized "13" logo, using a font face exclusive to Group W, from 1967 to 2023. It was the last remaining Group W/Westinghouse station to utilize the typeface. In 2002, the CBS eye was added, and in 2018, the station switched to a silver and gold-colored version with the WJZ call letters displayed below in squares.
CBS extended its usage of the WJZ call sign to radio on November 3, 2008, when CBS Radio changed the call signs of two of its Baltimore stations, WHFS and WJFK, to WJZ-FM and WJZ in reflection of their connection to WJZ-TV; the changes coincided with the move of WJFK's local sports radio programming, including a program co-hosted by WJZ-TV sports anchor Mark Viviano, to WJZ-FM. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced that it would spin off from CBS Corporation and merge with Entercom, effectively separating WJZ-TV from the WJZ radio stations; the transaction closed on November 17, 2017.
Programming
WJZ-TV was the Baltimore area affiliate of the It's Academic high school quiz competition, currently on hiatus looking for a TV station in Baltimore since its long time sponsor backed out.Over the years, WJZ-TV frequently preempted ABC programming in favor of locally produced programs and syndicated content from Westinghouse's broadcasting division, Group W, such as The Mike Douglas Show and the original version of The Merv Griffin Show; notably, the former ABC daytime soap opera Dark Shadows was preempted during the mid-1960s. From 1970 to 1972, WJZ-TV dropped General Hospital, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game to make room for The Mike Douglas Show, the three shows were seen instead on now-defunct WMET-TV, and not telecast in color. By 1972, WJZ-TV re-added The Newlywed Game to their schedule. During the mid-1970s, WJZ-TV re-added General Hospital, and stayed on the station until the switch to WMAR-TV in 1995. WJZ-TV aired The Edge of Night in pattern from its December 1975 relocation from CBS to ABC until September 16, 1983; the following Monday, the soap opera was moved to a one-day delay time slot of 11 am, where it remained until the series took a two-week hiatus in favor of ABC's coverage of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Despite the preemptions and delays, ABC was more than satisfied with channel 13, which was one of its strongest affiliates. Additionally, Baltimore viewers could watch ABC programs on Washington's WMAL-TV/WJLA-TV, whose signal decently covers most of the Baltimore area.
From 1957 to 1964, one of the station's highest-rated programs was The Buddy Deane Show, an in-studio teen dance show similar to ABC's American Bandstand, which WJZ-TV also preempted in favor of the Deane program. Deane's program was the inspiration for the John Waters 1988 motion picture Hairspray and its subsequent Broadway musical version, which in turn has been made into a film.
Since becoming a CBS affiliate, WJZ-TV has carried the network's lineup in pattern with virtually no preemptions except for breaking news emergencies and Orioles baseball games, as per an agreement between Group W and CBS. Prior to September 2019, WJZ-TV aired the CBS Evening News on a half-hour tape delay, due to an hour-long 6 p.m. newscast.
Sports programming
WJZ-TV has been the de facto broadcaster for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League, airing a majority of the team's contests since CBS acquired rights to the American Football Conference in 1998, including their Super Bowl XXXV and XLVII appearances, both victories, at the end of the 2000 and 2012 seasons.Channel 13 has also served two stints as the television home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, from 1954 to 1978 and from 1994 until 2017. It was one of the few "Big Three" stations to air baseball on a regular basis. As an ABC affiliate, WJZ-TV also broadcast select Orioles games via ABC's MLB broadcast contract from 1976 to 1989, including their 1979 and 1983 World Series appearances, the latter won by the team.