WDSU


WDSU is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Hearst Television. The station's studios are located on Howard Avenue in the city's Central Business District, and its transmitter is located on East Josephine Street in Chalmette.

History

The station first signed on the air on December 18, 1948. It was the first television station to sign on in the state of Louisiana, the first in the city of New Orleans, the first on the Gulf Coast, the first in the Deep South, and the 49th in the nation. It was founded by New Orleans businessman Edgar B. Stern, Jr., owner of WDSU radio. Stern had inherited the construction permit to build the television station a few months earlier when he bought the WDSU radio stations for $750,000. The station has been a primary NBC affiliate since it signed on, owing to WDSU radio's longtime affiliation with the NBC Radio Network; however, it initially also carried programming from the three other major broadcast networks at the time: CBS, ABC, and the DuMont Television Network. It lost DuMont programming when that network ceased operations in August 1956. Even after WJMR-TV signed on in November 1953 as a primary CBS and secondary ABC affiliate, WDSU continued to "cherry-pick" a few of the higher-rated programs carried by those two networks until September 1957, when WWL-TV signed on as a full-time CBS affiliate. At that time, WJMR became a full-time ABC affiliate, leaving WDSU exclusively with NBC.
The radio station was originally located at the DeSoto Hotel on Baronne Street; the "D" in the name stood for the DeSoto, while "S" referred to the now-defunct New Orleans States newspaper and the "U" stood for Joseph Uhalt, who founded the radio station as WCBE in 1923. WDSU-TV originally operated out of studio facilities located within the Hibernia Bank Building, the tallest building in New Orleans at the time. The WDSU stations moved into the historic Brulatour Mansion on Royal Street in the French Quarter in April 1950; Stern had also bought other buildings near the mansion to construct production studios for the radio and television stations. At that point, Stern reorganized his business interests as the Royal Street Corporation. The transmitter site remained at the Hibernia Bank Building until 1955, when it moved to its tall tower in Chalmette.
In the 1950s, WDSU-TV became the springboard for the career of Dick Van Dyke, first as a single comedian and later as the emcee of a locally produced comedy program on the station; among his duties, Van Dyke had also served as a staff announcer, hosted music programs and appeared in a segment during the station's noon newscast. WDSU-TV became the first television station in the New Orleans market to telecast its programming in color in 1955. WDSU-TV was the ratings leader in New Orleans for over a quarter century, largely because of its strong commitment to coverage of local events and news. It originated the first live broadcasts of the Sugar Bowl and Mardi Gras, and was the first area station to provide extensive local hurricane coverage. The station was also the first television station in the market to provide statewide election coverage, as well as the first to utilize a mobile newsgathering unit.
WDSU-TV was also the first to originate an international broadcast, relaying a Today broadcast from Bimini to the United States in 1955, using a 300,000 watt transmitter built by WDSU-TV engineers via special permission granted to NBC by the Federal Communications Commission.
In January 1972, Royal Street merged with Columbia, South Carolina–based Cosmos Broadcasting in a $17 million deal. Cosmos decided to sell off the radio stations because the ownership of the three station properties combined would exceed ownership limits of the time set by the FCC. Cosmos eliminated much of the local flavor that had been the station's hallmark, opting to concentrate on its already strong news operation. By the early 1980s, rival WWL-TV had overtaken WDSU as the top-rated station from sign-on to sign-off as well as in local news. WDSU has been a solid runner-up to WWL for most of the last quarter-century, although since the mid-2000s, it has had to fend off a strong challenge from a resurgent WVUE. In 1984, WDSU built the first working television studio at a World's Fair for the station's live broadcasts from the event held in New Orleans that year. On February 17, 1986, WDSU became the first NBC affiliate in Louisiana to broadcast its programs in stereo.
Cosmos sold WDSU to Pulitzer, Inc. for $47 million in 1989. Under Pulitzer, channel 6 finally dropped the "-TV" suffix from its calls in 1993, more than 20 years after it and its former radio sisters had gone their separate ways. In March 1996, the station moved into its current facility on Howard Avenue, located a few blocks from the Le Pavillon Hotel, where WDSU radio began operations in 1923. Also during the 1990s, WDSU became the first New Orleans station to operate its own Doppler weather radar system. Pulitzer sold its entire television station division, including WDSU, to Hearst-Argyle Television in 1999 for $1.8 billion. WDSU celebrated its 60th anniversary of broadcasting on December 18, 2008.
Since 2009, WDSU has simply branded with its callsign in most verbal references, despite retaining the "channel 6" red dot logo it has used since 2000. In 2015, the NBC Peacock logo was added to the "channel 6" red dot logo.

Hurricane Katrina

Prior to the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, WDSU shut down operations at its studios in New Orleans around 9:30 p.m. on August 28, 2005, in order to allow station staff to take shelter from the oncoming hurricane. At that point, WDSU's broadcasts began to originate from the studios of ABC-affiliated sister station WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi, where some of WDSU's on-air staff had already evacuated. Fellow sister station, NBC affiliate WESH in Orlando, Florida, also originated some on-air weather content during the storm. In the weeks that immediately followed the hurricane, WDSU's news programming originated from the WAPT facility, using meteorologists and anchors from both stations, with programs being simulcast in Jackson and New Orleans.
The Howard Avenue studio facility largely withstood Hurricane Katrina with minimal damage, but WDSU's analog and digital transmitters were both destroyed in the storm. In early September, WDSU arranged to transmit its signal via i: Independent Television affiliate WPXL-TV through the end of December 2005; WDSU also partnered with i O&O KPXB-TV in Houston to simulcast WDSU's morning newscast and continuing coverage of the storm's aftermath that channel 6 had aired between 6 and 11 p.m. from September 7 to 13, 2005. The station restored its analog signal, operating at reduced power, in October 2005. WDSU chose to replace its existing transmitter building with an elevated and rugged hurricane resistant building to house its analog and digital transmitters; construction of this building was completed in early February 2008. WDSU's digital signal was restored on August 1, 2007, having temporarily shared a frequency with LeSEA Broadcasting-owned WHNO's digital signal on UHF channel 21. In late February 2008, WDSU's analog signal was upgraded to full power; its digital signal on channel 6.1 was restored on March 6, 2008.

Hurricane Gustav

In September 2008, WDSU broadcast continuous coverage of the approach, landfall and aftermath of Hurricane Gustav for five consecutive days. The storm prompted a massive evacuation of much of the station's viewing area. As a result, on September 1, 2008, satellite provider DirecTV began simulcasting WDSU's coverage of Hurricane Gustav nationally on channel 361. Its storm coverage was also streamed on the station's website, while its broadcast audio was carried by the stations within Citadel Broadcasting's New Orleans radio cluster. C-SPAN2 and ABC affiliate WBRZ in Baton Rouge also ran portions of the station's live news coverage of Gustav.
WDSU tapped the resources of parent company Hearst-Argyle Television, and brought in personnel from Hearst-owned television stations across the country to assist in various capacities. Some members of WDSU's news staff were relocated to support studios in Baton Rouge and Orlando, and provided reports via satellite. All three locations stayed operational throughout the storm's duration. Another of WDSU's sister stations, ABC affiliate KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, also provided WDSU's coverage of Hurricane Gustav via its second digital subchannel for evacuees who came to Oklahoma City.

Programming

Today, WDSU clears the entire NBC programming lineup, only preempting certain programs during instances in which the station has to carry extended breaking news or severe weather coverage.
The station's notable local programs over the years included Midday, one of the earliest magazine programs in the United States, hosted by Terry Flettrich ; the 3:00 Money Movie, a Saturday afternoon movie showcase with irreverent wraparound segments hosted by Sam Adams, who regularly performed parody songs on a piano serving as clues to the answers during phone-in contests for cash prizes; and Morgus the Magnificent, a program hosted by a mad doctor character played by Sid Noel.
In the early 1980s, the station sustained criticism among its viewers when it chose to preempt Late Night with David Letterman in favor of airing the syndicated late night talk show Thicke of the Night, which was a notorious flop; around this time, the station also carried feature films during the overnight hours instead of airing the short-lived news program NBC News Overnight. Cox Cable provided a feed of Late Night from WRBT in Baton Rouge as an interim solution for their subscribers. When WDSU began clearing Late Night, the station aired the show an hour later than the recommended 11:35 p.m. timeslot for the network's Central Time Zone stations, instead airing syndicated reruns of The Love Boat.
WDSU serves as the local over-the-air broadcaster of Monday Night Football games involving the New Orleans Saints, airing simulcasts of ESPN-televised games that are not aired on WGNO through ABC's national simulcast. WDSU's corporate parent, Hearst Communications, holds a 20% ownership stake in ESPN, and the company has right of first refusal for simulcasts of ESPN's NFL telecasts in a team's home market, which it has never declined for WDSU. The station also provides additional game analysis from former Saints coach Jim E. Mora. Prior to 2006, when NBC gained the rights to Sunday night games, WDSU also aired Saints games from 1970 to 1997 whenever the team played host to an AFC team at Tulane Stadium/the Superdome, via NBC's contract to broadcast AFC games in those years. The station also provided local coverage of Super Bowl IX, which was hosted at Tulane Stadium, and Super Bowls XV and XX, both of which were hosted at the Superdome. Beginning in 2025, WDSU will air select New Orleans Pelicans games as part of NBC's contact with the NBA.
The station was unusual in airing Maury from its September 1991 premiere, carrying the show for 27 years until September 2018, despite the program taking a tabloid/conflict focus in the late 1990s and becoming universally associated with affiliates of smaller networks such as The WB, UPN and The CW. WDSU ended carriage of the show upon the launch of a noon newscast, effectively leaving the program off the station schedule, though it quickly found a new home in the market on WNOL-TV.