WGRZ
WGRZ is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill Road in South Wales, New York.
History
The station first signed on the air on August 14, 1954, as WGR-TV, owned by the WGR Corporation, along with WGR. WGR-TV started out as an NBC affiliate sharing the 184 Barton Street studios of UHF outlet WBUF-TV. In 1955, WBUF-TV, which was dark at the time, was sold to NBC. In January 1956, WGR-TV became an ABC affiliate after NBC moved its programming to the company-owned WBUF.Most TV sets could not receive channels above 13 or needed a special device to do it. All television reception at the time was via set-top or rooftop aerial antennas. UHF television technology was in its infancy, and most people did not understand how to receive the signals or had antennas designed to pick up UHF channels. UHF signals also did not travel as well as VHF, making it hard for viewers outside of Buffalo and its adjacent suburbs to get a clear picture. WGR-TV itself began its existence using the tower and transmitter of another defunct UHF station, the short-lived WBES-TV on channel 59. WBUF was an experiment by NBC to see if UHF television was yet viable if enough investment were placed into a UHF station; the experiment was not a success, and in September 1958, the station facility was donated to a public broadcaster to become WNED-TV, and NBC reaffiliated with WGR-TV.
ABC programming was not available in Buffalo for another two months until WKBW-TV signed on in November of that year as a full-time affiliate of that network. The failure of WBUF was a blow to UHF but served as a boon to WGR-TV locally. Viewers could easily receive the station's VHF channel 2 signal, and WGR-TV now had more syndicated and network program options. The station also carried some shows from the DuMont Television Network, until it shut down in 1956.
In 1959, WGR-TV launched an FM radio station, WGR-FM. Originally a simulcast of its AM radio sister, it began airing its own programming under the WGRQ call sign in 1973. Over the years, WGR Corporation bought several other radio and television stations across the country, including WNEP-TV in Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, WHAM-TV in Rochester and WDAF-AM/FM/TV in Kansas City, and eventually became known as Transcontinent Broadcasting. Transcontinent merged with Taft Broadcasting in 1964.
During the 1960s, WGR-TV also operated a repeater station on VHF channel 6 in Jamestown, New York. The repeater on channel 6 continued until the channel 2 transmitter was moved from Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo to the South Wales transmitter site, which greatly improved signal coverage into the population center of the mountainous Chautauqua region south of Buffalo. In 1972, the station moved into its current Downtown Buffalo facility at 259 Delaware Avenue.
In December 1982, Taft Broadcasting agreed to trade WGR-TV to movie theater chain General Cinema in return for WCIX in Miami. At the time, the Federal Communications Commission would not permit stations with different owners to share the same call sign. On May 1, 1983, in preparation for the ownership change, WGR-TV added a "Z" to its call sign, thus becoming WGRZ-TV. Z was chosen because of the letter's resemblance to the number 2, and also allowed General Cinema to continue trading on the WGR call letters and their then 60-year legacy in Buffalo. The trade closed two weeks later, with WGRZ becoming part of General Cinema's Coral Television division. In exchange, Taft acquired WCIX in Miami. Taft held on to 550 WGR and 96.9 WGRQ until 1987, when both stations were sold to Rich Communications. The AM station is now owned by Audacy, Inc., while its former FM sister is now owned by Cumulus Media.
In the years following the 1983 exchange deal, WGRZ-TV changed hands several times. General Cinema exited the broadcasting business in 1986 by selling Coral Television to WGRZ Acquisition Corp., a partnership between SJL Broadcast Management, TA Associates and Smith Broadcasting. The price tag was $56 million. Native Buffalonian and former Newport Television CEO Sandy DiPasquale also held an ownership stake in WGRZ-TV at this time. Two years later, Tak Communications purchased WGRZ-TV from the SJL-led group for $100 million in 1988. Less than four years later in 1991, Tak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A group of creditors seized the company's assets in 1994. Argyle Television Holdings II, a broadcasting holding company formed by a group of managers who had recently left Argyle I after that company sold all of its stations to New World Communications, purchased the station. Then-sister station KITV was included in the sale. Tak's creditors sold the two TV stations for $91 million in 1995. Argyle II closed on WGRZ-TV in April of that year, followed by KITV two months later.
WGRZ-TV nearly lost its NBC affiliation in 1994 when NBC's parent company, General Electric, announced plans to purchase King World Productions, the then-owner of CBS affiliate WIVB-TV. Had it occurred, WIVB-TV would have become an NBC owned-and-operated station. However, the deal never materialized, and WIVB-TV was sold to the LIN TV Corporation after attempts to sell that station to Westinghouse Broadcasting, New World Communications, Tribune Broadcasting, Paramount Stations Group and the E. W. Scripps Company fell through; as a result, the Buffalo market was one of the few areas to not be affected by the affiliation switches that took place between late 1994 and late 1996. However, WGRZ did lose the local rights to the Buffalo Bills to WIVB-TV when the NFL returned to CBS in 1998 after the network acquired the rights to the American Football Conference package. That ended a 33-year run for Channel 2 as the Bills' unofficial hometown station. Presently, WGRZ airs Bills games when they are featured on NBC's Sunday Night Football.
Gannett acquired WGRZ-TV and WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from Argyle II in a 1996 swap deal that saw KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City and WLWT in Cincinnati being traded by Gannett to Argyle II. The deal was triggered by issues from cross-ownership rules related to Gannett's ownership of The Cincinnati Enquirer and the Niagara Gazette, as well as cross-ownership rules related to Gannett's 1995 acquisition of Multimedia Cablevision in the Oklahoma City market. In January 1997, seven months prior to Argyle II's merger with the broadcasting unit of the Hearst Corporation, the deal formed Hearst-Argyle Television. WGRZ dropped the "-TV" suffix in 2009.
On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WGRZ was retained by the latter company, named Tegna.
Programming
Previous local programs include the talk show Your Today in WNY, the talk show Nearly Noon, a local version of Bowling for Dollars, the classic television anthology series Lunchtime with the Classics, and the weekly late-night series In the Buff. The Healthy Zone was a weekday show hosted by Maria Genero and Dr. Derek Alessi, which focused on physical, emotional, community and financial health and wellness. 2 The Unknown featured psychic Karen Reece and aired for one season on WGRZ; it was the series' second season. Reece returned to WBBZ as host of Psychic Encounters in 2016. The Cat's Pajamas was an overnight block, usually presenting movies, with weatherman Barry Lillis hosting and news updates from the WGRZ overnight team between films.The syndicated cartoon series Colonel Bleep used WGR-TV as its flagship station in the late 1950s; Richard Ullman syndicated the show from Buffalo.
In 2000, WGRZ-TV took over the broadcast rights to televise the New York Lottery's live drawings from longtime home WKBW-TV, when that station's contract with the lottery ran out. WGRZ dropped the lottery drawings in October 2013.
Sports programming
WGRZ airs select Buffalo Bills games since 2006 as part of NBC's Sunday Night Football package. WGRZ also simulcasts any Bills games those that are exclusive to NBC's streaming service Peacock, as per NFL local team anti-siphoning rules.WGRZ formerly aired selected Buffalo Sabres games from 2005 to 2021 as part of NBC's broadcast contract with the NHL. Despite a conflict with the Kentucky Derby in 2007, WGRZ aired game 5 of the Senators–Sabres playoff series in its entirety, including the overtime period that NBC omitted and moved to Versus.
News operation
WGRZ presently broadcasts hours of locally produced newscasts each week. In addition, replays of WGRZ's midday and 6 p.m. newscasts air on a one-hour delay on WGRZ-DT2. Unlike most television stations, WGRZ takes an openly activist "watchdog journalism" approach to its news coverage, with its commitment to "Holding People In Power Accountable" and being "On Your Side". As a result of this and larger corporate investment, WGRZ has the largest staff in the Buffalo television market with more general assignment/feature reporters, and sports reporters than either WIVB or WKBW-TV.The station used the NewsCenter brand for its newscasts in the 1970s. The current brand, Channel 2 News, dates to the 1980s and early 1990. WGRZ was the first in the market to adopt a 5 p.m. newscast. In the early 1990s, WGRZ-TV used the "24 Hour News Source" format, providing news briefs each hour outside of regular newscasts. From 2001 to 2003, WGRZ-TV produced a 10 p.m. newscast for Pax owned-and-operated station WPXJ-TV. In 2006, WGRZ-TV began producing another 10 p.m. newscast, this time for WB affiliate WNYO-TV Channel 49. The newscast was known as 2 News on 49 – 10 at 10. It originally featured ten minutes of news and the rest was dedicated to sports.
WGRZ-TV was the last of the three Buffalo television news outlets to produce a midday newscast, which it debuted in February 2008 in a traditional noon time slot. In June 2009, it moved to an 11 a.m. time slot, the first of its kind in the Buffalo market. On February 17, 2010, WGRZ upgraded its newscasts to upconverted widescreen standard definition. From then until October 29, 2011, the station's news footage was shot in 4:3 SD, then cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio and upconverted to 1080i in master control, before HD graphics and pictures were added for broadcast.
On January 17, 2011, WGRZ debuted a new set for its newscasts during Daybreak, which was designed for the transition to high definition newscasts and features extensive use of steel, glass and wood in combination with HD flat panel displays, blue lighting, and a background of several local landmarks. During the 10‑day construction period, the station temporarily broadcast its newscasts from one of its interview areas. The new set complements the HD weather set that debuted in February 2010. Rival WKBW-TV 7 upgraded its newscasts to true high definition in August 2011. That prompted WGRZ to upgrade its newscasts to true high definition on October 29, 2011. WGRZ began to broadcast its field video in full HD on October 29, 2011, making Channel 2 the only Buffalo television station to offer all aspects of its news production in true HD.
On April 23, 2012, WGRZ and Investigative Post announced a partnership in which the latter would co-produce investigations, interviews and other news segments that focus on various government issues around western New York. In addition, WGRZ and Investigative Post launched a co-branded website incorporating shared content. As a result of this partnership, former Buffalo News reporter Jim Haney and former Patch reporter Dan Telvock began serving as contributors for WGRZ, conducting interviews on the Sunday edition of Daybreak, producing weekly news segments with Investigative Post content, and making periodic appearances on WGRZ's other newscasts. The partnership with Investigative Post did not result in cutbacks to WGRZ's staff, instead it added additional resources for investigative reporting.
On August 6, 2012, WGRZ expanded its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, moving the start of the program at 4:30 a.m. On September 15, 2012, WGRZ added a second hour to its Saturday morning newscast from 6 to 7 a.m., while moving what became the second hour of the show ahead one hour to 9 a.m.
On April 8, 2013, the WGRZ-produced 10 p.m. newscast moved from WNYO-TV to Fox-affiliated WUTV. The station explained a weak lead-in by MyNetworkTV programming on WNYO prompted the switch. As part of this arrangement, the 10 p.m. newscast expanded from weeknights-only to a nightly newscast. A rebroadcast of the 6 a.m. hour of WGRZ's morning newscast was added on WNYO-TV in the interim, which eventually was seen on WUTV as well. Although WNYO-TV and WUTV are both owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, an ownership group known for carefully managing the content of newscasts on its local stations, the terms of the contract between WGRZ and WUTV prohibit Sinclair from having any editorial control over the newscasts. WUTV replaced WGRZ's newscast with one produced by its own stations WSTM-TV and WHAM-TV in July 2021, with WGRZ's prime time newscast moving to WGRZ-DT2. The prime time newscast was quietly canceled some time before January 2023, by which point WUTV's newscast had also been canceled and WNLO was the sole over-the-air prime time newscast left in the market.
In August 2013, WGRZ announced a partnership with the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority to provide traffic reports for the Daybreak and First at Five newscasts on weekdays. This is similar to the former partnership that the NFTA had with competitor WKBW-TV 7 until the summer of 2013. WGRZ had previously employed in-house traffic reporters.