WKBW-TV


WKBW-TV is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Street in Colden.
WKBW-TV is one of a number of local Buffalo television stations that are available over-the-air and on cable television in Canada, particularly in Southern Ontario. For years, it was carried via microwave to cable systems in such areas as Corning and Horseheads; this ended when WENY-TV signed on as the ABC affiliate for the Elmira market.

History

Clinton Churchill/CapCities ownership (1957–1986)

The Channel 7 frequency was hotly contested during the 1950s; the Buffalo Courier-Express and former WBUF-TV owner Sherwin Grossman tried several times to gain rights to the channel allocation, but was unable to secure a license. The competition for the channel 7 allocation continued to grow when the city's first UHF station, WBES-TV, failed. Clinton Churchill, original owner of 50,000 watt radio station WKBW, was granted the license to operate the station in 1957. WKBW-TV was originally intended to be an independent station. However, after WBUF was shut down by its second owner, NBC, on September 30, 1958, then-ABC affiliate WGR-TV re-added NBC programs. As a result of the network shuffle, WKBW-TV premiered as ABC's new Buffalo affiliate when it went on the air on November 30, 1958. The station's studios were originally located at 1420 Main Street in the former Churchill Tabernacle Church, with WKBW radio located next door at 1430 Main Street.
Churchill sold the WKBW stations to Capital Cities Broadcasting in 1961, earning a handsome return on his original investment into WKBW radio in 1926. CapCities would serve as WKBW-TV's longest-tenured owner, owning it and its radio sister for 25 years, and the station would reach its peak during Capital Cities' ownership. WKBW-TV produced iconic children's programing such as Rocketship 7 and The Commander Tom Show from the 1960s to the 1980s. A staple of its morning programming for multiple years was Dialing for Dollars, which later became AM Buffalo after the Dialing for Dollars franchise was discontinued; AM Buffalo continued to air on WKBW-TV until June 23, 2023. Under Capital Cities' ownership, in 1978 the WKBW stations moved their studios from Main Street to their present location, "7 Broadcast Plaza", on Church Street a few blocks southwest of Niagara Square.
In 1977, WKBW-TV unsuccessfully sued the Canadian Radio-Television Commission over simultaneous substitution rules. In Capital Cities Communications Inc v Canadian Radio-Television Commission, WKBW-TV argued that the CRTC did not have jurisdiction to enforce simultaneous substitution if the stations simulcasting an American program did not broadcast across a provincial line. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the CRTC's favor, declaring broadcasting to be a federal undertaking under Canadian law, and that whether the station broadcast across a provincial line was irrelevant to that fact.

Queen City Broadcasting/Granite Broadcasting Co. years (1986–2014)

When Capital Cities announced its acquisition of ABC in March 1985, it was required to divest stations to stay within Federal Communications Commission ownership limits of the era. The company announced the sale of WKBW-TV to J. Bruce Llewelyn's Queen City Broadcasting in August of that year; the sale of the station would be completed in early 1986, shortly after Capital Cities completed its acquisition of ABC. At that point, WKBW radio was sold to Price Communications and had its call letters changed to WWKB. In late 1993, Granite Broadcasting acquired a 45% minority stake in WKBW-TV from Queen City Broadcasting. A year-and-a-half later, in June 1995, Granite bought the remaining 55% interest in the station.
Until 2000, New York Lottery drawings were shown on WKBW-TV. WKBW-TV, through at least the early 2000s, operated the Niagara Frontier radio reading service on its second audio program feed, though it was pulled after the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy in 2004 due to content concerns and the FCC's stricter enforcement of obscenity laws, which included some RRS titles. WNED-FM's subcarrier then was contracted to carry the service from then on.
From 2006 to April 2009, WKBW-TV operated WNGS, owned at the time by Equity Media Holdings, under a local marketing agreement for most of that time while channel 67 was affiliated with the then-Equity-owned Retro Television Network. Equity went bankrupt in 2009, selling off RTN to company shareholder Henry Luken's Luken Communications by January 2009 and the Equity stations being liquidated, with WNGS sold to the Daystar Television Network in April 2009. As a result of the changes, WKBW-TV ended the LMA with WNGS which has since changed its call to WBBZ-TV.

The Scripps era (2014–present)

On February 10, 2014, the E. W. Scripps Company announced that it would acquire WKBW-TV as well as MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYD in Detroit from Granite Broadcasting for $110 million. The FCC approved the sale on May 2. The sale was completed on June 16. The completion of the purchase resulted in WKBW-TV becoming Scripps' first station in the state of New York. With Scripps' acquisition of WKBW-TV, each of Buffalo's "Big Three" network affiliates have at one point or another been owned by a company with newspaper interests; WIVB-TV, founded in 1948 as WBEN-TV, was owned by the Butler family, then-owners of the Buffalo Evening News, from its inception until the early 1970s ; Gannett Company, publishers of USA Today and various other newspapers around the country, acquired WGRZ-TV in 1996. E. W. Scripps spun-off their papers to Journal Media Group on April 1, 2015, while Gannett's broadcasting and digital media operations were spun off to the new Tegna on June 29, 2015.
On September 24, 2020, a consortium made up of Scripps and Berkshire Hathaway announced the proposed purchase of Ion Media, including its Ion Television owned-and-operated station in the Buffalo market, WPXJ-TV. Scripps chose not to retain WPXJ as Buffalo has fewer than eight unique television station owners, not enough to permit a duopoly in any case. WPXJ was instead included in a package of stations resold to Inyo Broadcast Holdings.
On December 31, 2021, beginning with the 11 p.m. newscast, WKBW had its first major rebrand in 18 years. The station changed its logo to a new one that it had been using for its digital operations for the previous few months.

Programming

Until recently, WKBW-TV signed off on Saturday and Sunday mornings for a half-hour from 4 to 4:30 a.m.; there was no station information, but the American and Canadian national anthems were played before and after the test pattern, like Sinclair-owned stations WUTV and WNYO-TV, which continue to sign off on Monday mornings.

Past local programming

  • AM Buffalo, the outgrowth of WKBW's version of Dialing for Dollars, was a talk show that by the 21st century consisted mostly of brokered segments with paid sponsors as "guests". A PM Buffalo version aired between 2004 and 2008. Longtime hosts included Liz Dribben, Nolan Johannes, Dave Roberts, Brian Kahle, Linda Pellegrino, Jon Summers, and Melanie Camp. On June 1, 2023, the Buffalo Broadcasters Association reported that WKBW-TV was cancelling the program after 59 years.
  • Rocketship 7, a morning children's show hosted by weatherman Dave Thomas and "Promo the Robot" from 1962 until Thomas left the station for WPVI-TV in Philadelphia in 1978. Thomas also hosted Dialing for Dollars which became AM Buffalo in 1978. A revival aired from 1992 to 1993 immediately after Commander Tom was canceled; this version, effectively a retooled version of Commander Tom with new hosts, featured Commander Mike and sidekick "Yeoman Bob", with guest appearances by Commander Tom.
  • The Commander Tom Show was an afternoon children's show hosted by WKBW-TV weatherman Tom Jolls from 1965 until 1991 when budget cuts forced its cancellation. In its last decade, the show aired on weekends only.
  • In Conversation was a program that aired in the 1960s and 1970s, in which Liz Dribben would interview celebrities on tour in Buffalo.
  • Off Beat Cinema, a collection of offbeat B movies, was created at WKBW-TV in 1993; it ran on WKBW-TV in overnight Friday and/or Saturday time slots from 1993 to 2012, and was also syndicated to the Retro Television Network. The program moved to WBBZ-TV in August 2012.
  • WKBW-TV aired an annual 12-hour Variety Kids telethon each March, with Mr. Food and Clint Holmes co-hosting along with WKBW-TV's personalities. In 2020, the telethon moved to WGRZ and WBBZ-TV.
  • Dyngus Day Diary was an annual special summarizing Buffalo's annual Dyngus Day parade. It was hosted by "Airborne Eddy" Dobosiewicz, a local comedian, historian, and on-again/off-again WKBW contributor.
  • As part of a perpetual contract, WKBW was the local broadcast outlet for Monday Night Football games that feature the Buffalo Bills. In 2022, WKBW surrendered its rights and WGRZ acquired them. With Monday Night Football moving to a more extensive simulcast schedule with ESPN and ABC from 2023 onward, WKBW has indirectly regained rights to most Bills MNF appearances. WKBW was also the longtime home of Bills preseason games before the Bills signed a statewide agreement with WIVB owner Nexstar Media Group.
  • Countdown to 19/20## was an annual tradition held on New Year's Eve. The multi-part broadcast covered, most notably, official coverage of the Buffalo Ball Drop, billed as the second-largest New Year's Eve ball drop in the United States ; the event was televised in synchronized split screen alongside the national New Year's Rockin' Eve broadcast and has been carried by the station since 1988. Also covered by the broadcast were local First Night celebrations. For 2025, the local coverage was cut to a split screen of the Buffalo ball drop and subsequent fireworks, as New Year's Rockin' Eve aired in its entirety.