WPTZ

Infobox_Broadcast
call_letters = WPTZ| station_
station_slogan = Where the News
Comes First
station_branding = NewsChannel 5
analog = 5 (VHF)
digital = 14 (UHF)
other_chs =
affiliations = NBC
NBC WX+ (on DT2)
network =
founded =
airdate = December 8, 1954
location = North Pole - Plattsburgh, New York /
Burlington, Vermont
callsign_meaning = PTZ (refers to Plattsburgh)
former_callsigns = WIRI (1954-1956)
former_channel_numbers =
owner = Hearst-Argyle Television
licensee = Hearst-Argyle Stations, Inc.
sister_stations = WNNE
former_affiliations = ABC (1954-1968)
DuMont (1954-1955)
both secondary
effective_radiated_power = 25.1 kW (analog)
650 kW (digital)
HAAT = 607 m (analog)
845 m (digital)
class =
facility_id = 57476
coordinates = coord|44|34|27.2|N|73|40|29.1|W|type:landmark_scale:2000 (analog)
coord|44|31|32|N|72|48|56|W|type:landmark_scale:2000 (digital)
homepage = [http://www.wptz.com/ wptz.com]

WPTZ, channel 5, is the NBC-affiliated television station in Plattsburgh, New York, licensed to North Pole, New York. Its an analog transmitter is located on Terry Mountain in Peru. WPTZ's digital transmitter is located on Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak. Owned by Hearst-Argyle Television, the station has studios on Television Drive in Plattsburgh. Syndicated programming on WPTZ includes: "Jeopardy!", "Wheel of Fortune", "Oprah", and "Judge Judy".

Overview

The station operates secondary studios, known as the Vermont Bureau, on Roosevelt Highway in Colchester, Vermont. Like other stations that serve Plattsburgh and Burlington, it has a large audience in Southern Quebec, Canada. This includes Montreal, a city far larger than all of WPTZ's entire American viewing area combined. At one point, WPTZ even identified itself on-air as "North Pole / Plattsburgh / Burlington / Montreal" to acknowledge its large cable viewership in Canada. On cable, WPTZ can be seen in Plattsburgh on Charter channel 2 and in Burlington on Comcast channel 5. On Vidéotron systems in Montreal, it can be seen on: channel 23 (West Montreal), channel 18 (Central and East Montreal), and channel 52 (Illico digital).

However, during NBC prime time programming, Canadian cable systems frequently cover up WPTZ's signal. This is done to satisfy CRTC's Simsub rules. That action benefits CFCF-TV and CKMI-TV. WPTZ performs master operations for sister station and NBC affiliate WNNE. That station has its own studios on Dewitt Drive in White River Junction, Vermont. It serves the Connecticut River Valley (a.k.a. the Upper Valley) portion of central Vermont and western New Hampshire as well as southern Vermont as a semi-satellite of WPTZ. However, WNNE airs its own station identifications and local advertisements.

History

Channel 5 first signed on the air on December 8, 1954 as WIRI. It was owned by the Great Northern Broadcasting Company along with WIRY-AM 1340. It has been an NBC station since its inception although it carried secondary affiliations with ABC from its launch until 1968 (when WVNY signed on) and DuMont (until that network ceased operations in 1956). Rollins Telecasting bought the station in 1956. Shortly before that, WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia was sold to NBC and renamed WRCV-TV (it is now CBS affiliate KYW-TV). Rollins quickly grabbed the WPTZ calls for channel 5 realizing that "PTZ" refers to Plattsburgh. Rollins merged with Heritage Broadcasting in 1987 to form Heritage Media. In 1991, Heritage bought NBC affiliate WNNE in Hartford, Vermont which was a separate station with its own news department. With Heritage's purchase, it was made into a semi-satellite of WPTZ. Channel 5 took over the master control operations for WNNE in 1996.

Heritage Media sold all of its broadcasting properties to Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1997 prior to Heritage's merger with News Corporation. The sale protected new Fox affiliate WFFF-TV which was initially operated by WPTZ under a local marketing agreement (LMA). Otherwise, WPTZ and WNNE along with then-sister stations WEAR-TV in Pensacola, Florida and WCHS-TV in Charleston, West Virginia would have been forced to switch their network affiliations to Fox. Sinclair, in turn, sold WPTZ and WNNE (along with the WFFF LMA) to Sunrise Television in 1998. However, instead of keeping them, Sunrise decided to swap all three stations along with Smith Broadcasting-owned KSBW in Salinas, California to Hearst-Argyle Television in return for WNAC-TV in Providence, Rhode Island and WDTN in Dayton, Ohio. The swap became official on July 2, 1998. WFFF began operating as an independently-controlled station in 2000 when the LMA with WPTZ was terminated.

On June 23, 1999, WPTZ petitioned the FCC to change its city of license from North Pole to Plattsburgh. The station cited the area's declining population. The last census did not even count North Pole as a separate community and collapsed it into Lake Placid. As of 2007, this has not yet been approved. However, the station has largely dropped North Pole from its station identifications and now identifies on-air as "Plattsburgh / Burlington" most of the time. WPTZ is one of two television stations in the United States to broadcast from the "North Pole". The other is KJNP-TV, a religious station licensed to North Pole, Alaska that serves Fairbanks. WPTZ was a subject of a blooper when Oprah Winfrey taped a promo for her show for WPTZ and started laughing after she spoke the station's community of license. David Letterman, in another promo (during his NBC tenure), riffed on the station's request for him to pronounce the "Z" in WPTZ as "zed" instead of "zee" for the station's Canadian audience.

NBC Weather Plus launch

In September of 2006, WPTZ established a daily web video forecast as part of a major revamping of its website. The video forecast, known as the "Weather Plus Update", featured a logo showing WPTZ and WNNE offering NBC Weather Plus together known as "5 & 31 Weather Plus". This was seen as the first step toward the two stations beginning to offer Weather Plus. Another web video forecast known as the "Weather Plus Evening Drive Forecast" with a separate Upper Valley version was also created. Starting in October, WPTZ's studios in Plattsburgh underwent extensive renovations. During that time, WPTZ newscasts were broadcasted from a temporary news set while the renovations took place. While the studios as a whole were being upgraded, the weather department underwent the most change.

In advance of the launch of NBC Weather Plus, the weather center was expanded to make room for the new combined WPTZ and WNNE weather graghics and logos. The remodeling was completed by late-November. WPTZ launched NBC Weather Plus on its second digital subchannel on November 15. The station launched a new digital signal from Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest elevation a day earlier. Weather Plus in not yet offered on WNNE's digital signal. On digital cable, Weather Plus is carried on: Comcast channel 169, Time Warner channel 854, and Telecom channel 305. It is not yet offered on Charter systems in New York State.

News operation

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, WNNE had its own news department. In 1989, the station began the process of downsizing its staff and integrating them with WPTZ. See the WNNE article for more information about the station's own in-house news production. Today, WPTZ and WNNE use the "NewsChannel" branding. During WPTZ news, WNNE is referred to as the Upper Valley Bureau and features two full-time reporters based in that station's White River Junction studios. In addition to the Upper Valley and Vermont bureaus, WPTZ broadcasts national news from a Washington D.C. bureau that is operated by Hearst-Argyle. The bureau employs several reporters who give live reports to the various Hearst-Argyle affiliates.

Although the two stations do not own or operate weather radars of their own, WPTZ uses live NOAA National Weather Service radar data from several regional sites. It is presented on-screen in a forecasting system known as "Storm Tracker 5000". The main signal comes from the radar located next to the NWS Local Forecast Office at Burlington International Airport. Unlike most other NBC affiliates, WPTZ does not air a weekday Noon newscast. The station had aired news at that time until 2005 but it was dropped in favor of "5:30 Now". With the departure of Thom Hallock on November 23, 2007, the station was left with an all woman anchor team. That changed with the arrival of Gus Rosendale. He left WPTZ in 2005 to report at sister station WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh. Rosendale made his debut back at WPTZ in mid-December.

News staff

Anchors
*Gabrielle Komorowski - weekday mornings
**reporter
*Erin Connors - weeknights at 5 and 5:30
**weekday health reporter and "Now You’re Cooking" segment participant
*Stephanie Gorin - weeknights at 5, 6, and 11
**"Learning Counts" segment producer
*Gus Rosendale - weeknights at 6 and 11
*Michelle Mortensen - weekends
**consumer reporter and "Will It Work?" segment producer

"NewsChannel 5 Weather Plus Meteorologists"
*Tom Messner (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - Chief seen on weeknights at 5, 6, and 11
**heard on WOKO-FM 98.9, WKOL-FM 105.1, WJOY-AM 1230, and CKON-FM 97.3
*Gib Brown (AMS Seal of Approval) - weeknights at 5:30
**"Now You’re Cooking" segment participant
*Jim Moore (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - weekday mornings
*Keith Carson - weekends

Sports
*Matt Hobbs - weeknights at 6 and 11
*Ken Drake - weekends
**sports reporter

Reporters
*Kelley Morris - New York
*Heather VanArsdel - New York
*Erin Vannella - New York
*Stewart Ledbetter - Vermont Bureau Chief
**host of "Vermont This Week" on VPT
*Mary Morin - Vermont
*Mia Moran - Vermont
*Matt Gerien - Vermont
*Brittany Oat - Upper Valley (WNNE)
*Jackie Bender - Upper Valley (WNNE)
*Paul Sands - editorials
*Sally Kidd - national correspondent
*Laurie Kinney - national correspondent
*Nikole Killion - weekday morning national correspondent

Alumni

*Jeanne Moos - now reporter for CNN
**in 1976, Moos became WPTZ's first female correspondent
*Dawn Fratangelo - now NBC News correspondent
*Cindy Fitzgibbon - now at WFXT Boston
*Thom Hallock - weeknight 6 and 11 o'clock anchor
**at the station from 1996 until 2007
*Hailee Lampert - New York reporter
*Mark Sudol - now at NECN
*Chris Kelley - occasional fill-in at WFSB
*Erik Heden - former weekend meteorologist
**now working for the National Weather Service
*Bird Berdan - original weatherman from the 1950s until the 1980s
**nicknamed the "Atlantic Weatherman"
**appeared in advertisements at least through late 1996
**recently deceased
*Neil Drew - anchor in the 1970s
*Chris Ortloff - anchor in the early-1980s
**served in the New York State Assembly from 1986 until 2007
*Erin Clark - main anchor for sister station KSBW in Salinas / Monterey, CA

External links

* [http://www.wptz.com/ WPTZ "NewsChannel 5"]
* [http://www.wptz.com/wnne WNNE "NewsChannel 31"]
* [http://www.nbc.com NBC]
*TVQ|WPTZ