WQCW (channel 30), branded on air as Tri-State's CW, is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...
licensed to
Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth is a city in and the county seat of Scioto County, Ohio, United States. Located in southern Ohio south of Chillicothe, it lies on the north bank of the Ohio River, across from Kentucky, just east of the mouth of the Scioto River. ...
, United States, serving as the
CW affiliate for the
Charleston–
Huntington, West Virginia market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
. It is one of two
commercial
Commercial may refer to:
* a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television)
** Radio advertisement
** Television advertisement
* (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...
television stations in the market licensed outside West Virginia (alongside
WTSF
WTSF (channel 61) is a religious television station licensed to Ashland, Kentucky, United States, serving the Huntington–Charleston, West Virginia market as an owned-and-operated station of the Daystar Television Network. The station's studio ...
, channel 61, in
Ashland, Kentucky
Ashland is a home rule-class city in Boyd County, Kentucky, United States. The largest city in Boyd County, Ashland is located upon a southern bank of the Ohio River at the state border with Ohio and near West Virginia. The population was 21,6 ...
). WQCW is owned by
Gray Television alongside Huntington-licensed
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
affiliate
WSAZ-TV
WSAZ-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Huntington, West Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It serves the Charleston–Huntington market, the second-largest television market (in terms of geographical area) east of t ...
(channel 3). Both stations share studios on 5th Avenue in Huntington, while WQCW's transmitter is located on Barker Ridge near
Milton.
History
Although a
construction permit was issued for channel 30 in 1984 under the calls WUXA, no station signed on this channel until October 5, 1998, when WHCP signed on as an affiliate of
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on terrestrial television, broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture be ...
. It added
UPN
The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which pr ...
programming in 2000 after that network was dropped from
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
affiliate
WVAH-TV
WVAH-TV (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Charleston, West Virginia, United States, serving the Charleston– Huntington market as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Decades. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, whi ...
, airing it off-pattern on weekends and after WB network time.
The station's
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
transmitter, despite its over 2 million-
watt
The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...
ERP, was not strong enough to cover the entire Huntington–Charleston market, even though it
identifies itself on-air as "Portsmouth/Charleston." The market, the largest geographic market east of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...
, covers 61 counties in central West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio. Most of this territory is a very rugged
dissected plateau
A dissected plateau is a plateau area that has been severely eroded such that the relief is sharp. Such an area may be referred to as mountainous, but dissected plateaus are distinguishable from orogenic mountain belts by the lack of folding, ...
, making UHF reception difficult. WVAH faced similar problems when it originally signed on in 1982 on channel 23, forcing it to move to channel 11 in 1988. WHCP did not have that recourse, and could not increase their analog station's power due to probable interference with digital television stations in
Roanoke, Virginia
Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is ...
and
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...
. Shortly after going on the air, it signed on two
low-power translators
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
—WBWV-LP channel 69 in Huntington and WOWB-LP channel 53 in Charleston. The station effectively depended on
cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
and
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...
for most of its viewership, which is all but essential for acceptable television in much of this vast market, even in today's digital era—especially in Eastern Kentucky.
Dish Network had carried the station since it began offering a local Huntington–Charleston feed, with
DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...
following suit on January 25, 2006. The station began to be carried in
high definition on DirecTV on November 9, 2010, with Dish following on March 7, 2012.
When UPN and The WB shut down and merged to form The CW in 2006, WHCP joined the new network more or less by default. On May 26, WOWB and WBWV became
WOCW-LP channel 21 and WVCW-LP channel 45, respectively, in preparation for the new affiliation. WHCP followed suit on May 31, changing its calls to WQCW. It initially rebranded itself as "The Q," with a logo showing The CW's logo turning into a capital "Q", but eventually followed the network's generic regional branding style as "Tri-State's CW."
On January 20, 2007, longtime owner Commonwealth Broadcasting sold the station to
Lockwood Broadcast Group
Lockwood Broadcast Group is a television broadcasting company that owns stations in several markets.
Lockwood Broadcast main offices are located in Hampton, Virginia with Operation Headquarters in Richmond, Virginia.
History
Lockwood Broadcast ...
. The deal closed on May 21, 2007.
The WVCW-LP license was surrendered to the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
(FCC) on June 1, 2012 as Lockwood did not intend to convert the translator to digital. In the digital transition, WQCW's transmitter was moved to the WOWK tower near Huntington. At the same time, the station's power was boosted to a full million watts, equivalent to five million watts in analog. This gave the station a coverage area comparable to those of the other stations in the market.
On November 15, 2013, Lockwood announced that it would sell WQCW and WOCW-LP to Excalibur Broadcasting for $5.5 million. Had the purchase been approved by the FCC, WQCW would have entered into a
shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Television, owner of NBC affiliate WSAZ-TV. Excalibur's president Don Ray was a former general manager at WSAZ.
However, in February 2014, this deal was abandoned in favor of selling WQCW and WOCW to Gray outright for that same $5.5 million; Gray noted in the updated filing with the FCC that WQCW is not among the four highest-rated stations in the market and that there would still be eight unique station owners upon the completion of the WQCW purchase, and in a statement said that "it made more sense to own the stations outright."
In the interim, Gray took over WQCW and WOCW through a
local marketing agreement on February 1.
[ The sale was completed on April 1.
On January 14, 2015, the low power repeater WOCW was sold to ]DTV America Corporation
DTV America Corporation is an owner of low-power television stations in the United States.
Majority owned by telecommunications conglomerate INNOVATE Corp., DTV America stations have no local operations, and the company relies almost entirely ...
for a token payment of $100; WQCW's move to the WOWK tower made the repeater redundant.
Newscasts and local programming
The station's local programming efforts have been mostly high school sports
Amateur sports are sports in which participants engage largely or entirely without remuneration. The distinction is made between amateur sporting participants and professional sporting participants, who are paid for the time they spend competing ...
and local professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
promotions such as the Portsmouth-based Revolutionary Championship Wrestling. Under Lockwood's ownership, the station did not produce much local content, and served mostly as a "pass-through" for automated programming.
The station, under the WHCP call letters, attempted a local news operation between November 7, 2005 and February 21, 2006, with longtime local anchor Tom McGee as the station's main anchor and news director
A news director is an individual at a broadcast station or network or a newspaper who is in charge of the news department. In local news, the news director is typically in charge of the entire news staff, including journalists, news presenters, ...
for weeknight shows at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. The program was done on a very low budget; it didn't have teleprompter
A teleprompter, also known as an autocue, is a display device that prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script.
Using a teleprompter is similar to using cue cards. The screen is in front of, and usually be ...
s or an IFB system, and its presentation style was very crude even by small-market standards. The station also did not subscribe to Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
newswires. As a result, it never seriously competed with the major stations in the market at 6 p.m., nor WVAH's 10 p.m. show.
McGee was forced from the station on February 21, 2006 over claims the station refused to provide health insurance to his reporters, and because of low revenues allegedly paid some employees with discounted and/or free food from station advertisers, and a dispute over the addition of a news helicopter. The news department was shuttered altogether two days later.
On March 31, 2014, concurrent with Gray's purchase of WQCW, WSAZ-TV moved its 10 p.m. newscast from WSAZ-DT2, its second digital subchannel, to WQCW. The newscast was also expanded from thirty minutes to one hour, putting it in direct competition with the 10 p.m. newscast on WVAH that is produced by ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
affiliate WCHS-TV
WCHS-TV (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Charleston, West Virginia, United States, serving the Charleston– Huntington market as an affiliate of ABC and Fox. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain se ...
(channel 8).
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WQCW shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 30, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 17.[http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-138A2.pdf ] Through the use of PSIP
The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...
, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former UHF analog channel 30.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wqcw
The CW affiliates
Heroes & Icons affiliates
Start TV affiliates
Quest (American TV network) affiliates
Court TV affiliates
QCW
Television channels and stations established in 1998
1998 establishments in Ohio
Gray Television