WBZ-TV

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WBZ-TV is the CBS television owned-and-operated station serving the Boston, Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire television markets. The station's transmitter is located in Needham, Massachusetts while the studios are located on Soldiers Field Road in Boston's Allston/Brighton neighborhood. Before becoming a CBS affiliate on January 2, 1995, the station was a NBC affiliate.

1 History
- 1.1 Logos
2 Coverage area
3 Newscasts
4 Staff
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

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History

WBZ-TV 4 was the first commercial television station in New England when it signed on in June 9, 1948. It beat WNHC-TV in New Haven (now WTNH-TV) to the air by a matter of weeks. Owned by the Group W Broadcasting division of Westinghouse along with WBZ radio, WBZ-TV immediately joined NBC, although it shared ABC programming with WNAC-TV (now WHDH) until the original WHDH-TV (now WCVB) signed on in 1957.

The station went off the air on August 31, 1954, when Hurricane Carol toppled the station's self-supporting tower over its studios. A temporary transmitter was installed on a nearby tower and later on WNAC-TV's (now WHDH-TV) tower. In 1957, WBZ-TV began broadcasting from a 1200-foot (366-meter) tower in Needham, Massachusetts. The tower site is now known as the CBS digital television facility which is used by several Boston-area television stations, including WGBH-TV and WCVB-TV.

WBZ-TV was a pioneer in Boston television with live broadcasts of Boston institutions such as Red Sox games. It was also the first Boston station to have daily newscasts. In the mid-1960s, it adopted the Eyewitness News format that had been pioneered at sister station KYW-TV in Philadelphia. It led the news ratings in Boston for many years until WCVB-TV passed it in the mid-1970s. The station also broadcast locally produced programs such as Evening Magazine in the 1970s and 1980s as well as a talk show called People Are Talking in the 1980s and early 1990s. One of the latter program's host was Tom Bergeron.

As a NBC affiliate, the station was known to preempt several hours of network programming a day—a common practice among Group W stations. It primarily preempted several daytime morning programs. On January 3, 1983, when People Are Talking expanded to one hour, WBZ-TV dropped NBC's Another World, which would move to WQTV (now WBPX) until the fall of 1987, when the show moved to WHLL (now WUNI-TV) and later to WMFP in the early 1990s. The station also dropped many Saturday morning cartoons in 1990, though NBC would end such programming in 1992. Despite the preemptions, NBC was generally satisfied with WBZ-TV, which was one of NBC's strongest affiliates.

A partnership struck between Westinghouse and CBS in late 1994 led to WBZ-TV switching its affiliation to CBS. The station ended its nearly 47-year affiliation with NBC on January 2, 1995. As a CBS affiliate, the station did not preempt any CBS programming as per Westinghouse's agreement with CBS. WHDH-TV, the former CBS affiliate, picked up the NBC affiliation. When Westinghouse Electric Company merged with CBS in November 1995, WBZ-TV became a CBS owned and operated station. CBS then had to sell WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island due to signal overlap between WBZ-TV and WPRI-TV.

For many years, WBZ-TV was a strong second to the long-dominant WCVB-TV in the Boston news race. Although the station tends to rank #1 in daytime and primetime ratings, Channel 4's local news ratings have suffered since the switch in network affiliations. Taken as a whole, its local news is the lowest rated of Boston's "big 3" affiliates, having dipped behind a resurgent WHDH-TV as well. In an attempt to bolster local news ratings, Channel 4 reinstated its 5 PM news and dismissed its former lead anchor Josh Binswanger, leading to the return of long-time anchor Jack Williams to the prime-time newscasts. In addition, after Ed Carroll left the station in October 2005 after failing to get a new contract, the station hired Ken Barlow from KARE-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to replace him as chief meteorologist.

Channel 4 has changed its news and station branding continuously, from "Eyewitness News" to "WBZ News 4" to "News 4 New England" to "WBZ 4 News." On February 1, 2004, WBZ changed to the current "CBS 4" identity.

After Viacom's (whose head Sumner Redstone comes from Boston) merger with CBS in 2000, WBZ-TV's operations were merged with that of Boston's UPN affiliate, WSBK-TV, and later with WLWC-TV, the UPN affiliate in nearby Providence. Today, the master control for all three stations as well as the studios and offices of WBZ-TV and WSBK-TV are co-located at WBZ's facilities in Allston.

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Logos

WBZ once held a record for the longest-lived numeric logo in New England. In 1965, WBZ unveiled a new stylized "4" logo (using the same font as the old Group W logo, which was customary among Group W stations at the time. The logo became italicized in the late 1980s, but remained the same font), and that style of "4" had become a part of every logo for the station until September 1995, when it unveiled a "Circle-4" logo. WBZ lost this record when WCVB's stylized "5" crossed the 31-year mark in 2003. The stylized 4 logo was also used on KARK-TV, the NBC affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Stylized "4" Logo (1965-Sept. 1996)	Box Logo (Sept. 1996-Jan. 1998)	Circle 4 Logo (Jan. 1998-Sept. 2003)	Crescent 4 Logo (Sept. 2003-Jan. 2004)
Black & Gold Logo (Jan. 2004-Jan. 2005)	Current Logo (Jan. 2005-Present)

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Coverage area

WBZ-TV's transmitter is located in Needham, Massachusetts, on the same tower as WCVB-TV, in fact, the transmitter is owned by CBS itself. Its signal covers Greater Boston, southern New Hampshire, northern Rhode Island, and northeastern Connecticut. WBZ-TV's coverage area overlaps with several other CBS affiliates, including WPRI in Providence, Rhode Island, WGME in Portland, Maine, and WCAX in Burlington, Vermont. The station is also one of six local Boston TV stations seen in Canada on the Bell ExpressVu satellite provider, and is also seen on most cable systems in Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec.

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Newscasts

Image:Wbz cbs 4 tv.jpg The station operates a Bell LongRanger 206LIV called SkyEye 4. In addition to its Boston studios, WBZ-TV opened a studio in Worcester on July 20, 2005.

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