WKPT-TV

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WKPT-TV
Kingsport / Johnson City / Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia
Branding	ABC19 WKPT
Slogan	ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source
Channels	19 (UHF) analog, 27 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	ABC
Owner	Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation
Founded	August 20, 1969
Call letters meaning	W KingsPorT
Transmitter Power	1260 kW (analog) & 5.38 kW (digital)
Website	www.wkpttv.com

WKPT-TV is an ABC television affiliate station in Kingsport, Tennessee. It serves the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee and Virginia from a transmitter on Holston Mountain, on the Sullivan County - Carter County county line, near Elizabethton, Tennessee.

WKPT-TV is owned by the Holston Valley Broadcasting Corporation, along with WAPK-CA channel 36, WKPT AM 1400, WOPI-AM 1490, WKTP-AM 1590 and WTFM-FM 98.5.

Contents 1 History 2 Newscasts 2.1 Titles 2.2 Themes 3 External links

[edit] History

WKPT-TV signed on the air August 20, 1969 as an ABC affiliate, taking the ABC programs previously shown on the NBC primary affiliate WCYB-TV, Bristol, Virginia, and WJHL-TV, Johnson City, Tennessee, the primary CBS affiliate. Until WKPT-TV signed on, ABC affiliate WLOS-TV, Channel 13, in nearby Asheville, North Carolina considered the Tri-Cities part of its own primary coverage area.

WKPT-TV has the historic distinction of being the oldest UHF television station in Tennessee to have maintained continuous operation on the UHF band to the present. WKPT-TV was one of the first stations in the country to utilize a newly-adopted (at the time) FCC rule called "must-carry," that required local cable companies to black out nearby stations and their networks that were carried on any local cable systems, and cover the channel with the local network affiliate. As a result, the easily receivable off-air network signal from WLOS-TV, 80 miles away, was always blacked out on cable systems in Kingsport, Bristol and Johnson City and the surrounding communities and covered by the WKPT-TV signal any time both stations were broadcasting the network; local WLOS-TV programming was not blacked out.

While both WCYB and WJHL received the ABC network via traditional microwave links provided by AT&T back in the 50's and 60's, when WKPT signed on the air in 1969, station owners developed their own low-cost way of bringing ABC to upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. Before the advent of satellite technology, WKPT utilized a series of private microwave relay stations between Kingsport and Knoxville. As the ABC-TV signal was being transmitted via traditional microwave from AT&T into the studios of then-ABC affiliate WTVK-TV, Channel 26 on Sharp's Ridge in Knoxville (now CBS affiliate WVLT, Channel 8), WKPT would literally "grab" the telco signal just as it was going into the WTVK studios, then the ABC-TV signal bound for WKPT was transmitted via microwave, to a relay station 70 air miles east atop Camp Creek Bald on the Tennessee-North Carolina border in southern Greene County, Tennessee. That same ABC-TV signal was then re-transmitted via another WKPT microwave 33 air miles further east to the WKPT transmitter site on Holston Mountain near Elizabethton, Tennessee. From the relay point there, it was transmitted via yet a third WKPT microwave 25 air miles down to the studios in downtown Kingsport, through the station's master control board, and then back to Holston Mountain via the station's regular studio-transmitter link, and then broadcast on Channel 19. If any part of the private microwave relay system malfunctioned, as it did periodically because of heavy snowfall or downed trees, the station was forced to, and had permission to, temporarily broadcast ABC-TV through the off-air signal of either WTVK or WLOS-TV, as long as those stations were broadcasting the same ABC-TV program. Occasionally, WKPT accidentally aired those stations' ID's and had to quickly cover them up. When WTVK-TV swapped networks with WATE-TV, WKPT merely moved its permanent Knoxville microwave relay 800 feet west to WATE-TV's transmitter site, also on Sharp's Ridge, and continued to receive ABC-TV via its privately-owned microwave relay system.

WKPT's first branding in the 1970s was "WKPT, Tri-Cities' ABC," which featured the first musical station ID's in the area (using TM Productions "Design '70" ID package). That concept was later used by WATE, when that station switched to the ABC network in 1979.

In 1998, the station rebranded as "ABC19 WKPT," which marked the first time the station's off-air channel number was actually mentioned on-air since the 1980s.

[edit] Newscasts

WKPT-TV's first personalities in the early 70's included news anchor Bill Freehoff, and weather with Bill Trailer. These two distinguished broadcasters had been popular personalities on WKPT-AM1400, and made the move to television.

Until February 2002, WKPT produced news in-house[1]; From February 2002 to September 2006, 6pm and 11pm newscasts originated from WJHL-TV and were simulcast on both WJHL and WKPT. In situations where one station was off time (due to network runover or other circumstances), the news was broadcast on the other station at the correct time. As of September 2006, WJHL's nightside broadcast is repeated on WKPT at or around 1:06 AM.

Also, WJHL's 12pm weekday newscast is repeated on WAPK on a half-hour delay at 12:30 PM.

===Weekdays===i love myselft

• ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source Nightside (1:06-1:36 AM)

[edit] Titles

• The Television 19 News (1969-1974)
• TV-19 News (1974-1981)
• Newswatch 19 (1981-1994)
• WKPT-TV News (1994-1999)
• WKPT-TV News on ABC 19 (1999-2002)
• ABC 19 Tri-Cities News Source (2002-present)

[edit] Themes

• WNDU 1986 News Theme (Unknown; 1988-1993)
• Production Music: Intrepid (Network Music; 1993-1998)
• Bold Branding News (Joe Hogue Productions; 1998-2002)
• Counterpoint (Stephen Arnold Music; 2002-Present)

[edit] External links

• WKPT-TV Homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WKPT

ABC Network Affiliates in the state of Tennessee
WKRN 2 (Nashville) - WATE 6 (Knoxville) - WBBJ 7 (Jackson) - WTVC 9 (Chattanooga) - WKPT 19 (Kingsport) - WPTY 24 (Memphis)
See also: CBS, CW, Fox, ION, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS and Other stations in Tennessee