WGRZ - History

History

The station premiered in 1954 as WGR-TV, owned by the WGR Corporation along with WGR-AM 550. It was an NBC affiliate sharing the 140 Barton Street studios of UHF outlet WBUF/Channel 17. In 1955, WBUF, which was silent at the time, was sold to NBC. In January 1956, WGR became an ABC affiliate after NBC moved its programming to WBUF. It was a bad move. All television reception at the time was via set top rabbit ears or roof top aerials. UHF television technology was in its infancy, and most people did not understand how to receive the signals, which are very different and subject to much greater degradations in strength than those of the other local stations, which transmitted on VHF. WGR switched back to NBC in September 1958 after NBC shut down the money-bleeding WBUF (which eventually was revived as a public broadcaster; the license is currently held by channel 23 WNLO while the channel 17 space is currently occupied by WNED), although WGR continued to carry a secondary affiliation with ABC for another two months until WKBW-TV/Channel 7 signed on in November of that year. The abject failure of WBUF-TV in Buffalo actually gave UHF a bad name to the broadcasting industry and the viewing public, but served as a boon to WGR-TV locally. Viewers still wanted more choices, could easily receive the VHF channel 2 signal, and the station now had more syndicated and network program options. The station also carried programming from the now-defunct DuMont Television Network.

During the 1960s, WGR-TV also operated a repeater station on VHF channel 6 in Jamestown, New York; this continued until the channel 2 transmitter was moved from Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo to the South Wales transmitter site, which greatly improved signal coverage into the population center of the mountainous Chautauqua region south of Buffalo.

In 1959, WGR launched an FM radio station, WGR-FM 96.9 (now WGRF). Originally a simulcast of its AM radio sister, it began airing its own programming under the WGRQ call sign in 1973. Over the years, WGR Corporation bought several other radio and television stations across the country, including WNEP-TV in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, WHAM-TV in Rochester (the call letters of which Transcontinent would change to WROC-TV) and WDAF-AM/FM/TV in Kansas City, and eventually became known as Transcontinent Broadcasting. Transcontinent merged with Taft Broadcasting in 1964.

In 1972 new studios were constructed at 259 Delaware Avenue.

On May 1, 1983, WGR added a Z to its callsign, thus becoming WGRZ. Less than two weeks later Taft Broadcasting and General Cinema Corporation (which operated the Coral Television division) completed the trade deal that was first announced in December 1982 in which Taft gave Channel 2 to General Cinema while in exchange Taft got Miami's WCIX. (Taft held on to WGR-AM and WGRQ/WRLT until 1987, when both stations were sold to Rich Communications. The AM station is now owned by Entercom Communications, while its former FM sister is now owned by Cumulus Media.)

In the years following the 1983 exchange deal, WGRZ changed hands several times. General Cinema exited the broadcasting business by selling Coral Television to WGRZ Acquisition Corp., a partnership between SJL Broadcast Management, TA Associates and Smith Broadcasting, for $56 million in 1986. Native Buffalonian and current Newport Television CEO Sandy DiPasquale also held an ownership stake in WGRZ (through his stake in Smith Broadcasting) at this time. Two years later, Tak Communications purchased WGRZ from the SJL-led group for $100 million in 1988. Less than four years later, Tak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991, and a group of creditors seized the company's assets in 1994. Argyle Television Holdings II, a broadcasting holding company formed by a group of managers who had recently left Argyle I after that company sold all of its stations to New World Communications, purchased the station (and then-sister KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii) from Tak's creditors for $91 million (on WGRZ's end) in 1995. Argyle II closed on WGRZ in April of that year, followed by KITV two months later.

WGRZ nearly lost its NBC affiliation in 1994 when NBC's parent company, General Electric, announced plans to purchase King World Productions, the then-owner of CBS affiliate WIVB-TV. Had it occurred, WIVB would have become an NBC owned-and-operated station. However, the deal fell through, and WIVB was sold to the LIN TV Corporation (who entered into a long-term affiliation renewal with CBS for that station, currently set to expire at the end of 2014) instead (coincidentally, King World would eventually be acquired by CBS, who merged the company into CBS Television Distribution in 2007). However, they did lose the local rights to the Buffalo Bills to WIVB when the NFL on CBS returned in 1998 with the rights to the American Football Conference package.

Gannett acquired WGRZ and WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan from Argyle II in a 1996 swap deal with KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and WLWT in Cincinnati, Ohio going from Gannett to Argyle II. The deal— which was related to issues from cross-ownership rules related to Gannett's ownership of The Cincinnati Enquirer— closed in January 1997, seven months prior to Argyle II's merger with the broadcasting unit of the Hearst Corporation to form what then became Hearst-Argyle Television (which Hearst now wholly owns under a new name, Hearst Television).