WDTV - History

History

It signed-on as WJPB-TV on March 17, 1954 as the second television station in the market licensed to Fairmont. WJPB was a primary NBC affiliate but maintained secondary relations with ABC and CBS. WTAP-TV in Parkersburg was technically the area's first outlet having launched October 8, 1953. That station cleared programming from NBC, CBS, and ABC but was intended to be a primary NBC outlet. Originally, there were plans calling for WJPB to join WTAP (located seventy miles to the west) and turn North-Central West Virginia into one giant market. However, the latter's analog signal on UHF channel 15 was not strong enough to reach across the very rugged dissected plateau to provide Fairmont, Clarksburg, and Weston with adequate reception. Likewise, WJPB's analog signal on UHF channel 35 did not reach Parkerburg.

Those two issues, combined with the fact UHF converters were very expensive, led the station to shut down on February 28, 1955. Meanwhile, the area's third station WBOY-TV signed-on from Clarksburg on November 17, 1957. That was originally intended to be the ABC affiliate for all of North-Central West Virginia. After it became clear Clarksburg/Weston/Fairmont and Parkersburg were going to be separate markets, WBOY joined NBC and remains with the network to this day. On December 30, 1959, WJPB's owner was awarded a construction permit for an analog signal on the more desirable VHF channel 5. It signed back on in June 1960 as a sole ABC affiliate licensed to Weston. In 1965, the station changed its call letters to WDTV. The calls had previously been used from 1949 until 1954 on what is now CBS O&O KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. The call sign was reportedly chosen for use on this West Virginia outlet "in honor" of KDKA which had been a charter affiliate with DuMont and served as the default station to Clarksburg/Weston/Fairmont.

In 1967, WDTV switched primary affiliation to CBS. However, for many years it continued sharing ABC with WBOY and aired select sports programming from the network since the market was one of the few in the country without a primary ABC affiliate. The area's cable companies piped in WTAE-TV from Pittsburgh to bring the full ABC schedule to the area. At some point in the 1980s, WDTV and WBOY dropped ABC altogether. The network would not return to a Clarksburg/Weston/Fairmont based station until August 1, 2008 when WBOY launched a new second digital subchannel to offer the network. WDTV aired programming from UPN on its second digital subchannel until September 18, 2006 when the network merged with The WB to form The CW. WVFX, at the time owned separately from this station, became an affiliate with the new combined service (through The CW Plus) on a second digital subchannel.

In 2007, WFVX's owner Davis Television (relation unknown to Wisconsin company of the same name controlling WFXS-DT) merged with Withers Broadcasting. Since the Clarksburg/Weston/Fairmont market has only five full-powered stations, this amount is too few to allow a duopoly under normal Federal Communication Commission (FCC) guidelines. However, Withers obtained a "failed station" waiver allowing the purchase to go through. WDTV shut down analog transmissions on June 12, 2009 and moved its digital broadcasts back to its previous analog channel. Fairmont is technically the market's largest city because Morgantown (though only twenty miles north) has the largest population of any city in the geographic area and is part of the Pittsburgh market. Despite this technicality, the station is still able to sell commercials to businesses in that area. Locations around Morgantown are within reach of over-the-air signals from Pittsburgh stations. In addition to WDTV, most cable providers offer KDKA on their basic tiers. In some cases, that station's high definition feed is offered on the digital tiers instead of WDTV.