WPMT - History

History

The station began broadcasting on December 21, 1952 as WSBA-TV. It was owned by Susquehanna Radio Corporation along with WSBA-AM 910. It was one of the first commercially-licensed UHF stations in the United States, hitting the airwaves just over three months after KPTV in Portland, Oregon. However, that station moved to VHF channel 12 a few years after taking to the air. This makes WPMT the second-oldest continuously broadcasting UHF station in the country only behind WSBT-TV in South Bend, Indiana (although WSBT moved from its original channel 34 to channel 22 in the late 1950s, making WPMT the oldest UHF station that broadcasts continuously on the same virtual channel number to this day).

WSBA was originally an ABC affiliate. However, in 1961, the station switched to CBS and joined the Keystone Network which comprised WHP-TV in Harrisburg and WLYH-TV in Lebanon. The three stations provided a strong combined signal with about 55% overlap. Initially, WHP-TV, WLYH and WSBA aired the same programming. By the late 1960s, while all three stations ran most of the CBS programming schedule, WHP-TV ran different local programming during non-network hours, while WLYH and WSBA continued to simulcast nearly all the broadcast day. WHP ran CBS shows that WSBA and WLYH preempted. These two stations ran programming that WHP preempted. All three ran most of the CBS lineup duplicating over 3/4 of the network's programs. In May 1983, Susquehanna sold WSBA-TV to Idaho-based Mohawk Broadcasting, who changed its calls to the current WPMT. The station signed off in August and returned to the air in September as an independent station. It was a typical UHF independent airing cartoons, sitcoms, movies, dramas, sports, and westerns.

On October 6, 1986 after Mohawk sold the station to Renaissance Broadcasting, it became one of the charter affiliates of the newly-launched Fox network. In the mid-1990s, WPMT featured original kids programming hosted by the station's mascot, a clown named Pete McTee (a play on the station's call letters). In 1997, Renaissance merged with Tribune Broadcasting, WPMT's present owner.

The station's newscasts were seen in a fictional sense in the 2010 film Unstoppable, which is set in the station's market area.