WPHL-TV (channel 17), branded as PHL17, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW. The station also maintains a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV. Owned and operated by The CW's parent company, Nexstar Media Group, WPHL-TV maintains studios in the Wynnefield section of West Philadelphia and broadcasts itself and WUVP-DT (channel 65), the area's Univision station, from a tower in the antenna farm at Roxborough.
The first incarnation of channel 17 was a low-profile religious station, WPCA-TV, which started broadcasting July 17, 1960. It was founded by Percy Crawford's Young People's Church of the Air. Crawford died months after starting the station, and it went off the air August 1, 1962. It was purchased by a group led by Aaron Katz and relaunched as WPHL-TV on September 12, 1965. WPHL-TV was one of three independent stations, all on the ultra high frequency (UHF) band, to start in Philadelphia that year, competing with channel 29 (now WTXF-TV) and the original channel 48 (WKBS-TV). The station was merged into the U.S. Communications group, owned by American Viscose Corporation, in 1967 alongside construction permits held by Daniel H. Overmyer; WPHL-TV was the most successful station in the group and the only one not threatened with closure. Channel 17 was a sports broadcaster from the start, airing Philadelphia 76ers basketball from 1965 to 1972 and Philadelphia Phillies baseball from 1971 to 1982.
The Providence Journal Company acquired WPHL-TV in 1978. During its ownership, channel 17 lost the Phillies after Taft Broadcasting, then-owner of channel 29, acquired the team, but it strengthened its competitive position by buying most of WKBS-TV's programming inventory when it liquidated in 1983. A new Taft Broadcasting, formed after the Taft family sold the earlier company and its stations, acquired the station at the end of 1987, with most of channel 29's executives defecting to channel 17. The station became more competitive, but the new Taft Broadcasting was burdened by debt from a leveraged buyout and sold WPHL-TV to Tribune Broadcasting in 1992. In Tribune's first three years of ownership, channel 17 became the home of Phillies baseball once again; affiliated with The WB; and launched its first local newscast, a joint venture with The Philadelphia Inquirer known as Inquirer News Tonight that lasted two years. When the partnership was dissolved at the end of 1996, WPHL took newscast production in-house, but it struggled to find a substantial audience, with Tribune outsourcing news production to WCAU (channel 10) in 2005.
When The WB and UPN merged to form The CW in 2006, WPHL-TV was excluded from the new network and instead affiliated with MyNetworkTV. In 2012, the station switched news providers from WCAU to WPVI-TV (channel 6), and in 2015, it began producing an in-house morning newscast. Nexstar acquired Tribune in 2019 and, after purchasing The CW in 2022, moved its Philadelphia affiliation to WPHL-TV in 2023.
Early history WPCA-TV: Religious programming Radio station WKDN of Camden, New Jersey, received a construction permit for ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 17 as WKDN-TV on January 27, 1954. (Guide to reading History Cards) After not building the facility, the station sold the permit to the Young People's Church of the Air, owned by Percy Crawford, for $40,000 in February 1959. The call letters were changed to WPCA-TV, reflecting both his initials and the name of his long-running broadcast ministry; the city of license was changed from Camden to Philadelphia in March 1960.
Promising a lineup of religious programs and family entertainment, the station signed on July 17, 1960, as the second local UHF station after educational WHYY-TV (channel 35). Crawford died October 31, 1960, after suffering a heart attack while driving. The station went dark August 1, 1962, having operated for two years.
WPHL-TV: Independent station relaunch When channel 17 went dark, its sale was immediately announced to a consortium headed by attorney Aaron Jerome Katz and two real estate men. The station returned to the air on January 31, only to go dark again on June 14, when an application for the sale of channel 17 was finally filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The station's cameras were lent to WHYY-TV, the new public television station in Wilmington, Delaware, to allow that station to operate before a scheduled donation of equipment could be transferred and the station's own equipment did not function properly.
The Philadelphia Television Broadcasting Company, headed by Katz and advertising executive Len Stevens, was approved to purchase the station in mid-1964. After receiving approval to boost its effective radiated power from 12,000 to 626,000 watts, the new owners returned channel 17 to the air on September 17, 1965, as independent station WPHL-TV. Among its leading local programs were a weekly teen dance show, a children's cartoon program and a jazz show hosted by Sid Mark. It also carried away games of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. The relaunched channel 17 was one of three new UHF stations to launch in the Philadelphia market in 1965. Channel 29 debuted as WIBF-TV on May 16, and channel 48 was activated as WKBS-TV on September 1. WPHL-TV increased its effective radiated power to 1 million watts in August 1966.
U.S. Communications ownership In 1967, U.S. Communications Corporation, a division of the American Viscose Corporation (AVC), acquired WPHL-TV in exchange for 30 percent of the stock in a larger station group it was assembling. This group would include WPHL-TV and five construction permits for new major-market UHF stations held by Daniel H. Overmyer's Overmyer Communications. The relationship between WPHL-TV and Overmyer had been developing since the start of 1966, when former Overmyer director Robert F. Adams left the company and started a consulting firm serving the Overmyer group and WPHL-TV; further, channel 17 had signed up for the proposed Overmyer Network, which operated in May 1967 under other ownership as the short-lived United Network with WPHL-TV as one of its affiliates. One partner in the investment firm facilitating the sale of the Overmyer construction permits had been a stockholder in channel 17. The FCC approved the sale on December 8, 1967, waiving a proposed rule in place since 1965 that sought to limit television station ownership within the top 50 markets, a practice the FCC had employed before in similar transactions. Katz and Stevens, the previous owners of WPHL-TV, became senior executives in the new U.S. Communications Corporation. After the sale, in May 1968, WPHL-TV built a new tower and transmitter facility in Roxborough, separate from the Wyndmoor studio site, with an effective radiated power of 4.3 million watts.
WPHL-TV, which launched with 76ers games, built an identity as a sports station. It made history in 1969 as the first UHF independent station to air a scheduled regular-season pro football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Colts; the game had been delayed from Sunday to Monday night due to the World Series being played in Baltimore, but WCAU-TV (channel 10), Philadelphia's CBS affiliate, refused to air it to prioritize prime time programming. In November 1970, the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team announced the move of their telecasts from WFIL-TV (channel 6), the team's broadcaster for 21 seasons, in a three-year deal for 70 games a season. This came after AVC acquired the rights from Phillies owner R. R. M. Carpenter Jr. The next season, WPHL dropped the 76ers to carry Big 5 college basketball, which it believed was more popular. In 1974, the station broadcast road games of the Philadelphia Bell in the World Football League.
U.S. Communications considered WPHL-TV its flagship station; it was the strongest ratings performer of the three Philadelphia-market independent stations, with a sign-on–sign-off audience share of 7 percent in November 1969, and the number-one UHF independent nationwide in prime time. WPHL-TV was reportedly the company's only moneymaker when, in October 1970, Stevens was promoted to chief operating officer in an executive reshuffle. At that time, WPHL-TV was detached from U.S. Communications into a separate entity, WPHL-TV Inc. This situation reflected the wide gap in outcomes between WPHL-TV and the other stations. Over the course of 1971, every other U.S. Communications station was threatened with closure: KEMO-TV in San Francisco and WATL-TV in Atlanta were shuttered in March due to low advertising revenues, and the group intended to do the same to WXIX-TV in Cincinnati and WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh that August; WPGH-TV shut down, though the Cincinnati station was ultimately spared and sold to Metromedia. However, WPHL-TV was frequently linked in rumors to financial difficulties of its own, including by creditors of the other AVC stations, and management admitted its sale was a possibility. An attempt to sell the station to Music Fair Enterprises in 1972 fell through. After the transaction was called off, it emerged that the primary reason was a $2.2 million lawsuit filed by program distributor MCA Television for licensing fees it claimed to be owed.
After prior sale attempts, and in spite of the fact that channel 17 was losing money, AVC instead invested in WPHL-TV. In 1975, it moved from Wyndmoor, as well as sales offices on Walnut Street, into a converted A&P grocery store in Philadelphia's Wynnefield neighborhood. That same year, Gene McCurdy became channel 17's new general manager less than a month after being ousted from WPVI-TV.
During the 1970s, channel 17 had a host for horror movies: Joseph Zawislak, better known as Dr. Shock, who developed his on-air persona in the mold of John Zacherle on WCAU-TV. Zawislak's 13-week trial as a host was ended by station management due to low ratings, but after receiving thousands of letters and cards in protest of the cancellation, management reversed its decision and brought him back, first on Saturday nights and later Saturday afternoons; his show was among the station's highest-rated programs outside of Phillies games. His young daughter Doreen, known on air as "Bubbles", frequently appeared. Zawislak, a magician, died of a heart attack in 1979.
Providence Journal Company ownership As early as 1976, AVC sought to shed non-core business areas and focus on its industrial activities. As a result, it sold WPHL-TV in 1978 for $10 million to the Providence Journal Company (ProJo), publisher of the namesake newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island, and owner of two radio stations there. It was ProJo's first television station. The new ownership made a visible commitment to the station; in 1979, it increased the rights fees it paid to the Phillies just so the team could sign free agent Pete Rose.
In 1981, Taft Broadcasting—owner of channel 29, by this time WTAF-TV—acquired a 47-percent stake in the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team as part of a group headed by team executive Bill Giles. Immediately, it was announced that Phillies games would move to channel 29 beginning in 1984, after the existing WPHL-TV contract ended; this was brought forward a year to 1983 after Taft negotiated a buyout of channel 17's final year on the contract. Simultaneously, in part filling the gap on its schedule, WPHL-TV became the new television home of the Philadelphia 76ers, previously broadcast by WKBS-TV. Beyond sports, WPHL-TV produced Dancin' on Air, a teen dance show, beginning in 1981. The program, originally co-hosted by Eddie Bruce and Bill O'Brien and later by just O'Brien, originated from the WPHL-TV studios as well as theme parks and beaches around the Philadelphia market. Later, a national version, Dance Party USA, was produced from the WPHL-TV studios for the USA Network; it was taped at channel 17 until 1988 and aired until June 1992.