Who owns wbz

Entercom and iHeartMedia both said it was too early to say whether there would be any changes at any of their stations affected by the deal, but Beasley immediately gave a full-throated endorsement of the format and programming at The Sports Hub. Together, the companies hope those moves also help them win the approval of the Federal Communications Commission, which still must sign off on the deal.

The companies expect the merger to close as soon as Nov. Bruce J. Mittman, a veteran broadcasting executive who leads the Needham ad agency Mittcom, said he believes the merger has brought about the largest industry reshuffling that Boston has ever seen, and it highlights the need for consolidation as radio competes for ad dollars with digital media.

A weeknight magazine series that originated on sister station KPIX , it spread to all other Group W stations in the late s before its distribution to non-Westinghouse stations as PM Magazine. Later, Edwards and Barry Nolan became the longest running hosts of the program — Evening enjoyed an overyear run, the last nine of which had it compete directly with WCVB's newsmagazine Chronicle.

From January to September , WBZ aired a new, locally-produced magazine series in the time slot, The Report , that specialized in investigative reports. Randy Price was the principal anchor. That show has been syndicated by CBS since WBZ was the first Boston station to have regularly scheduled late-afternoon news. In the s, the station aired First 4 News at pm, anchored by Gail Harris. On Monday, July 21, , a new format premiered in this time slot; Live on 4 , a more infornal program mixing elements of a daytime talk show in with those of a traditional newscast, went on to become a trendsetter in the Boston market in the s.

At first anchored by Gail Harris and Chris Mannou, it later had hosting assumed by many others on the WBZ staff, including entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik and news anchor Chris Conangla in the mids.

Live on 4 gave a loose preview of the news to be covered more in depth at 6 and 11, with featuring stories on lifestyle, health and entertainment topics, along with live, in-studio guests. The program expanded to an hour starting at 5pm in the early '80s. At one point, WCVB considered launching a competing program that was similarly structured to be anchored by Peter Mehegan and Mary Richardson , who later became the long-running anchor team on Chronicle , but it was WNEV who made three attempts at a Live on 4 -inspired show.

After a year of disappointing ratings, Look was trimmed to an hour and retitled New England Afternoon. This, too, failed in the Nielsens , and was canceled in Three years later, WNEV tried the even more news-oriented copy New England News: Live at Five , which essentially became Boston's first proper 5pm newscast, although it still featured the informal structure of Live on 4.

Live at Five was a rare success in the ratings for WNEV's news, but in , the format's creator, anchor Dave Wright who imported it from ATV in Toronto , left the station following a feud between his news producers. WNEV's 5pm news became a completely regular newscast thereafter, with its talent seated on the regular news set. With syndicated news and tabloid programming becoming more the norm in the late '80s and early '90s, Live on 4 , like Evening Magazine , was starting to become of lesser importance to Group W.

In , after a year-run, Live on 4 bid farewell in favor of popular syndicated entries like A Current Affair. WBZ would turn the half-hour over to Eyewitness News , which would eventually expand into 5pm in People Are Talking, — a live early-afternoon talk show aired on WBZ, as it did on some other Westinghouse stations.

In Boston, it was originally hosted by Nancy Merrill and later by Buzz Luttrell, but the best-known host was the program's last, Tom Bergeron. Despite its overnight success, WBZ had little interest in keeping the show as a part of its schedule partially because the station wanted to give priority to the upcoming Group W-distributed talk show, The Wil Shriner Show. The following September, Oprah moved to a 5pm time slot on WCVB, where it became an institution later moving to 4pm in and will continue to air until the show's year run ends on September 9, NBC has traditionally been less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks and had to find alternate independent stations to air whatever programs that BZ did not air.

As an NBC affiliate, the station was known to preempt several hours of network programming a day — a common practice among Group W stations. It primarily preempted several daytime morning programs.

The station also dropped many Saturday morning cartoons in , even though NBC later abandoned such programming in favor of live-action, teen-oriented shows, such as Saved by the Bell. Its evening news team — anchors Liz Walker and Jack Williams , meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler and sportscaster Bob Lobel — was the longest-running news team in New England from until Walker moved to the noon newscasts in Other personalities who came to channel 4 during this time were entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik and political reporter John Henning.

Williams is still at channel 4 today; Walker gave up anchoring duties in and hosted a Sunday morning talk show for several years before leaving the station in October Westinghouse felt betrayed by ABC's decision, and as a safeguard began shopping for affiliation deals for the entire Group W television unit. The Boston market's third network affiliation switch took place on January 2, Channel 4 provides at least grade B coverage of all of Rhode Island, and city-grade coverage of Providence itself as well as Fall River and New Bedford.

At the time, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of two stations with overlapping signals, and wouldn't even consider a waiver for stations with overlapping city-grade signals. Although the station tends to rank 1 in daytime and primetime ratings, Channel 4's local news ratings have suffered since the switch in network affiliations.

In January , attempting to bolster its local news ratings, Channel 4 reinstated its 5 pm news and dismissed its former lead anchor Josh Binswanger, leading to the return of long-time anchor Jack Williams to the prime-time newscasts.

May, along with Sara Underwood, anchored the 5 p. She left the station on March 4, In January , the station launched Project Mass, [1 ] a commitment to cover the community's top concerns in government, transit, healthcare, education, finance, and the environment.

The initiative kicked-off with an online town meeting. In January , longtime morning and midday meteorologist Barry Burbank was re-assigned to the weekend programs. He was replaced by meteorologist Todd Gutner. On February 29, , it was reported that the Writers Guild of America strike caused a significant loss in viewers during the late news. WBZ-TV finished with an average of , total viewers, down from , viewers in On April 1, , CBS' owned-and-operated television stations division ordered widespread budget cuts and staff layoffs from its stations.

Lobel left channel 4 on May 16, while Kulhawik and Wahle left on May 29 and 30, respectively. Steve Burton is now the new sports director, while the position that Kulhawik held was eliminated.

Jack Williams filled in for the 9 p. It was announced on June 6 that reporter and now former-weekend anchor Kate Merrill will anchor the news, along with general assignment duty weekdays at 5 and 6 p. In fact, the tower and site are owned by CBS itself. As part of the analog television shutdown and digital conversion , WBZ-TV shut down its analog transmitter on June 12, , [5 ] and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel WBZ-TV was a local television pioneer in lottery.