WCHS-TV

WCHS-TV (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Charleston, West Virginia, United States, serving the Charleston–Huntington market as an affiliate of ABC and Fox. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to WVAH-TV (channel 11) under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Cunningham Broadcasting. However, Sinclair effectively owns WVAH-TV as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The two stations share studios on Piedmont Road in Charleston; WCHS-TV's transmitter is located atop Coal Mountain, south of Scott Depot, West Virginia.

History

WCHS-TV signed-on August 15, 1954, and was originally owned by the Tierney Company, alongside WCHS radio (580 AM). WCHS-TV was the second station in Charleston after WKNA-TV, which launched on UHF channel 49 as an ABC affiliate in 1953 but went dark in 1955 due to lack of viewership. Originally a CBS station sharing ABC with WSAZ-TV (channel 3), channel 8 became a full CBS affiliate when WHTN-TV

News operation

For most of its history according to Nielsen ratings, WCHS has been a distant runner up to longtime dominant WSAZ-TV. This station and WOWK are usually more competitive in Charleston but WCHS ultimately has higher viewership, however neither is competitive in Huntington, or in the counties of Ohio and Kentucky that are in the market. This is because both stations generally ignore news outside of Charleston. In 2013, however, WCHS opened a small studio and news office in Huntington. WSAZ came in a close second to WCHS for a short period in late 2009–early 2010. This was due to lower lead-in numbers originated by The Jay Leno Show and WSAZ has since regained its first place ratings.

WCHS currently uses the Eyewitness News branding for its news operation and produces three newscasts for WCHS-DT2. This includes Eyewitness News This Morning on Fox 11 seen for an hour on weekday mornings from 7 until 8. There is also an hour-long nightly prime time broadcast known as Eyewitness News at 10 on Fox 11. For many years, WVAH's 10 p.m. news broadcast was the market's only hour-long late evening newscast. This changed on March 31, 2014, when WSAZ moved their 10 p.m. newscast from MyNetworkTV affiliate WSAZ-DT2 to CW affiliate WQCW (channel 30) and expanded the broadcast from a half-hour to a full hour.[3]

Transition to local HD

WCHS and WVAH started the switch over to high definition in June 2012 by first installing a new HD Master Control room. In July 2012, the station started to remove the set from the studio that was installed in the late '90s. The old news desk, backdrop, monitors, and the chroma key wall were moved to a small conference room in the station until the transition to HD news was completed. In late July 2012, the new set arrived from Devlin Design Group based out of Crested Butte, Colorado. During the months of August and September, the new set was installed. On September 29, 2012, WCHS and WVAH became the third and fourth stations in the market to launch high definition newscasts.

callsign	WCHS-TV
city	Charleston, West Virginia
branding	WCHS 8; Your News on 8 Fox Appalachia (8.2)
digital	29 (UHF)
virtual	8
affiliations	8.1: ABC 8.2: Fox 8.3: Antenna TV
owner	Sinclair Broadcast Group
licensee	WCHS Licensee, LLC
location	Charleston–Huntington, West Virginia
country	United States
airdate	August 15, 1954
callsign meaning	From WCHS radio; Charleston
sister stations	WVAH-TV
former channel numbers	Analog: 8 (VHF, 1954–2009) Digital: 41 (UHF, 2001–2018)
former affiliations	CBS (1954–1958, 1962–1986) ABC (1958–1962) NTA (secondary, 1956–1961)
erp	533 kW
haat	514.1 m
facility id	71280
coordinates	38.40778°N, -81.90333°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://wchstv.com

History

News operation

Transition to local HD

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

Carriage disputes

Dish Network

Suddenlink Communications

Time Warner Cable

External links

References