'''''"CBS3"''''' is the
CBS owned-and-operated
Television station in
Philadelphia . Its transmitter in the
Roxborough section of the city, a tower shared with
WPVI-TV . Its signal covers the
Delaware Valley area.
KYW is one of the world's oldest television stations. It began in
1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by
Philco . In
1939 , it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now
WNBC-TV ) in
New York City , becoming
NBC 's second television affiliate—a link that would last for 56 years. On
September 3 ,
1941 ; W3XE received a commercial license as WPTZ, the nation's third commercial television station and the first outside New York City. It was one of three stations (along with WNBT and
WRGB in
Albany, New York ) that premiered NBC's regular television service in
1946 .
Westinghouse Electric Corporation , owner of Philadelphia's NBC affiliate,
KYW-AM 1060 , bought WPTZ in
1952 . In
1956 , Westinghouse traded WPTZ and KYW-AM to NBC for
Cleveland 's WNBK (now
WKYC ) and
WTAM -AM-FM. NBC badly wanted an owned and operated station in Philadelphia, the nation's fourth largest television market and the only top-five market in which it didn't own a station. It threatened to pull all of its programming from WPTZ and Group W's other NBC affiliate,
WBZ-TV in
Boston , unless the swap was made. When NBC took over, it changed the calls to WRCV-AM-TV (for A '''V'''ictor). Shortly after NBC took over, the WRCV stations moved from their original tower in the suburb of
Wyndmoor to a new 1100-foot tower in Roxborough. The tower was co-owned with WFIL-TV (now WPVI) and added much of
Delaware and the
Lehigh Valley to WRCV's city-grade coverage.
However, almost immediately after the trade was finalized, Westinghouse complained to the
FCC and the
Justice Department about NBC's blackmail. In
1965 , after a protracted legal battle, the FCC ordered the swap reversed without NBC realizing any profit on the deal. When Westinghouse took over the Cleveland stations, it changed the calls to KYW-AM-TV (the WPTZ calls eventually went to
A Station In Upstate New York ), so when Westinghouse regained ownership of the Philadelphia cluster, channel 3 became KYW-TV. Westinghouse took over a transmitter facility far superior to the one it had to give up in 1956.
For the next 30 years, KYW frequently pre-empted many of NBC's network shows, choosing to air its own local programming instead. Pre-empted shows were usually daytime game shows or reruns of NBC prime time shows from previous seasons prior to syndication. Sometimes the station even pre-empted low rated prime time shows. The average amount of pre-emptions over the years was two hours a day—a pattern followed by other Group W stations. At one point, in the fall of
1980 , KYW preempted the entire morning NBC schedule after the
Today Show . The network shows ended up on
WPHL-TV until
1976 . From
1976 to
1977 , the pre-empted shows were on WKBS-TV (now
WGTW-TV ). The shows would return to WPHL in 1977 and were broadcast from that station until
1982 . Preempted programs were also on
WTAF/WTXF in
1987 , and WGTW in
1992 . This was standard practice for the stations in Westinghouse's broadcasting unit,
Group W . However, NBC was very peturbed at seeing its programs preempted in the nation's fourth-largest market, since KYW was its weakest major-market affiliate for much of the 80s (see below). It continued to pursue efforts to get an owned and operated station in Philadelphia.
In
1994 ,
ABC cut a deal to move its
Baltimore affiliation away from its longtime affiliate, Westinghouse-owned
WJZ-TV . Westinghouse was outraged, and as a safeguard began shopping for affiliation deals for the entire Group W television unit--KYW, WBZ, WJZ,
KDKA-TV in
Pittsburgh and
KPIX-TV in
San Francisco . Group W eventually struck an agreement to switch KYW, WJZ and WBZ to CBS (KDKA and KPIX were already CBS affiliates), entering into an arrangement under which CBS and Westinghouse would jointly own KYW, as well as newly-acquired stations in
Miami ,
Salt Lake City and
Denver . As a result, CBS was required to sell its longtime owned and operated station,
WCAU-TV . After NBC won a bidding war with
Fox and
New World Communications (which had planned to switch WCAU to Fox but not to carry the Fox children's programming, and only after
WTXF-TV was sold to Fox), CBS agreed to sell WCAU to NBC. On
September 11 ,
1995 , KYW and WCAU swapped network affiliations. This made KYW the third station in the city to affiliate with CBS (the first being WFIL) and gave NBC its long-coveted owned and operated station in Philadelphia.
Westinghouse and CBS merged two months later, in November 1995, making KYW a CBS owned and operated station. In
2000 , the combined company was purchased by
Viacom . The Viacom deal brought KYW-TV under common ownership with Philadelphia's
UPN affiliate,
WPSG-TV and WPSG moved into KYW's studios on
Independence Mall . When Viacom spun off
CBS Corporation in
2005 , KYW and WPSG (the latter soon to become
The CW affiliate), along with the rest of Viacom's broadcasting interests, became a part of the new company. In
2007 , KYW and WPSG will move to a new broadcast complex on Spring Garden Street in Center City.
KYW called itself simply "channel 3" until
1991 , when it started calling itself "KYW-3." On
New Year's Day 2003 , KYW officially rebranded itself as "CBS 3."
From
1967 to 2003, KYW's logo was a stylized "3" in the distinctive font made famous by Group W. The logo was finally retired after KYW rebranded itself as CBS 3. In its place, it used a plainer "3" in a font similar to that of other CBS O&Os. It was the longest continuously-used logo in Philadelphia television history until
2006 , when WPVI's simple "6" logo passed it. The stylized 3 logo was also used on
WSAV 3 the NBC affiliate in
Savannah, Georiga .
