WLKY-TV is a television station located in Louisville, Kentucky USA, and serves the Louisville area and southeastern Indiana. The station is owned by the Hearst Corporation, and is an affiliate of the CBS television network. WLKY's transmitter is located north of Louisville in Floyds Knobs, Indiana.

History [link]

The station signed on September 16, 1961 as an ABC affiliate. Previously, the ABC affiliation in Louisville was shared between NBC affiliate WAVE-TV and then-CBS affiliate WHAS-TV. Although Louisville had been big enough since the early 1950s to support three full affiliates, it had a fairly long wait for full network service. The Louisville market is a fairly large market geographically, and also includes some rugged terrain. The nearest VHF allocations, channels 7 and 13, had been allocated to Evansville and Bowling Green, respectively. These factors caused the first attempt at a full-time ABC affiliate in the area, WKLO-TV, to shut down after only six months on the air. With this in mind, perspective owners were skittish about setting up shop on one of the available UHF allocations in the area.

WLKY was founded by a local group, Kentuckiana Television, who in 1967 sold it to Sonderling Broadcasting (which would acquire several medium-market radio and television stations such as WAST in Albany, New York (now WNYT) until that company merged with Viacom in 1979). In 1973, Sonderling sold the station to Combined Communications. In 1979, Combined Communications merged with the Gannett Company.

In the spring of 1983, Gannett sold WLKY and WPTA in Fort Wayne, Indiana (the two smallest stations in Gannett's television station portfolio at the time) to Pulitzer Publishing after it purchased WLVI-TV in Boston (currently owned by Sunbeam Television) from Field Communications and WTCN-TV (now KARE) in Minneapolis from Metromedia. This was because the WLVI and WTCN purchases left Gannett with two television stations over the Federal Communications Commission's seven-station limit in effect at the time. Pulitzer kept WLKY but sold WPTA to Granite Broadcasting in 1989.

From 1977 to 1986, WLKY was known as "32 Alive." At the time, Combined Communications used the "Alive" moniker on four of its stations-- WLKY, KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, WXIA-TV in Atlanta and WPTA in Fort Wayne. Gannett-owned WXIA still uses the "Alive" moniker, as does WPTA, although that station is no longer owned by Gannett.

In September 1990, just over seven years after Pulitzer completed its purchase of the station, WLKY swapped network affiliations with WHAS (by then owned by the Providence Journal Company, now owned by Belo), with WLKY taking the CBS affiliation and WHAS becoming the ABC affiliate—much to that station's chagrin.^[1] This came after then-second-place ABC became dissatisfied with the viewership ratings at some of its affiliates (while CBS was in distant third at this midpoint of the Laurence Tisch era of the network's history), and ABC wanted a stronger affiliation. WLKY had long been one of ABC's weaker affiliates, while WHAS had been the dominant station in Louisville for almost 20 years at the time.

By this time, however, cable television had gained significant penetration in the Louisville area. Indeed, to this day, cable and satellite are all but essential for acceptable television in much of Kentuckiana. Combined with a low universal cable channel number (Channel 5 on both Comcast and Insight), WLKY's former weakness of being a UHF station was almost completely nullified.

Pulitzer sold its entire broadcasting division, including WLKY, to what was then Hearst-Argyle Television in 1999. Hearst's aggressive marketing helped make the station a factor in the ratings for the first time in memory, and by the dawn of the new millennium it was waging a spirited battle with WAVE for the runner-up slot in the market behind long-dominant WHAS-TV.

On September 1, 2011, WLKY added Me-TV to 32.2.^[2]

Digital television [link]

Analog-to-digital conversion [link]

WLKY-TV shut down analog transmissions on June 12, 2009. ^[3] The station remained on its pre-transition channel 26. ^[4] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WLKY-TV's virtual channel as 32.

Programming [link]

WLKY is one of the few CBS affiliates to show The Young and the Restless 4-5 p.m., leading into the 5 p.m. local news. In 1993, after losing Oprah to WHAS, WLKY tried The Bertice Berry Show (which was cancelled nationally after one season) in the timeslot, which was a disaster and eventually moved The Young and the Restless to 4pm where it remains today. Other CBS affiliates WAFB in Baton Rouge, WRAL-TV in Raleigh and KMOV in St. Louis also run The Young and the Restless in the 4pm timeslot. The game show duo of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune have also aired on channel 32 in national syndication for many years.

News operation [link]

In 2008, WLKY changed its branding from WLKY NewsChannel 32 to WLKY News. NewsChopper 32 was renamed "WLKY NewsChopper". A new graphics package debuted as well.

In February 2010, WLKY became the third station in the Louisville market to begin airing its newscasts in widescreen—and the second to air them in upconverted widescreen standard definition rather than true high definition.

In 2012, WLKY began airing a two-hour extension of its morning newscast on its MeTV subchannel (32.2) from 7-9 a.m. It competes with WDRB's morning newscast.

Ratings [link]

For most of its tenure as an ABC affiliate, WLKY was one of that network's weaker stations in terms of local viewership, usually ranking third in the Nielsen ratings (and at times second ahead of then-runner-up WAVE). However, since the affiliation switch to CBS and rise of cable and satellite penetration, WLKY has been far more successful in the Nielsen ratings. Even with the affiliate "downgrade" from VHF to UHF, CBS' network ratings in the Louisville market during the early to mid 1990s remained strong at a time when its ratings in many other markets stagnated or declined, with WLKY leading in the recent May 2011 sweeps from sign-on to sign-off, including newscasts.^[5] It has been one of CBS' strongest affiliates for the last decade, although Louisville is one of the few Nielsen markets where all four network stations have about equal ratings and strong news operations.

News/station presentation [link]

Newscast titles [link]

• WLKY-TV News (1961-1963)
• Metro Report (1963-1967)
• Complete Information News (1967-1969)
• 32 Eyewitness News (1969-1977)
• 32 Alive Newsroom (1977-1984)
• 32 Alive News (1984-1986)
• Channel 32 News (1986-1998)
• NewsChannel 32 (1998-2008)
• WLKY News (2008-present)

Station slogans [link]

• Keep Your Eye on 32 Eyewitness News (early 1970s)
• It's All Right Here on 32 Alive (late 1970s)
• Looking Better All the Time (early 1980s)
• Turn to the Channel 32 News (late 1980s)
• If It Matters to You, It Matters to Us (late 1980s)
• Louisville's 24-Hour News Source / 32 for You (early 1990s-1995)
• Where the News Comes First (1995-2005)
• Live. Local. Latebreaking. (1998-present; also used by sister station KOCO in Oklahoma City since the same period)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

On-air staff [link]

Current on-air staff [link]

Anchors

• Steve Burgin - weekends at 6:30 and 11 p.m.; also investigative reporter
• Natasha Collins - weekday mornings WLKY News This Morning
• Vicki Dortch - weeknights at 5, 5:30, 6 and 11 p.m.
• Monica Hardin - weekday mornings WLKY News This Morning
• Rick Van Hoose - weeknights at 5, 5:30 and 11 p.m.
• Karen Roby - weekend mornings WLKY News This Morning; also weekday reporter

WLKY Weather

• Jay Cardosi (AMS Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weeknights at 5, 5:30, 6 and 11 p.m.
• Jared Heil (AMS member) - meteorologist; Saturdays at 6 and 11 p.m.
• Susanne Horgan (AMS Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekend mornings, and Sundays at 6:30 and 11 p.m.
• Matt Milosevich - (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist) - meteorologist; weekday mornings (4:30-7 a.m. on 32.1, and 7-9 a.m. on 32.2) and noon

Sports team

• Fred Cowgill - sports director; weeknights at 6 and 11 p.m., also airs a pre-taped sports round-up on MeTV during the extension of WLKY's morning news.
• Keith Farmer - sports anchor; weekends at 6:30 and 11 p.m.

Reporters

• Marissa Alter - general assignment reporter
• Ann Bowdan - general assignment reporter
• Liz Everman - "Wednesday's Child" feature reporter
• Eric King - general assignment reporter
• Duane Pohlman - investigative reporter
• Maxine Rouben - "Real Deal" consumer reporter
• Lexy Scheen - traffic reporter
• Steve Tellier - general assignment reporter
• Daniel Kemp - general assignment reporter

Hearst Television Washington Bureau

• Sally Kidd - Washington bureau reporter
• Nikole Killion - Washington bureau reporter
• Kate Amara - Washington bureau reporter

• Laurie Kinney - Washington bureau reporter

Notable former staff [link]

• Mark Giangreco - sports anchor (later at WLS-TV Chicago)
• Dan Lewis - anchor (Currently evening anchor for KOMO-TV in Seattle)
• Tom Mintier - reporter (moved to CNN)
• Diane Sawyer - got her start at the station (1967-1970; now anchor of ABC's World News)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

References [link]

External links [link]

• WLKY-TV website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WLKY
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WLKY-TV