WGRZ

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WGRZ-TV is the NBC affiliate in Buffalo, New York. Its studio is located at 259 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, while its transmitter is located at 11526 Warner Hill Road in South Wales, New York. The station is currently owned by Gannett Company, Inc., publisher of the national newspaper USA Today, and owner of numerous television stations.

The station's newscasts are called Channel 2 News; prior to 1998, it was 2 News and previously NewsCenter 2. Until July 2005, its partner station for the area was WPXJ-TV (Pax 51).

It is one of four local Buffalo TV stations seen in Canada on the Star Choice satellite service. It is also seen throughout Toronto and Central Ontario on Rogers and Cogeco cable systems.

Rich Kellman (news anchor) and Ed Kilgore (sports) have been staples of "Newscenter 2" since the 1970s. Barry Lillis, the station's weatherman for almost twenty years, left WGRZ in the mid-1990s and is now a priest with the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America.

WGRZ currently offers NBC Weather Plus on its digital signal called "StormTeam 2 WeatherPlus"

History

The station premiered in 1954 as WGR-TV, owned by the WGR Corporation along with WGR-AM 550. It was an NBC affiliate sharing the Barton Street studios of UHF outlet WBUF/Channel 17. In 1955, WBUF was sold to NBC. WGR affiliated with ABC and then switched back to NBC in 1958 after NBC shut down the money-bleeding WBUF. The station also carried programming from the now-defunct DuMont Television Network[1].

Over the years, WGR Corporation bought several other radio and television stations across the country, including WNEP-TV in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, WHAM-TV in Rochester (the call letters of which Transcontinent would change to WROC-TV) and WDAF-AM/FM/TV in Kansas City, and eventually became known as Transcontinent Broadcasting. Transcontinent merged with Taft Broadcasting in 1964.

In 1983, WGR's callsign changed to WGRZ after it was sold by Taft Broadcasting to General Cinema Corporation, which operated the Coral Television division. Taft gave Coral WGRZ, while in exchange, Taft got Miami's WCIX. (Taft held on to WGR radio until 1987, when it was sold to Rich Communications; today, it is owned by Entercom Communications.)

In the years following the 1983 exchange deal, WGRZ changed hands several times. General Cinema exited the broadcasting business by selling Coral Television to WGRZ Acquisition Corp., a subsidiary of SJL Broadcast Management (one of SJL's present-day subsidiaries is Montecito Broadcast Group) for $56 million in 1986. Two years later, Tak Communications purchased WGRZ from SJL for $100 million in 1988. Less than four years later, Tak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992, and a group of creditors seized the company's assets in 1994. Argyle Television (now part of Hearst-Argyle Television) purchased the station (and then-sister KITV in Honolulu, Hawaii) from Tak's creditors for $91 million (on WGRZ's end) in December 1995.

Gannett became the station's owner in 1997. Argyle (which merged with Hearst's broadcasting unit shortly after the trade was finalized) traded WGRZ and Western Michigan's ABC affiliate WZZM-TV to Gannett for Oklahoma City's ABC affiliate KOCO-TV and Cincinnati's NBC affiliate WLWT in a four-station deal between the two companies.

Since 2000, lottery drawings have been presented on Channel 2.

In 2006, WGRZ began producing a 10pm newscast for local WB (now MyTV BUFFALO) affiliate WNYO, known as "2 On Your Side at 10" (formally known as "2 News on 49 - 10 at 10", which originally featured 10 minutes of news and the rest dedicated to sports).

Logo

In the 1980s, the "futuristic" logo consisted of two lines, making an outline of the number two. In 1988, the station's logo consisted of simply a large number "2" in a common Avant Garde font, with a yellow triangle over blue added in the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s, the logo changed to a blue-on-red box with the bottom reading WGRZ-TV Buffalo. The NBC logo is placed to the left of the numeral "2"; however, "NBC" is not mentioned in the station's on-air brand (which is simply "Channel 2").

Infamous moment

According to the Baseball Hall of Shame book series by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, WGR-TV did not complete the telecast of the game between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 26, 1981. The station went to an Army training film as scheduled at 5 p.m. that afternoon. As a result, local baseball fans missed Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan's record fifth no-hitter.

Historic slogans

• Your 24 Hour News Station
• NBC in Western New York
• It Takes 2 (1995 - 1999)
• Channel 2 is on Your Side

News reporters and journalists

News Anchors

• Jodi Johnston, co-anchor of Daybreak and Channel 2 News at 5
• Pete Gallivan, co-anchor of Daybreak and Channel 2 News at Noon
• Scott Levin, co-anchor of Channel 2 News at 5, 6, 10, and 11
• Mary Alice Demeler, co-anchor of Channel 2 News at 5:30, 6, 10, and 11
• Erika Brason, anchor of Saturday Morning Daybreak
• Ron Plants, anchor of Channel 2 News at 6 and 11 Weekend

Sports

• Ed Kilgore, sports director and sports anchor of Channel 2 News at 6, and 11 and co-host of Western New York Sports Zone
• Adam Bengini, sports anchor of Channel 2 at 6 and 11 Weekend and co-host of Western New York Sports Zone
• Matt Pearl, sports reporter and fill-in anchor
• Stu Boyer, sports reporter and fill-in anchor

Weather

• Kevin O'Connell, chief weather anchor of Channel 2 News at 5, 5:30, 6, and 11 and 2 News 10 at 10
• Chesley McNeil, meteorologist of Daybreak and Channel 2 News at Noon
• Andy Parker, meteorologist and co-anchor of Saturday Morning Daybreak and Channel 2 News at 6 and 11 Weekend
• Jim Lytle, weather fill-in
• Josh Boose, weather fill-in

Reporters

• Scott Brown, joined in 2002, former politician
• Josh Boose, joined in 2006
• Lynne Dixon, joined in 1997
• Claudine Ewing, joined in 1999 after leaving News Radio 930-WBEN
• Mary Friona, joined in 1998, As Seen On TV reporter
• Theresa Fulcher, joined in 2007, Traffic Tracker 2 Reporter
• Mike Igoe, joined in 1989 as the Money Matters Reporter
• Rich Kellman, joined in 1972, denoted as the senior correspondent, now working part time
• Heather Ly, joined in 2006, Hot Daybreak Reporter
• Kevin O'Neill, joined in 2006, resigned from WIVB-TV as "the Why Guy"
• Liz Vetrano, joined in 2006 as the Traffic Tracker Repotrer
• Robyn Young, joined in 1999
• Jessica Weinstein, joined in 2006

Reporters that left

• Aaron Saykin, left in 2006, went to Pittsburgh
• Julie Wolfe, left in 2005, went to Atlanta
• Tracy Carloss, left 2000, went to WEWS Cleveland
• Stefan Mychajliw

Other local shows

• 2 Your Home - housing show about renovation of homes throughout Western New York
• Western New York Living - a show about living in Western New York hosted by Maria Genero
• WGRZ has also aired Buffalo Bills football games that aired on ESPN in recent seasons. This included Saturday Football and Sunday Night Football. With recent changes in the NFL's contract, including the moving of games to the NFL Network and the move of Sunday night games to NBC, the future of this agreement is unclear. Since the Bills were not scheduled for any night games, this agreement would not come into play in 2006. That being said, the reason had WGRZ had the rights was because it was an NBC affiliate and did not have any other NFL rights. (The same was true for other stations that held Bills night game rights in the past, WPXJ (a Pax affiliate) and WNYO (then aligned with the WB).) With the addition of Sunday Night Football, it is possible that the Bills night games will be moved to WKBW-TV, which is an affiliate of ABC (the sister station to ESPN) and already the official home of the Bills' preseason games and all other televised content for 2007. The Bills host, on ESPN, the Dallas Cowboys on Monday, October 8, 2007, which if sold-out, would force the game to be aired on a local over-the-air station.

External links

• Official website
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