Portland, Maine United States |
|
---|---|
Branding | CBS 13 (general) CBS 13 News (newscasts) |
Slogan | On Your Side |
Channels |
Digital: 38 (UHF) Virtual: 13 () |
Subchannels | 13.1 CBS 13.2 TBD 13.3 ASN |
Owner |
Sinclair Broadcast Group (WGME Licensee, LLC) |
First air date | May 16, 1954 |
Call letters' meaning |
Gannett of MainE (for former owner Guy Gannett) |
Sister station(s) | WPFO |
Former callsigns | WGAN-TV (1954–1983) |
Former channel number(s) | 13 (VHF analog, 1954–2009) |
Former affiliations | |
Transmitter power | 1,000 kW |
Height | 465 m |
Facility ID | 25683 |
Transmitter coordinates | 43°55′28.5″N 70°29′26.7″W / 43.924583°N 70.490750°W |
Website | wgme |
WGME-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station for Southern Maine and Eastern and Northern New Hampshire that is licensed to Portland. The station broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 38 (PSIP virtual channel 13) from a transmitter on Brown Hill west of Raymond. Owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station has studios on Northport Drive in the North Deering section of Portland, with regional studios in the Lewiston/Auburn area, as well as at the state capital in Augusta.
Its first broadcast was on May 16, 1954 as WGAN-TV, owned by Guy Gannett Communications (no relation to Gannett Company or its television spinoff, TEGNA, which owns WCSH) along with WGAN-AM 560 and the Portland Press-Herald daily newspaper. (An FM station, 102.9 WGAN-FM was added in 1967.) When the radio stations were sold in 1983, the WGAN call letters went with them. WGAN-TV then changed its call sign to the current "WGME-TV" on December 15 of that year. It remained the flagship station of Guy Gannett Communications until the company sold most of its television stations, including WGME, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1998. The 493.5-meter (1,619 foot) tall transmission tower of WGME, situated near Route 121 in Raymond, was built in 1959. It was, according to the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records, the world's tallest architectural structure in those days. It was surpassed by KFVS-TV's tower in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in 1960. However, it remained the tallest structure in Maine until the erection of WMTW's tower in 2002.