Burlington, New Jersey - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States |
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Channels |
Digital: 27 (UHF) Virtual: 48 () |
Translators | W60CX Atlantic City, NJ |
Affiliations | Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) |
Owner | TBN (TCCSA, Inc., d/b/a Trinity Broadcasting Network) |
Founded | July 14, 1988 |
First air date | August 13, 1992 |
Call letters' meaning | We're Great Television to Watch |
Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 48 (UHF, 1992-2009) |
Former affiliations |
Independent (1992-2004) NBC (secondary, 1992-1995) |
Transmitter power | 160 kW |
Height | 354 m |
Facility ID | 7623 |
Transmitter coordinates | 40°2′30″N 75°14′11″W / 40.04167°N 75.23639°W |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
Website | www |
WGTW-TV, channel 48, is a Trinity Broadcasting Network-owned and operated television station for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.) to Burlington, New Jersey, to the east and across the Delaware River and serving the metropolitan Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. With studios in suburban Folcroft, and transmitter in the nearby Roxborough section, WGTW's signal covers the Delaware River valley in adjoining states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Channel 48 was once the home of WKBS-TV, which operated from 1965 until 1983, by Field Communications of Chicago, Illinois which also had its flagship television station WFLD there. It also owned the daily newspapers, the "Chicago Sun-Times" and the defunct tabloid "Chicago Daily News". Fields voluntarily took the suburban Burlington, New Jersey station off the air and returned its license to the Federal Communications Commission. Six months later, the FCC put Channel 48's license back up for auction. Among those bidding on the license were Dorothy E. Brunson, (1939-2011), an African-American radio executive previously from 1973-1979 with Inner City Broadcasting Corporation of New York City who owned five stations there. Brunson later purchased several radio stations in 1979 and later - Baltimore, (WEBB) Atlanta and Wilmington, North Carolina, and was then residing in Baltimore. In partnership with Cornerstone Television, a Christian television network based in Pittsburgh, she became the first African-American woman to own a television station in America. After a two-year process, the auction ended with Brunson winning the license. Cornerstone had, during the interim, purchased Channel 48's transmitter equipment, moved it to Altoona in southwestern Pennsylvania, and used it to sign on a new station in 1985 on Channel 47 there, ironically and coincidentally enough under the same WKBS-TV call letters which had been reassigned in the two-year interim.