WPTA
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Fort Wayne, Indiana United States |
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| Branding |
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| Slogan | Your Weather Authortiy. |
| Channels |
Digital: 24 (UHF) Virtual: 21 () |
| Subchannels |
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| Affiliations | ABC |
| Owner |
Quincy Media (WPTA License, LLC) |
| First air date | September 28, 1957 |
| Call letters' meaning | W Patricia & Thomas TArzian (children of Sarkes Tarzian) |
| Former channel number(s) |
Analog: 21 (UHF, 1957–2009) |
| Transmitter power | 335 kW |
| Height | 224.4 m |
| Facility ID | 73905 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°6′7.7″N 85°11′3.7″W / 41.102139°N 85.184361°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www |
WPTA, virtual channel 21 (UHF digital channel 24), is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. The station is owned by Quincy Media; sharing with CW affiliate and one-time sister station WISE-TV (channel 33, owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting), its studios and transmitter facilities are located on Butler Road in Northwest Fort Wayne. The station can also be seen on Comcast and Frontier FiOS channel 7, in HD on Frontier FiOS digital channel 506 and Comcast digital channel 1007, and in HD on DIRECTV digital channel 21.
The station first signed on the air on September 28, 1957 and was founded by Sarkes Tarzian, an Indianapolis engineer whose company owned Bloomington's WTTV and several other stations in Indiana. The WPTA call letters come from the long tradition of other Tarzian stations, including once former sister station WPTH, that base the call letters upon the initials of family members of company management. Upon its launch, channel 21 took all ABC programming from NBC affiliate WKJG-TV (channel 33, now WISE-TV) and CBS affiliate WANE-TV (channel 15).
Under Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules at that time, the market was deemed too small to support three full-power stations, so Tarzian's application listed WPTA's city of license in the small town of Roanoke, located just across the Allen and Huntington county line approximately 14 miles to the southwest of its studios and transmitter in Fort Wayne. It was possible because the FCC had by this time allowed a station to have its main studio in a different location from its city of license. WPTA identified itself as "Roanoke/Fort Wayne" on-air until the license was officially transferred to Fort Wayne sometime in the 1970s.
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Wikipedia