WTRF-TV
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Wheeling, West Virginia/ Steubenville, Ohio United States |
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| Branding | "7 News" "My Ohio Valley" (on DT2) "ABC Ohio Valley" (on DT3) |
| Slogan | Working For You |
| Channels | Digital: 7 (VHF/PSIP) |
| Subchannels | |
| Affiliations | |
| Owner |
Nexstar Media Group (Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc.) |
| First air date | October 24, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning |
Two Radio Frequencies (referring to AM and FM stations with same calls) |
| Sister station(s) | WOWK, WVNS, WBOY |
| Former channel number(s) | 7 (VHF analog, 1953–2009) 32 (UHF digital, –2009) |
| Former affiliations |
NBC (1953–1980) ABC (secondary, 1953–1980s) |
| Transmitter power | 25.4 kW |
| Height | 293 m |
| Facility ID | 6869 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°3′41.1″N 80°45′8.5″W / 40.061417°N 80.752361°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www |
WTRF-TV, channel 7, is a television station located in Wheeling, West Virginia, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, WTRF is the primary CBS affiliate for the Wheeling-Steubenville, Ohio television market. The station also carries programming from MyNetworkTV and ABC over its digital subchannels (MyNetworkTV on 7.2, ABC on 7.3). WTRF's studios are located on 16th Street in downtown Wheeling, and its transmitter is based in Bridgeport, Ohio.
WTRF-TV has a full-service satellite station:
WTRF signed-on for the first time on October 24, 1953. Its call letters came from WTRF radio, which had signed on in 1947 on AM 1290 (now WOMP) and FM 100.5 (now WBGI-FM). Those were sold off in the 1970s to help finance the television station. WTRF was originally an NBC affiliate but also carried some programming from ABC, splitting that network's programming with then-CBS affiliate WSTV-TV (now WTOV-TV). In 1979, WTRF became the area's first station to use videotape rather than film. For its first quarter-century on the air, WTRF-TV was the undisputed leader in the Wheeling/Steubenville market despite being well within reach of the much larger Pittsburgh market. As of 2016, the Wheeling/Steubenville market remains separate from Pittsburgh despite the very close proximity between the two markets as well as significantly overlapping signals between the two markets.
On January 7, 1980, WTRF swapped network affiliations with WTOV and became a CBS affiliate. NBC had struggled in the ratings for a number of years at the time and WTRF wanted a stronger affiliation. It also dropped the remaining ABC programs from its schedule. This was not as serious a problem as it appeared, since Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV was widely available in the area over-the-air and on cable. However, the switch backfired disastrously. While as an NBC affiliate, channel 7 had to contend with Pittsburgh's WIIC-TV (now WPXI), one of NBC's weakest affiliates, for network viewers, it now had to contend with KDKA-TV, one of CBS' strongest affiliates, as it was (and remains today) widely viewable in the area both over-the-air and available on cable. This, combined with NBC re-surging in the 1980s while CBS faltered at the same time, saw WTRF become a very distant second to WTOV in the local ratings. While CBS rebounded in the 1990s, WTRF has never recovered, with some viewers even watching now-CBS O&O KDKA-TV for CBS programming over WTRF.
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