WPVI-TV

WPVI-TV, channel 6, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. WPVI has its studios located on the border between Philadelphia and Bala Cynwyd, and its transmitter is located in the Roxborough neighborhood. The station's signal covers the Delaware Valley area, comprising large portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

History

As WFIL-TV

Philadelphia's second-oldest television station signed on the air on September 10, 1947 as WFIL-TV. It was owned originally by Triangle Publications, publishers of The Philadelphia Inquirer, along with WFIL radio (560 AM) and WFIL-FM (102.1 FM, now WIOQ).

WFIL radio had been an ABC radio affiliate dating back to ABC's days as the Blue Network. However, WFIL-TV started out as a DuMont affiliate, as ABC hadn't gotten into television yet. When ABC launched its television network on April 19, 1948, WFIL-TV became the fledgling network's first affiliate. Channel 6 joined ABC before the network's first owned-and-operated station, WJZ-TV in New York City (now WABC-TV), signed on in August. However, it retained a secondary affiliation with DuMont until DuMont shut down in 1956.

The WFIL stations were the flagship of the growing communications empire of Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, which owned two Philadelphia newspapers (the morning Inquirer and, later, the evening Philadelphia Daily News), periodicals including...
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