16 Facts About WDSU

WDSU is a television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Hearst Television.

The WDSU stations moved into the historic Brulatour Mansion on Royal Street in the French Quarter in April 1950; Stern had bought other buildings near the mansion to construct production studios for the radio and television stations.

WDSU-TV became the first television station in the New Orleans market to telecast its programming in color in 1955.

WDSU-TV was the ratings leader in New Orleans for over a quarter century, largely because of its strong commitment to coverage of local events and news.

WDSU has been a solid runner-up to WWL for most of the last quarter-century, although since the mid-2000s, it has had to fend off a strong challenge from a resurgent WVUE.

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In 1984, WDSU built the first working television studio at a World's Fair for the station's live broadcasts from the event held in New Orleans that year.

Also during the 1990s, WDSU became the first New Orleans station to operate its own Doppler weather radar system .

Since 2009, WDSU has simply branded with its callsign in most verbal references, despite retaining the "channel 6" red dot logo it has used since 2000.

At that point, WDSU's broadcasts began to originate from the studios of ABC-affiliated sister station WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi, where some of WDSU's on-air staff had already evacuated.

WDSU chose to replace its existing transmitter building with an elevated and rugged hurricane resistant building to house its analog and digital transmitters; construction of this building was completed in early February 2008.

WDSU tapped the resources of parent company Hearst-Argyle Television, and brought in personnel from Hearst-owned television stations across the country to assist in various capacities.

Today, WDSU clears the entire NBC programming lineup, only preempting certain programs during instances in which the station has to carry extended breaking news or severe weather coverage.

WDSU serves as the local over-the-air broadcaster of Monday Night Football games involving the New Orleans Saints, airing simulcasts of ESPN-televised games.

WDSU ended carriage of the show upon the launch of a noon newscast, effectively leaving the program off the station schedule, though it quickly found a new home in the market on WNOL-TV.

For much of the time since the early 1980s, WDSU's newscasts have been in second place among the market's news-producing stations.

WDSU is one of now two stations in the New Orleans market that have yet to upgrade production of their local news programming to high definition.