16 Facts About WTVH

WTVH is a television station in Syracuse, New York, United States, affiliated with CBS.

On March 2,2009, as a result of continual low ratings, slow advertising sales, and the loss of the Ithaca area to WENY-DT2, it was announced that WTVH would enter into joint sales and shared services agreements with rivals WSTM-TV and WSTQ-LP.

WTVH's studios were put up for lease in Summer 2009 and were eventually sold after several years of vacancy to developer Lou Santaro in October 2016, who plans to convert the old studios into office space.

The existing LMA for WTVH was included in the deal; however, Granite retained ownership of WTVH's license assets.

Scripps Company and Quincy Newspapers in February 2014, along with the surrender of San Francisco independent station KOFY-TV's spectrum in the 2017 incentive auction, WTVH is the last remaining station whose license is owned by SP Granite.

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From 1956, when CBS ended a secondary affiliation with WKTV after a dispute, to November 22,2015, when WKTV affiliated its second digital subchannel with the network, WTVH served as the de facto affiliate for the majority of the Utica market, namely Herkimer County and that area's portion of Oneida County; the southern portion of the market was served by WBNG.

WTVH was extremely protective of this status, barring current ABC affiliate WUTR from affiliating with CBS on at least one occasion.

Under Granite's ownership, WTVH did not take advantage of this status in terms of targeted advertising and news coverage focusing on the Utica area.

WTVH's schedule was carried in full on cable in Watertown due to its status as an out-of-market station that was "significantly viewed" over-the-air, even though the area has WWNY-TV as its own CBS affiliate.

Therefore, WTVH was formerly forced to black out Buffalo Bills games if they do not sell out before a 72-hour deadline prior to kickoff.

WTVH's status was different from the years NBC held the AFC package, where WSTM and WKTV were allowed to broadcast Bills home games regardless of sell-out status, mainly due to less finessed market boundary maps in the pre-digital age.

Ever since the mid-1990s, WTVH's newscasts struggled in the Nielsen ratings running a distant third behind rivals WSYR-TV and WSTM-TV.

On October 23,2016, WSTM and WTVH became the second and third stations, respectively, to switch to their own true HD newscasts.

WTVH already has a separate news anchor seen weeknights exclusively on the station.

WTVH continues to simulcast local news with WSTM-TV on weekend evenings.

WTVH shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 5, on June 12,2009, the official date in which full-power television in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.