WFMZ-TV


WFMZ-TV, virtual channel 69, is an independent television station licensed to Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by the locally based Maranatha Broadcasting Company, as part of a duopoly with Wilmington, Delaware-licensed MeTV affiliate WDPN-TV. WFMZ-TV's studios and transmitter are located on South Mountain in Allentown, with a secondary studio in the PPL Center sports arena in downtown Allentown.

Broadcast area

WFMZ mainly serves the Lehigh Valley region and Berks County. Because the Lehigh Valley is part of the Philadelphia television market, it also has significant cable coverage in much of the Philadelphia area. The station's over-the-air signal reaches some counties in northwestern New Jersey that are part of the New York City market, and is carried on some cable companies in the area. WFMZ provides local news coverage to and has cable carriage in Carbon, Monroe, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties within the Wilkes-Barre–Scranton television market.

History

Prior to the debut of channel 69, an earlier television station that held the WFMZ callsign, which was also based in Allentown, operated on UHF channel 67 from December 1954 to April 1955.
The current incarnation of WFMZ first signed on the air on UHF channel 69 on November 25, 1976. Its initial programming featured a mix of religious content and general entertainment, as well as two daily local newscasts. The station ran religious shows such as the PTL Club and The 700 Club from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. In the afternoons the station ran a mix of family-type drama shows and classic sitcoms. In prime time, the station ran a newscast and the Phil Donahue Show. Religious shows ran late night. On Saturdays, the station ran a few hours of children's shows, specialty shows and some religious shows. On Sundays, the station aired mostly religious shows. The station was on air about 15 hours a day.
In the 1990s, the station began running fewer religious shows and more sitcoms, talk shows and reality shows. 69 News gradually expanded and by 2000, the station was running three hours of local news a day and a mix of comedy shows and talk/reality and court shows. Today, the station runs about six hours a day of news as well as talk and reality shows.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
69.1720pWFMZ-HDMain WFMZ-TV programming
69.2480iWFMZ-AWThe 69 News Weather Channel
69.3480iWFMZ-MESimulcast of WDPN-TV / MeTV

Retro TV was carried as a subchannel of WFMZ after the digital conversion in 2009. On July 4, 2011, MeTV was broadcast by WFMZ, but on January 24, 2014, MeTV announced that it would move its Philadelphia-market affiliation from WFMZ-TV's 69.3 subchannel to KJWP, which has carried MeTV programming in addition to the WFMZ subchannel since November 2013. In April 2014, Atlanta-based Tuff TV officially replaced MeTV on the 69.3 subchannel; in December 2014, the signal began carrying the Heroes & Icons network feed. On October 1, 2019, WFMZ re-added MeTV as a simulcast of WDPN-TV on the 69.3 subchannel; H&I is still seen in the market on WDPN's fourth subchannel.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WFMZ-TV shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 69 on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 46. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 69, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.
WFMZ's standalone signal was sold in the 2017 broadcast spectrum auction. It entered into a channel-sharing agreement with WBPH-TV. To relieve any congestion related to the channel sharing, some of WFMZ's subchannels moved to KJWP, which WFMZ purchased in a separate transaction with the proceeds from the spectrum sale.

The 69 News Weather Channel

WFMZ debuted The 69 News AccuWeather Channel on February 5, 2001. It broadcasts on WFMZ's second digital subchannel and is available through digital cable within the Allentown area, broadcasting 24 hours a day. According to WFMZ, it is the first 24-hour local weather channel in the United States. Local weather updates are provided every 15 minutes by WFMZ's on-air weather staff, with a rotation of live local camera views from around the station's coverage area, radar/satellite images, graphical and text forecasts, current conditions and weather trivia airing at other times. Advertising appears in the form of icons in one corner of the screen, and audio announcements. The channel is streamed live on the Internet through the station's website and is simulcast during the overnight hours on WFMZ's primary subchannel. This channel is locally produced, unlike The Local AccuWeather Channel associated with other AccuWeather-affiliated stations. The channel's format is similar to The Weather Channel's Local on the 8s.

Programming

Syndicated programming

programming seen on WFMZ includes Judge Judy, The Doctors, Dr. Phil, and Last Man Standing, among others.

Local programming

News

WFMZ-TV currently broadcasts 46½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week, with 8½ hours each weekday, three hours on Saturdays and one hour on Sundays. The station's newscasts primarily focus on Allentown and southeastern Pennsylvania. The 5:30 and 10:30 p.m. newscasts on weeknights focus primarily on news stories in neighboring Berks County and its county seat of Reading; they are branded as 69 News Berks Edition. WFMZ won two Regional Emmy Awards for "Best Newscast", respectively in 2004 and 2012.
The station's news department debuted with WFMZ itself on November 25, 1976 and originally featured two daily newscasts at 7 and 10 p.m. under the title Newspulse. The news programs was retitled Channel 69 News by 1987 and was shortened to 69 News in 1999. Those two newscasts eventually expanded to include additional local newscasts on weekday mornings, weekdays at noon and 5 p.m. and every night at 6 p.m., while the 7 p.m. newscast was dropped. In February 2003, the station debuted a half-hour Spanish-language nightly newscast at 11 p.m. – one of the few English-language stations to offer a news program in another language; an additional half-hour Spanish newscast at 8 p.m. debuted in 2007, but was canceled two years later, leaving the 11 p.m. edition as the only newscast on WFMZ produced in Spanish. In 2014, the Spanish newscast expanded to 6:30 p.m. on WFMZ-DT4 and WBPH-TV 60.
In 2005, WFMZ formed a broadcast partnership with Philadelphia's ABC owned-and-operated station WPVI-TV that allowed the two stations to cooperate in news gathering for local stories. The most recent set for WFMZ's newscasts debuted on November 15, 2017. On May 1, 2008, WFMZ became the fourth television station in the Philadelphia market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. Until it expanded the program to 5 a.m. in 2012, WFMZ was the only news-producing television station in the Philadelphia market – and effectively the largest news-producing station in the United States by market size because Allentown was part of the Philadelphia market – whose weekday morning newscast continued to maintain a post-5 a.m. time slot. On October 15, 2014, WFMZ added an hour-long newscast at 4:00 p.m., making it the third station in the Philadelphia market to broadcast local news in that timeslot. On February 16, 2015, WFMZ debuted its new street-level studio inside the PPL Center sports arena in Center City Allentown; the noon newscast is broadcast from the location.

Other locally-produced programming

The station produces various local programs about business, sports and health related issues:
In New Jersey, WFMZ is carried on basic cable in Phillipsburg and Milford. WFMZ is carried on cable providers in Schuylkill County, Carbon County, Monroe County, and Luzerne County. In northwestern New Jersey, it is available on digital cable on Comcast's Port Murray system alongside CBS owned-and-operated station KYW-TV, Fox O&O WTXF-TV and NBC O&O WCAU. It is not carried on satellite outside the Philadelphia market. Over-the-air reception from its main transmitter begins to decrease past US 206.