An end of an era is looming for one of Pittsburgh’s most notable broadcast television brands.
WPCW-TV, most commonly referred to as Pittsburgh’s CW, is one of eight CBS-owned stations across the country that is set to drop its CW affiliation and begin operating independently come next fall. News of that decision by CBS broke late last week, and its validity regarding Pittsburgh’s CW was confirmed to the Post-Gazette Monday morning by Chris Cotugno, president and general manager of KDKA-TV and WPCW.
Cotugno said in an email that WPCW will continue its CW affiliation through the end of August before officially becoming an independent station in September. The other affected stations are WPSG-TV in Philadelphia, WUPA-TV in Atlanta, KBCW-TV in San Francisco, KSTW-TV Seattle, WKBD-TV in Detroit, WTOG-TV in Tampa Bay, Florida, and KMAX-TV in Sacramento, California, according to a Deadline report from last week.
Practically, this will mean new programming must be implemented for WPCW's 8-10 p.m. block that has historically been filled by CW shows. Everything else on the station — the morning and evening news, sports shows, all local programming, etc. — will remain the same.
Plans for that 8-10 p.m. window will be announced in the near future once they are finalized, Cotugno said.
He pointed the Post-Gazette toward a statement from Wendy McMahon, president and co-head of CBS News and Stations, regarding the eight CW affiliates that will soon go fully independent.
“We look forward to reimagining these stations as independents while leveraging the considerable value of their prime-time real estate in each of the markets,” she said. “It’s an exciting time to look at new opportunities to add local programming, including live sports, and shows from across the Paramount Global brands.”
Nexstar Media Group, which owns 200 broadcast stations across 116 markets nationwide, recently acquired a controlling stake in The CW. It was previously jointly owned by Time Warner and CBS.
“Since our acquisition of The CW Network last October, we have known that Paramount Global might transition the network affiliations of eight of its company-owned stations later this year,” reads a Nexstar statement obtained by Deadline. “We are prepared for this possibility and confident that The CW Network will continue reaching 100% of U.S. television households without interruption.”
McMahon added in her statement: “We are also grateful to have been part of The CW for 17 memorable years and wish our partners at Nexstar continued success.”
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh.
First Published: May 8, 2023, 5:07 p.m.
Updated: May 9, 2023, 9:51 a.m.