WDRB
Encyclopedia
WDRB is a television station
in Louisville, Kentucky
, broadcasting locally on channel 41 (digital 49) as a Fox
affiliate. Owned by Block Communications
, the station's transmitter is located in Floyds Knobs, Indiana
alongside sister-station WMYO
. Along with WMYO, WDRB broadcasts a one million-watt omni-directional signal with a top-mounted antenna, providing the strongest signal in the market.
Fright Night showed low-budget horror movies, similar to The Shroud on WFFT-TV
. Fright Night was hosted by local theater actor Charlie Kissinger and was unique in that it ran during Saturday-night prime time, directly competing against high-rated network programming.
Presto the Magic Clown was a daily mix of cartoons, magic tricks, viewer participation and birthday greetings, all hosted by Bill "Presto" Dopp and his puppet sidekicks, J. Fred Frog and Hunny Bunny.
By 1976, WDRB was still signing on at 3 p.m. and was running cartoons, westerns, outdoor shows and old movies. By 1977, the station added religious shows from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. By 1979, WDRB began a 7 a.m. sign-on. By then they had cartoons from 7 to 9 a.m., religion 9 a.m. to noon, movies or westerns from noon to 3 p.m., cartoons from 3 to 5 p.m., classic sitcoms from 5 to 8 p.m., movies 8 to 10 p.m. and a mix of sitcoms and drama shows after 10 p.m. until signoff.
After being acquired by Block Communications, Inc. of Toledo, Ohio in 1984, WDRB began adding stronger, more recent off-network sitcoms and dramas to the schedule, becoming a stronger independent station. On April 5, 1987, WDRB became a charter Fox
affiliate. It remains a Fox affiliate to this day although between 1990 and 1999 WDRB shared the Fox affiliation in the Louisville market with Campbellsville
-based WGRB (now CW
affiliate WBKI-TV
), which served the southern reaches of the market before moving their transmitter north to service more of the Louisville metro area.
For many years, WDRB held the broadcast rights to University of Louisville
football and basketball. In the 1990s, WDRB moved away from older movies and classic sitcoms in favor of more talk and reality shows, due to changes in the industry. The cartoons would be dropped when Fox stopped offering its weekday kids lineup at the end of 2001, bumping over to WFTE/WMYO until the discontinuation of 4KidsTV at the beginning of 2009.
On April 21, 2007, WDRB became the first Louisville station to televise the Kentucky Derby
Festival's all-day "Thunder Over Louisville" air and fireworks show in high definition—at the time, one of the largest technical undertakings ever attempted by an American TV station. That was followed by a second—even more elaborate -- "Thunder" telecast in HD in April, 2008.
In late 2010 Block began testing digital subchannel
s on both WDRB and WMYO, and on or about January 30, 2011, launched Tribune Broadcasting
's Antenna TV
subchannel over Channel 41.2. WDRB-DT2 was added to Insight Communications
systems in the area over digital channel 187 as of April 20, 2011.
The station began phasing out its longtime "Fox 41" branding in favor of simply using the WDRB call letters in May 2011. While this occurred shortly after sister station KTRV-TV in Boise, Idaho
lost its Fox affiliation, the station chose to make the move to bring it in line with the other stations in Louisville (which have long branded with their call letters) and to distinguish the station from Fox News Channel
. WDRB and Fox later came to terms on an affiliation extension "for the forseeable future" on August 24, 2011, averting any signs the network may leave the station .
The station is also one of the few stations in the nation to run a regular editorial
segment, "Point of View." which is usually delivered twice weekly by WDRB/WMYO President and General Manager Bill Lamb. "Point of View" premiered in June 2002, introduced a weekly segment featuring phone response from viewers in 2007 and has evolved into one of the community's most prominent opinion forums, featuring frequent guest editorials by a wide cross-section of community members.
In 2006, WDRB—in partnership with Norton Healthcare—became the first and only station in Louisville to offer real-time closed captioning on all its newscasts, making 100% of the station's news content available to over 147,000 deaf or hard of hearing viewers in the market. Prior to this innovation, only pre-written studio-originated content was closed-captioned, while reports from the field and breaking news stories were not.
On April 17, 2010, WDRB-TV became the second Louisville station to convert its news operation to high definition, although it is the first in the market with all aspects of the operation, including field reporting, studio and weather operations completely in the format. WAVE—which broadcasts from the studio in HD—continues to produce field pieces in widescreen standard definition, while the other two news stations in the market (WHAS and WLKY) still broadcast in standard definition with the picture expanded to fill 16:9 widescreen dimensions.
On January 17, 2011, WDRB launched a weeknight-only early evening newscast at 6:30 p.m., which brought the station's weekday newscast output to seven hours a day (the station will also be the only station in the U.S. to carry newscasts at 4 and 6:30 p.m. without newscasts in the 5-6:30 p.m. time period).
FOX 41 Weather Team
Sports team
Reporters
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...
in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
, broadcasting locally on channel 41 (digital 49) as a Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
affiliate. Owned by Block Communications
Block Communications
Block Communications is a privately held holding company of various assets, mainly in the print and broadcast media, based in Toledo, Ohio. The company was founded in 1900 in New York City when Paul Block, a German immigrant who came to the United States fifteen years prior, formed an ad...
, the station's transmitter is located in Floyds Knobs, Indiana
Floyds Knobs, Indiana
Floyds Knobs is a small unincorporated town in Lafayette Township, Floyd County, Indiana. Historically a farming community on the outskirts of New Albany, it has since become a bedroom community for Louisville, Kentucky, containing subdivisions, farms, small shopping centers and churches, and...
alongside sister-station WMYO
WMYO
WMYO is a television station serving the Louisville, Kentucky market as a My Network TV affiliate on channel 58. The station is owned by the Independence Television subsidiary of Block Communications with sister-station WDRB in Louisville...
. Along with WMYO, WDRB broadcasts a one million-watt omni-directional signal with a top-mounted antenna, providing the strongest signal in the market.
History
WDRB signed on as the first independent television station in Louisville on February 28, 1971. Airing low-budget afternoon children's programming and occasional news updates from anchor Wilson Hatcher, the station was best known in its early years for its shock-theater program Fright Night and afternoon children's host "Presto the Magic Clown."Fright Night showed low-budget horror movies, similar to The Shroud on WFFT-TV
WFFT-TV
WFFT-TV is an Independent station for Northeastern Indiana licensed to Fort Wayne. From the network's launch on October 9th, 1986 to July 31, 2011, WFFT was the Fox-affiliated television station for Fort Wayne. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 36 from a transmitter at...
. Fright Night was hosted by local theater actor Charlie Kissinger and was unique in that it ran during Saturday-night prime time, directly competing against high-rated network programming.
Presto the Magic Clown was a daily mix of cartoons, magic tricks, viewer participation and birthday greetings, all hosted by Bill "Presto" Dopp and his puppet sidekicks, J. Fred Frog and Hunny Bunny.
By 1976, WDRB was still signing on at 3 p.m. and was running cartoons, westerns, outdoor shows and old movies. By 1977, the station added religious shows from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. By 1979, WDRB began a 7 a.m. sign-on. By then they had cartoons from 7 to 9 a.m., religion 9 a.m. to noon, movies or westerns from noon to 3 p.m., cartoons from 3 to 5 p.m., classic sitcoms from 5 to 8 p.m., movies 8 to 10 p.m. and a mix of sitcoms and drama shows after 10 p.m. until signoff.
After being acquired by Block Communications, Inc. of Toledo, Ohio in 1984, WDRB began adding stronger, more recent off-network sitcoms and dramas to the schedule, becoming a stronger independent station. On April 5, 1987, WDRB became a charter Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
affiliate. It remains a Fox affiliate to this day although between 1990 and 1999 WDRB shared the Fox affiliation in the Louisville market with Campbellsville
Campbellsville, Kentucky
Campbellsville is a city in Taylor County, Kentucky, United States. The population within city limits was 10,498 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Taylor County, and the home of Campbellsville University...
-based WGRB (now CW
The CW Television Network
The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB...
affiliate WBKI-TV
WBKI-TV
WBKI-TV is the CW-affiliated television station for the Kentuckiana area of North-Central Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Licensed to Campbellsville, Kentucky, the station broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 19 from a transmitter in Raywick, Kentucky...
), which served the southern reaches of the market before moving their transmitter north to service more of the Louisville metro area.
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville is a public university in Louisville, Kentucky. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General...
football and basketball. In the 1990s, WDRB moved away from older movies and classic sitcoms in favor of more talk and reality shows, due to changes in the industry. The cartoons would be dropped when Fox stopped offering its weekday kids lineup at the end of 2001, bumping over to WFTE/WMYO until the discontinuation of 4KidsTV at the beginning of 2009.
On April 21, 2007, WDRB became the first Louisville station to televise the Kentucky Derby
Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred horses, held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is one and a quarter mile at Churchill Downs. Colts and geldings carry...
Festival's all-day "Thunder Over Louisville" air and fireworks show in high definition—at the time, one of the largest technical undertakings ever attempted by an American TV station. That was followed by a second—even more elaborate -- "Thunder" telecast in HD in April, 2008.
In late 2010 Block began testing digital subchannel
Digital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a means to transmit more than one independent program at the same time from the same digital radio or digital television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compression techniques to reduce the size of each individual...
s on both WDRB and WMYO, and on or about January 30, 2011, launched Tribune Broadcasting
Tribune Broadcasting
The Tribune Broadcasting Company is a group of radio and television stations located throughout the United States which are owned and operated by the Tribune Company, a media conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois and named for the flagship Chicago Tribune newspaper.- History :Tribune Broadcasting...
's Antenna TV
Antenna TV
Antenna TV is an American digital broadcast television network, primarily featuring classic television series from the 1950s to the 1990s, along with some feature films. It is owned by Tribune Broadcasting, a division of the Chicago-based Tribune Company...
subchannel over Channel 41.2. WDRB-DT2 was added to Insight Communications
Insight Communications
Insight Communications is the 13th largest multiple system operator in the United States with approximately 692,000 customers in the three contiguous states of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio...
systems in the area over digital channel 187 as of April 20, 2011.
The station began phasing out its longtime "Fox 41" branding in favor of simply using the WDRB call letters in May 2011. While this occurred shortly after sister station KTRV-TV in Boise, Idaho
Boise, Idaho
Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
lost its Fox affiliation, the station chose to make the move to bring it in line with the other stations in Louisville (which have long branded with their call letters) and to distinguish the station from Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
. WDRB and Fox later came to terms on an affiliation extension "for the forseeable future" on August 24, 2011, averting any signs the network may leave the station .
News operation
In 1990, WDRB debuted The News at 10, a half-hour weeknight broadcast (later renamed Fox News @ 10 and expanded to a full-hour), with weekend newscasts later added. More newscasts were added as the station's market position strengthened: with the launch of the 4-hour long Fox in the Morning and midday newscast Fox News @ 11:30 in 1999 and the debut of Fox News @ 4 in 2001. WDRB currently runs a total of 34½ hours of local newscasts each week (with 6½ hours on weekdays and one hour each on weekends), including newscasts from 5-9 a.m., 11:30 a.m.-12 noon, 4-5 p.m. and 6:30-7 p.m. on weekdays and a primetime newscast at 10 p.m. seven nights a week.The station is also one of the few stations in the nation to run a regular editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
segment, "Point of View." which is usually delivered twice weekly by WDRB/WMYO President and General Manager Bill Lamb. "Point of View" premiered in June 2002, introduced a weekly segment featuring phone response from viewers in 2007 and has evolved into one of the community's most prominent opinion forums, featuring frequent guest editorials by a wide cross-section of community members.
In 2006, WDRB—in partnership with Norton Healthcare—became the first and only station in Louisville to offer real-time closed captioning on all its newscasts, making 100% of the station's news content available to over 147,000 deaf or hard of hearing viewers in the market. Prior to this innovation, only pre-written studio-originated content was closed-captioned, while reports from the field and breaking news stories were not.
On April 17, 2010, WDRB-TV became the second Louisville station to convert its news operation to high definition, although it is the first in the market with all aspects of the operation, including field reporting, studio and weather operations completely in the format. WAVE—which broadcasts from the studio in HD—continues to produce field pieces in widescreen standard definition, while the other two news stations in the market (WHAS and WLKY) still broadcast in standard definition with the picture expanded to fill 16:9 widescreen dimensions.
On January 17, 2011, WDRB launched a weeknight-only early evening newscast at 6:30 p.m., which brought the station's weekday newscast output to seven hours a day (the station will also be the only station in the U.S. to carry newscasts at 4 and 6:30 p.m. without newscasts in the 5-6:30 p.m. time period).
Newscast titles
- 41 Report (newsbriefs; 1971–1989)
- The News at 10 (1990–1996)
- Fox News aka Fox 41 News (1996–2011, still used sparingly)
- WDRB News (2011–present)
- WDRB Local Evening News (6:30 p.m. newscast; 2011–present)
Station slogans
- Don't Let Fox 41 Weekends Pass You By (1987–1988; localized version of Fox ad campaign)
Current on-air staff (as of May 2011)
Anchors- Lindsay Allen - weekday mornings WDRB News in the Morning (5-7 a.m.) and 11:30 a.m.
- Gil Corsey - weekdays at 4 p.m.
- Jennifer Baileys - weekdays at 11:30 a.m. and weeknights at 6:30 p.m. (WDRB News Local Evening News)
- Sterling Riggs - weekday mornings "WDRB News in the Morning" (5-9 a.m.)
- Candyce Clifft - weekday mornings "WDRB News in the Morning" (5-9 a.m.)
- David Scott - weeknights at 6:30 p.m. (WDRB News Local Evening News), and 10 p.m.
- Elizabeth Woolsey - weekdays at 4, and weeknights at 10 p.m.
- Tamara Evans -weekends at 10
FOX 41 Weather Team
- Marc Weinberg (AMSAmerican Meteorological SocietyThe American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...
Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weekdays at 4, 6:30 p.m. (WDRB News Local Evening News), and 10 p.m. - Lori Farmer - meteorologist; weekends at 10 p.m.; also morning fill-in
- Jude Redfield - meteorologist "WDRB in the Morning"
Sports team
- Tom Lane - sports director; weeknights at 6:30 and 10 p.m.
- Pat Doney - sports reporter; weeknights at 10 p.m.
- Steve Andress - sports reporter; weeknights at 10 p.m.
Reporters
- Valerie Chinn - general assignment reporter
- Rachel Collier - general assignment reporter
- Katie Delaune - general assignment reporter
- Bill Francis - general assignment reporter
- Bennett Haeberle - general assignment reporter
- Stephan Johnson - general assignment reporter
- Keith Kaiser - weekday morning reporter
- Chris Turner - general assignment reporter