Fox 53 Pittsburgh history

At the time, UHF stations could only be seen with a separately purchased converter and UHF antenna (television sets were not required to have UHF tuners until 1964, after passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act), and even then the picture quality was spotty at best.

On February 12, 1965, the FCC announced that an application was filed to sell the Channel 53 construction permit (now with call letters WAND-TV) from Agnes Jane Reeves Greer to Daniel H. Overmyer for consideration of $28,000, with the FCC granting approval of the sale on July 28, 1965.

Overmyer was planning a group of UHF stations to be part of the Overmyer Network which was intended to begin programming in 1967.

Despite excellent signal quality and a well-programmed lineup, financial problems continued to trouble the station, leading United States Communications Corporation to take WPGH-TV off the air on August 16, 1971.

The Meredith Corporation purchased WPGH-TV in 1978 and added stronger shows and some first-run syndicated talk shows to the station.

With WPTT-TV (channel 22, now WPNT) now in the competition, WPGH-TV put in very high bids for programming and even overpaid for some in order to prevent shows from ending up on WPTT-TV. That practice, however, caused the station to become unprofitable despite its high ratings. As a result, Meredith put WPGH-TV up for sale in 1985.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group (owner of WPTT-TV) put in a bid so it could combine assets and sell WPTT-TV to the Home Shopping Network (HSN). However, it was outbid by Lorimar-Telepictures which took over the station in 1986.

It was put up for sale again in 1990, and this time, Sinclair was the successful buyer.

So beginning on January 6, 1992, WPGH-TV began running shows on WPTT-TV that it lacked the time to run itself.

In 1993, WPGH-TV programmed WPTT-TV daily from noon to midnight.

Beginning in 1995, it controlled the entire day's programming on WPTT-TV, except for a few hours in the overnight.

In 1998, to coincide with the launch of its news department the year prior, WPGH-TV launched a new logo based around the colors of black and gold to match that of the city's local sports teams.

The station, under various forms of the logo, still use it today, and would later be copied by fellow Fox affiliate and sister station WTTE in Columbus, Ohio, who in 2000 adopted a similar logo in a scarlet and gray color scheme to match the Ohio State Buckeyes.

By 2002, WPGH-TV was no longer running cartoons after the Fox Kids weekday lineup was discontinued around the country.

Although it is still carried on area cable systems, CBS affiliate WTRF-TV added a primary Fox and secondary MyNetworkTV affiliation on a new digital subchannel; sister station WTOV-TV later acquired the Fox affiliation for their second subchannel in 2014.

On August 2, 2017, it was reported that Fox Television Stations was in talks with Ion Media to create a joint venture that would own their respective stations.