Балтимор қаласының WBAL телеарнасы

NBC television affiliate in Baltimore, Maryland
the television station

WBAL TV (channel 11) is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is the flagship property of Hearst Television, which has owned the station since its inception, and is sister to the company's sole radio properties, WBAL (1090 AM) and WIYY (97.9 FM). The three outlets share studios and offices on Television Hill in the Woodberry section of Baltimore, near the transmission tower that WBAL TV also shares with WIYY and several other Baltimore television and radio stations.

WBAL TV began operations on March 11, 1948, from its original studios on North Charles Street in Downtown Baltimore. It is the second television station in Maryland, after WMAR TV (channel 2). The station's parent, the Hearst Corporation, also owned WBAL radio and two local newspapers, the afternoon daily Baltimore News Post and The Baltimore American on Sundays–which later merged as the News American in 1965 before shutting down in 1986. WBAL TV is one of two Hearst owned broadcast properties to have been built and signed on by the company (the other being WTAE TV in Pittsburgh), and the oldest to be continuously owned by Hearst through its various television subsidiaries through the years. At its launch, WBAL TV was an NBC affiliate, owing to its radio sister's long affiliation with the NBC's radio networks. Early programming on channel 11 included Musical Almanac, Look and Cook and Know Baltimore, along with news and sports productions. In the 1950s, the station introduced Romper Room, a children's program produced locally by Bert and Nancy Claster that eventually became a nationally franchised and syndicated program. Another long running show of the 1950s was the weekday Quiz Club, co hosted by local personalities Brent Gunts and Jay Grayson. Baltimore Sun local history columnist Jacques Kelly described it at the time of Grayson's death in June 2000, as "pure 1950s live television executed on a low budget the genial hosts ruled the 1 p. m. airwaves". In the late 1970s, ABC steadily rose in the ratings to become the number one network in prime time. Accordingly, the network began to seek upgrades to its slate of affiliates, which included some stations that either had poor signals or poorly performing local programming. WBAL TV was invited to switch to ABC in 1977, but opted to remain with NBC out of concerns about the poor ratings for ABC's then recently revamped evening newscasts (a situation that would be improved in the coming years).

On March 3, 1981, CBS announced that it would be ending its 33 year affiliation with WMAR TV, then owned by the A. S. Abell Company (then publishers of the Baltimore Sun), and moving its programming to WBAL TV. Among its reasons for making the switch, CBS cited channel 11's strength in local news ratings and overall non network programming as opposed to WMAR TV, which heavily preempted the network in favor of syndicated programs, local public affairs and sports coverage; CBS also cited low ratings for WMAR's newscasts. WBAL TV's first stint as an NBC affiliate ended on August 30, 1981, when the two station exchanged networks–the first affiliation swap to occur in Baltimore. The last NBC program to air on channel 11 until 1995 was a rerun from the evening before the switch of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, with host George Carlin.

On June 16, 1994, the E. W. Scripps Company, present owners of WMAR TV, negotiated with ABC to affiliate with its Baltimore station as part of a multi station deal also involving KNXV TV in Phoenix and WFTS TV in Tampa. ABC agreed to the deal as a condition of retaining its affiliations with WXYZ TV in Detroit and WEWS TV in Cleveland; CBS was seeking to affiliate with both of those stations, as it was about to lose current affiliates WJBK and WJW to Fox in a separate affiliation deal with New World Communications. The move left NBC without a Baltimore affiliate and incumbent ABC affiliate WJZ TV (channel 13) without a network; one month later, CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting (Group W) formed a partnership which renewed the network's affiliations with Westinghouse owned KDKA TV in Pittsburgh and KPIX TV in San Francisco and caused WJZ TV and two other Westinghouse owned NBC affiliates, WBZ TV in Boston and KYW TV in Philadelphia, to switch their affiliations to CBS (Westinghouse would eventually acquire CBS in November 1995). Having lost the CBS affiliation to WJZ TV, WBAL TV had the choice of affiliating with either NBC or Fox. On July 27, 1994, NBC announced that it would move to WBAL TV, with station management citing NBC's sports programming as a factor; Fox would remain on its existing affiliate, WBFF (channel 45). Channel 11 rejoined NBC on January 2, 1995; it had sought to make the switch on August 29, 1994, in time for the new television season, but Group W and CBS agreed to not make the switch until January. The final CBS program to air on channel 11 before it rejoined NBC was the made for TV movie A Father for Charlie at 9 p. m. Eastern Time; this was directly followed by an hour long program explaining the switch, which preempted an airing of the Chicago Hope episode "Heartbreak" (which could still be viewed in much of the market via WUSA).

As a CBS affiliate, WBAL TV preempted an hour of the network's daytime schedule every day, as well as half of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Channel 11 also did not run CBS' late night programming. Baltimore viewers who wanted to see the entire CBS lineup could be able to view those programs through WDVM TV/WUSA in Washington, which was available over the air in most of the adjacent Baltimore area and preempted little network programming. The station also preempted Late Show with David Letterman in favor of continuing with The Arsenio Hall Show when it debuted in the fall of 1993; in response, CBS arranged for WNUV to carry the Letterman series instead. WBAL TV is one of the few NBC affiliates that does not air the fourth hour of Today (which can be seen in the area via NBC O&O WRC TV in Washington).

In 1970, when the then Baltimore Colts moved to the newly formed and realigned American Football Conference as part of the AFL–NFL merger of professional football of 1970, WBAL TV displaced WMAR TV (which had aired most of the team's games since 1956) as the station of record for the team (as NBC was the rightsholder for all AFC games). During its first season as such, the station provided coverage of the Colts' victory in Super Bowl V in 1971. This partnership continued until 1981, when WMAR TV became the team's unofficial home station again for their last three seasons in Baltimore (although the station continued to air Colts games in those three seasons, they were limited to home interconference contests). When the reorganized Baltimore Ravens began play in 1996 after moving the old Cleveland Browns franchise to Maryland, WBAL TV became the new team's station of record, but only for two seasons; in 1998, most games were moved to WJZ TV. Presently, WBAL TV airs any Ravens games when they play on NBC's Sunday Night Football and on Monday Night Football contests exclusive to ESPN, the latter being a benefit of Hearst's 20 percent ownership of ESPN. The station aired any Baltimore Orioles baseball games as part of NBC's broadcast contract with Major League Baseball from the establishment of the new Orioles franchise in 1954 (move of the old St. Louis Browns to the city) until 1981; it also aired all of the Orioles' postseason games through NBC's limited contract from 1995 to 2000. During its time as a CBS station, WBAL TV also broadcast select games involving the Orioles through CBS's MLB broadcast contract from 1990 to 1993. From 1964 until his retirement in 1995, Vince Bagli was WBAL TV's sportscaster. His colleagues at the station called him the "Dean of Baltimore Sports".

WBAL TV presently broadcasts 35 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday, 4 1/2 hours on Saturdays and 5 1/2 hours on Sundays); the station also produces a weekly public affairs program on Sunday mornings called 11 TV Hill. Appropriately for a station with roots in a newspaper, channel 11 has a rich news tradition. WBAL's newscasts have spent the better part of its history in either first or second place in the ratings. It led the ratings from the 1960s until WJZ TV passed it in the early 1970s. However, for the better part of the last 40 years, WBAL TV had waged a spirited battle for first place in the ratings with WJZ TV. In recent years, WBAL TV's newscasts placed first at 5, 6 and 11 p. m. However, in the November 2009 Nielsen ratings sweeps period—the first since the debut of The Jay Leno Show—WBAL's 11 p. m. newscast fell precipitously from first to a distant second behind WJZ (by contrast, the 11 p. m. newscast on WRC TV in nearby Washington, D. C. was one of the least affected late night newscasts of any NBC affiliate or owned and operated station in the country; it continued to dominate its competitors). WBAL still continued to lead at 5 and 6 p. m. until the November 2011 sweeps period. Since NBC took Leno off of prime time in February 2010—in part due to complaints from WBAL and other affiliates about effects on its newscasts—viewership of channel 11's late newscast has often come close to the WJZ newscast. However, since the November 2011 sweeps period, WJZ's newscasts took the lead in nearly all time slots but WBAL is still a strong second. In 1974, WBAL introduced the Action News format to Baltimore. Characterized by short, usually 90 second, news "packages" and upbeat introductory news themes, Baltimore's Action News briefly replaced WJZ as the number one news station in Baltimore during the mid 1970s. The architect of the success was news director Ron Kershaw, who had come to Baltimore from Texas and was considered somewhat ahead of his time. He brought in talented anchors like Sue Simmons and Spencer Christian but also replaced long time local news anchor Rolf Hertsgaard with controversial out of towner Don Harrison and streamlined the news operation. Kershaw later brought other innovations to WNBC TV in New York City and WBBM TV in Chicago as news director at those stations. WBAL TV lent then meteorologist Sandra Shaw to Hearst sister station WDSU TV in New Orleans on September 1, 2008, to assist with the Louisiana station's coverage of Hurricane Gustav. On January 3, 2009, WBAL TV became the second station in Baltimore (behind WBFF) to begin broadcasting its local news programming in high definition. Only the in studio cameras and footage from the station's helicopter were in HD at the time of the switch. For over a year, most field reports were still in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition. Most field reports are switched from 16:9 widescreen enhanced definition to 16:9 high definition in March 2012. On March 5, 2012, WBAL debuted a half hour 10 p. m. newscast on its WBAL Plus digital subchannel, which competes against an hour long newscast on WBFF. News Anchor Rod Daniels retired from WBAL TV in 2015 after more than 30 years with the station.

In addition, WBAL TV became the first Baltimore television station to win a Peabody Award for local news coverage, specifically of their Chesapeake Bay pollution investigation (and the first Baltimore television station to win the award in any category in more than fifty years). WBAL's news department was also awarded as one of the top three Best Television Newscasts by the National Headliners Association, alongside WFAA in Dallas, and WBAL's Boston sister station WCVB TV. The station has also won regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, the George Polk Award and the American Bar Association Gavel Award for excellence in reporting and journalism; it has also been rated the most outstanding television news operation in Baltimore (by the Associated Press and United Press International).

WBAL TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre transition UHF channel 59, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog era assignment of VHF channel 11. Several VHF digital stations received permission for a power increase later that month after stations experienced signal problems as a result of changing their digital channel from UHF to VHF. WBAL TV chose to test its equipment before making a commitment. As a part of the repacking process following the 2016 2017 FCC incentive auction, WBAL TV relocated to VHF channel 12 on July 2, 2020, using virtual channel 11. WJZ TV concurrently moved to channel 11, WBAL TV's former digital channel before the repacking.