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Site of the Week 7/15/16: Norfolk, Virginia TV

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
July 15, 2016
in Free Content, Tower Site of the Week, Virginia
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

Want to see all the TV towers in the Norfolk, Virginia market? It’s easy, really…just find your way out I-664 to the southwestern corner of the Hampton Roads Beltway, and then get off at Nansamond Parkway, VA 337, and head west.

WHRO's building
WHRO’s building

WHRO transmitter building
WHRO transmitter building

(With one quick stop first before we head out to rural Driver, Virginia: shown above at left is the studio building for public broadcaster WHRO, north of downtown Norfolk on Hampton Boulevard across from Old Dominion University…)

WHRO’s tower is one of the newer ones in the Driver tower farm, a 1259-foot candelabra that went up in 2006 toward the west end of the farm adjacent to an older WHRO tower. The candelabra also became the DTV home for four other full-power TVs in the market: WTKR (Channel 3/RF 40), TBN’s WTPC (Channel 21/RF 7), My Network affiliate WTVZ (Channel 33/RF 33) and ion’s WPXV (Channel 49/RF 46). The older WHRO tower is still there next to the candelabra, supporting antennas for WHRO-FM (90.3) and WHRV (89.5); there are also aux antennas for Entercom’s FMs in the market here.

The candelabra
The candelabra

WHRO/WHRV-FM
WHRO/WHRV-FM

WAVY-TV
WAVY-TV
WVEC and old WTKR
Old WTKR/WVKL and WVEC
WTKR/WGNT
WGNT/WNOH

The westernmost towers in the farm belong to Media General’s NBC and Fox affiliates, WAVY-TV (Channel 10/RF 31) and WVBT (Channel 43/RF 29).

Their two sticks sit in close proximity on Kings Parkway (VA 125), just west of where Nansamond Parkway/VA 337 bends south toward the WHRO candelabra site.

Old WTKR/WVKL and WVEC
Old WTKR/WVKL and WVEC

Old WTKR and WVKL 95.7
Old WTKR and WVKL

WGNT and WNOH
WGNT and WNOH
Old WTKR site
Old WTKR site

Heading eastward again on Nansamond, back toward I-664, we pass three towers on the south side of the road.

ABC affiliate WVEC (Channel 13/RF 13) is at right in the lefthand shot above; at left is the old WTKR analog tower, which still has former FM sister WVKL (95.7) on it.

wvkl-tx
WNOH 105.3

WTKR and WGNT
WNOH and WGNT

The easternmost tower in the farm is down a road that heads south just past the WVEC and old WTKR sites. This is the tower site of CW affiliate WGNT (Channel 27/RF 50), which was the old WYAH, the original flagship station of Pat Robertson’s CBN empire. Robertson also owned what’s now WNOH (105.3), which still has its transmitter in the building, too.

The Virginian-Pilot
The Virginian-Pilot

WTKR's Boush Street building
WTKR’s Boush Street building

It’s a chance encounter with an engineer working out here that gets us inside the doors of the WTKR/WGNT studios back in downtown Norfolk, one of the most historic broadcast facilities still standing anywhere in the mid-Atlantic region. Look closely behind the tree in front of the Virginian-Pilot building next door and you’ll see an STL tower that replaced the original 1949-vintage transmission tower for what was then WTAR-TV (Channel 3), then and now the CBS affiliate for the region.

Welcome to WTKR!
Welcome to WTKR!

1949 drawing
1949 drawing

When this plant went up in 1949 at 720 Boush Street for WTAR radio and TV, it was as state-of-the-art as a broadcast facility could be. The Art Deco building boasted a lavish marble lobby that opened right into an auditorium studio that could be used for radio or TV, complete with control booths off to the side of the stage and a sponsor’s room overlooking the auditorium.

Auditorium
Auditorium

Lobby
Lobby

After a fairly recent renovation, that auditorium is still in use and still gleaming, from the stage right up to the old Kliegl Bros. scoop lights that still hang over the stage.

There’s another big ground-floor TV studio that we didn’t get to see, because it was in the midst of renovations for a new set installation, which we’ll have to check out when next we get to Hampton Roads.

News control
News control

MCR hub
MCR hub

Upstairs, there’s a control room for TV down the hall from the newsroom, which sits in an annex to the original 1949 building. Up another floor, we’re at the space where the WTAR radio studios originally sat. It’s been decades since WTAR radio moved out, leaving the renamed WTKR-TV behind – and now the old radio studio space is a hubbed master control for many of Local TV LLC’s markets, including WTKR and WGNT locally.

And up one more flight of stairs? There’s a rooftop deck with a nice view of the Norfolk skyline, including the site of the old TV tower on the newspaper building next door.

Up on the roof
Up on the roof

Newsroom
Newsroom

After WTAR-TV pioneered TV in the Tidewater region in 1949, it was four long years before a second station showed up in town – and when WVEC (1490) and WVEC-FM (101.3) spawned a TV sister in the fall of 1953, WVEC-TV was operating at the severe disadvantage of being on UHF channel 15.

Unlike most early UHFs, WVEC-TV not only survived, it eventually landed a move down the dial to VHF channel 13, where it landed in 1959. (By then, it had lost its original NBC affiliation to the market’s third station, Portsmouth-licensed WAVY-TV 10, which signed on in 1957 with ABC.)

WVEC's studio
WVEC’s studio

WVEC newsroom
WVEC newsroom

While WVEC’s original studio building still stands in its city of license, Hampton, the station has long since moved to Norfolk, operating from a building down by the waterfront west of downtown that’s been expanded repeatedly over the years.

Production studio
Production studio

News studio
News studio

Walk inside, and the lobby opens right into the newsroom, which is in turn just down the hall from two studios. One is used for local production (that’s a weekend business show that was being taped on the Friday we stopped by), while the other is home to WVEC’s newscasts.

WVEC control room
WVEC control room

WVEC MCR
WVEC MCR

Control rooms are down the hall here, both the production control room and master control – WVEC, alone among the Big Four affiliates here in town, has a local master control that serves only its own channels. There’s an annex building, too, across the street, providing extra room for some of the marketing department and to house WVEC’s news vehicles.

For us, we’ve just scratched the surface of this fascinating market. We never did get across Hampton Roads to see the peninsula cities, including Newport News and Hampton, nor did we get to some of the other studio and tower sites on this side (including WAVY’s studio, on “Wavy Street” in Portsmouth!). And so we’ll definitely put the Tidewater high on our list of places to visit again sometime soon…

Thanks to WTKR’s Bill Sewell and Sperry Davis and WVEC’s Emily Mowers and Greg Brauer for the tours

WE’RE FIRMLY IN 2023

And if you don’t have your 2023 Tower Site Calendar yet, now is the perfect time to get it. Because we have lowered the price to just $14.

The calendar has great photos of broadcast sites near and far (everywhere from Navajo Nation on the cover to Boston to Toronto to Texas, and beyond), plus a lovely “centerfold” you can keep on your wall for 2024.

It’s still shipping regularly, and you can have yours in just a couple of days!

Order your copy and you’ll see what we mean.

If you have already ordered your calendar, make sure you check out the other items in the store, too!

Don’t miss a big batch of Hampton Roads IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: Salisbury, Maryland and the Delmarva Peninsula

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Tags: WAVYWGNTWHROWHRVWTKRWTVZWVECWVKL
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Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

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