WVEC

WVEC (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Hampton, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group; Nexstar owns NBC affiliate WAVY-TV (channel 10) and Fox affiliate WVBT (channel 43). WVEC's studios are located on Woodis Avenue in Norfolk; its transmitter is located near Driver in Suffolk. WVEC began broadcasting on UHF channel 15 on September 19, 1953, from studios in Hampton. It was the second television station in Hampton Roads and broke the monopoly on television programming and affiliations held by WTAR-TV (now WTKR), which broadcast on a VHF channel. The station was originally an NBC affiliate; NBC provided pre-launch support to the new station, at a time when UHF stations could only be seen by viewers with specially fitted converters. The station was a modestly successful second-place outlet until 1957, when Hampton Roads gained a second VHF station: WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, originally the ABC affiliate. WVEC-TV lost viewers and some NBC programs to the new VHF station, which could be seen in all homes. It was successful in encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to allocate a third VHF channel, channel 13, to Hampton Roads. It merged with the other applicants for the channel, and WVEC-TV moved to channel 13 on November 13, 1959.…

WVEC (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Hampton, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group; Nexstar owns NBC affiliate WAVY-TV (channel 10) and Fox affiliate WVBT (channel 43). WVEC's studios are located on Woodis Avenue in Norfolk; its transmitter is located near Driver in Suffolk. WVEC began broadcasting on UHF channel 15 on September 19, 1953, from studios in Hampton. It was the second television station in Hampton Roads and broke the monopoly on television programming and affiliations held by WTAR-TV (now WTKR), which broadcast on a VHF channel. The station was originally an NBC affiliate; NBC provided pre-launch support to the new station, at a time when UHF stations could only be seen by viewers with specially fitted converters. The station was a modestly successful second-place outlet until 1957, when Hampton Roads gained a second VHF station: WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, originally the ABC affiliate. WVEC-TV lost viewers and some NBC programs to the new VHF station, which could be seen in all homes. It was successful in encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to allocate a third VHF channel, channel 13, to Hampton Roads. It merged with the other applicants for the channel, and WVEC-TV moved to channel 13 on November 13, 1959. It simultaneously opened its current Norfolk studio and switched to a full-time ABC affiliation. The channel 15 facilities were then used for educational television by WHRO-TV, which began in 1961. The station's limited local news efforts gradually expanded in the 1970s and in the 1980s after Corinthian Broadcasting and the A. H. Belo Corporation in turn acquired channel 13. The bulk of station operations shifted to Norfolk, and after WTKR experienced a collapse in its news ratings in the mid-1980s, WAVY and WVEC began contending for first place in the market. In partnership with Cox Communications and The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, WVEC launched a local cable news channel, Local News on Cable, in 1997; it operated until 2010 and for most of that time featured an original 10 p.m. local newscast co-produced with The Virginian-Pilot. Belo sold the station to the Gannett Company, predecessor to Tegna, in 2013. Tegna's sale to Nexstar Media Group in 2026 brought WVEC under common ownership with WAVY-TV and Fox affiliate WVBT. ==History== ===Move to channel 13=== On July 30, 1958, it was announced that Peninsula had agreed to merge its WVEC-TV application with those of WTOV and Virginian Television, which each would own 10 percent of the new channel 13, with WVEC radio being spun off. It appeared as though approval was assured until WAVY-TV protested at a hearing that Broadcasting reported "burst into flame", claiming the addition of a third local VHF station would cause it financial distress and that the involvement of WNOR and WBOF in the same application raised questions of a potentially illegal duopoly. In April 1959, FCC examiner J. D. Bond rendered an initial decision approving the combined channel 13 application. Final approval came on July 15, after WAVY withdrew its petition. Before the approval, WVEC-TV had acquired a building in the Atlantic City area of Norfolk, at Third and Woodis streets, for a new Norfolk studio. WVEC-TV began airing ABC programming on August 22, 1959. It moved to channel 13 at 5 p.m. on November 13, 1959—Friday the 13th—from the new Norfolk facility. With its move to channel 13, WVEC-TV became a full ABC affiliate and WAVY-TV a full NBC affiliate. It also gained reception in many fringe areas that had been unable to receive the UHF transmissions on channel 15. The switch to channel 13 brought with it a new local program: the children's show Bungles the Clown, hosted by Jerry Sandford, which ran from 1959 to 1973. Educational programming for schools continued on the new channel 13 after the switch, though afternoon time was dropped and programs were aired in a block from 9 to 11:30 a.m. WVEC-TV announced in December 1960 that it would cease carrying educational programming beginning in June 1961. Three months later, in March 1961, an association of local school systems was formed, with proposals to use channel 15 instead of the locally reserved 21 as well as WVEC-TV's former tower from its channel 15 facility. Only two school systems emerged in favor of the project: those in Hampton and Norfolk, which formed the Hampton Roads Educational Television Association and applied for channel 15 on May 29, 1961. WHRO-TV began broadcasting on October 2, 1961, as Virginia's first noncommercial television station. While WVEC-TV initially posted strong ratings and competed with WTAR and WAVY, it ran third for most of the years following the 1959 affiliation switch. In 1965, the station became the third to move its transmitter facility to Driver, where a tower was built. The WVEC radio stations, last known under Peninsula ownership as WVEC and WVHR-FM, were sold in 1978 to Larry Saunders and Dick Lamb and became WWDE AM and WWDE-FM. ===Local News on Cable=== WVEC-TV, The Virginian-Pilot, and Cox Communications entered into a collaboration to launch a local cable news service, known as Local News on Cable (LNC), in February 1997. LNC offered simulcasts and repeats of the latest WVEC-TV newscasts as well as two special collaborative programs. Pilot 13 News at 10 featured two anchors at the WVEC studio and a third at a set built at the newspaper's downtown Norfolk offices. The other dedicated Pilot 13 News newscast aired on weekend mornings. Previously, WVEC had produced a 10 p.m. newscast for the low-power station WPEN-LP. Offered on different channel numbers in different areas, it moved to channel 5 when WSKY-TV began broadcasting in 2001. Pilot 13 News struggled with competition from WVBT (channel 43), which debuted a 10 p.m. newscast in 1998; by November 2005, it had just over one-fourth of the viewership of WVBT's newscast. After ceasing to be a profitable endeavor, Pilot 13 News aired for the final time on January 30, 2009; Local News on Cable continued to air news repeats with a ticker of stories from the newspaper's website until it closed at the end of 2010 when the agreement between the parties expired. ==News operation== Tony Burden arrived at WVEC in 1968 and later described what he found as "sick". The station was the last in the market to present color newsfilm and was last place in the ratings. Chisman commissioned a survey as to the viability of presenting the evening news at 5:30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. Though the survey recommended against it, Chisman started the newscast and slowly built a niche for WVEC in news that overperformed in demographics valuable with advertisers; by 1974, the early news ran second to a dominant WTAR-TV, while the late newscast placed third. Another impetus for improvement and expansion of the news operation was the 1973 survey by outgoing FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson of local programming at network affiliates in the top 50 television markets, which put WVEC among the 10 worst stations in the country. The station responded by adding more equipment and staff. Burden, who served as evening anchor and news director, was arrested in December 1977 on drug charges. The story received a wide airing on competing newscasts and in the Norfolk newspapers co-owned with WTAR-TV by Landmark Communications. Burden resigned in 1978 and was replaced as main anchor by Jim Kincaid, a Peabody Award–winning former correspondent for ABC News. Kincaid became known for his personal commentaries to close newscasts, which were compiled into a book, Notes from My Friends, and remained with the station until retiring in 1996. WVEC went to an hour-long evening newscast in 1980, the market's first since WAVY-TV tried the idea for six months in the mid-1970s. The changes came at a time of turmoil for channel 3, which as late as 1980 held an 18-percentage point lead over WVEC at 6 p.m. However, after the acquisition of WTAR-TV by Knight Ridder and its renaming to WTKR, its ratings declined. By 1985, WTKR was in second place in the time slot behind either WAVY or WVEC, depending on the ratings survey. By the late 1980s, WVEC had the leading 6 p.m. newscast in Hampton Roads and WAVY the most-watched 11 p.m. newscast, a situation that persisted into 1990. To try and improve the 11 p.m. news ratings, news director Tony Ballew—who came to the station in 1989—shuffled the anchor lineup and paired Kincaid with a new co-anchor, Barbara Ciara, who had previously worked at WAVY. By November 1992, WVEC led or tied at 5:30, 6, and 11 p.m. During this period, WVEC also launched a morning newscast in 1990, the third local station to do so. Another well-known news anchor for WVEC-TV was Terry Zahn, who was hired from WAVY-TV in 1993 and joined the news staff in 1994. Zahn was teamed with Ciara on the early news, which was moved from 5:30 to 5 p.m. and debuted in first place in the time slot. When Kincaid retired in 1996, Zahn took his place on the 6 p.m. news, anchoring for a time at 5, 6, and 11 p.m. After a battle with multiple myeloma in 1997, the cancer went into remission; it returned, and Zahn died in January 2000¹. Ciara departed later that year to work at WTKR. In the early 2000s, WVEC was the second-rated station to WAVY-TV in evening news but slowly gained on channel 10. It introduced a 5:30 p.m. newscast in September 2001, bringing the station to a 90-minute news block from 5 to 6:30 and providing WAVY and WTKR competition in the time slot. The move raised the ratings for the entire evening news block; WVEC claimed its first win at 6 p.m. in six years in November 2004, and by 2005 the block had a lead of several rating points over WAVY. The pattern of strong performances in the early evening and second- or third-place finishes in other dayparts for the most part continued, though WAVY occasionally led instead. In 2013, WVEC rebranded as 13 News Now, at a time when its ratings were increasing. In November 2013, the station was first place in early evening news and tied with WTKR at 11 p.m. ===Notable former on-air staff=== Sharyn Alfonsi – reporter, –1997 Natasha Barrett – reporter, 2003–2006 Marcia Bartusiak – WVEC's first female reporter, 1971–1975 Jim Kincaid – anchor, 1978–1996 John Miller – news anchor and news director (1971–1983), morning and noon anchor (1990–1996) Hank Plante – reporter Robyne Robinson – reporter, 1985 Stan Verrett — sportscaster, 1990s G. William Whitehurst — political analyst, late 1980s Terry Zahn – anchor, 1994–2000 ==Technical information== WVEC's transmitter is located near Driver in Suffolk. The station's signal is multiplexed: WVEC began broadcasting a digital signal on channel 41 on April 3, 2002. It ended programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 41 to VHF channel 13, where it remained until moving to channel 11 on May 1, 2020, as a result of the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction. In 2022, WVEC petitioned the FCC to let it move to the UHF band on channel 35. It cited signal reception difficulties related to its VHF facility, which increased after the repack. To eliminate concerns over adjacent-channel interference, Tegna acquired WYSJ-CD and proposed to move it to the same tower. The commission approved the change on March 16, 2023, and the station switched to UHF broadcasting on October 29, 2024. ===Eastern Shore translators=== On the Eastern Shore of Virginia, Accomack County owns two translators, W18EG-D and W25AA-D (licensed to Onancock and broadcast from Mappsville), that provide the main channel of WVEC alongside those of WTKR, WAVY-TV, and WHRO-TV. ==References== ==External links==

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