WPXI at 63

On this day in 1957, WIIC-TV, Channel 11 signed on as Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate. That was two years after it was supposed to sign on as the area’s CBS affiliate. Operating on the UHF Channel 16, WENS-TV took issue with the granting of the license to the owners of WIIC given that WENS had applied for Channel 11 to get on to the VHF spectrum. (I’m sure we’ve mentioned that conundrum several times over the years!)

Had WIIC been the CBS affiliate, KDKA-TV (2) would have had NBC which would have made sense given the radio station’s long affiliation with NBC at the time. But CBS had the better ratings and no real place to call home exclusively and chose KDKA. But the move also required more shuffling. WIIC Incorporated was a venture of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who owned WWSW (970); and Pittsburgh Radio Supply House, who owned WJAS (1320). WJAS-AM and FM (99.7) had to be sold as a result and NBC bought them turning them into WAMP and WFMP respectively.

Bill Cardille signed WIIC on the air that September 1, 1957 and remained with the station through the transition to WPXI in 1980 and well into the 1990s. His Chiller Theatre and work with the annual MDA Labor Day Telethon are stuff of legend and will be remembered for a long time.

But wait a minute… why WPXI? Pittsburgh Press TV-Radio Editor Barbara Holsopple asked that question in her article on November 28, 1980 when the station sought to make that change. Mind you, the letters were on an FM station in Charleston, South Carolina. Then WIIC general manager Jack McCarthy told the writer that it was customary for the station seeking letters already in use to pay for legal fees and stationary changes. The FM station in Charleston had requested a price the TV station thought was a little high. Had they not been attainable, WIIC would have remained. Meanwhile, the change was all about the station’s image.

‘The station is under new management, new philosophy and new direction,” McCarthy explains. “It’s not the same Channel 11 and we feel a call letter change is one way to tell people of Pittsburgh it is, in fact, a new station.’

WPXI was chosen he says, ‘because it says Pittsburgh 11’.

Now, I may be a little thick in the head, but I studied those letters for a long time and all I got was ‘pixie.’ Press TV program clerk Mary Jane Gieche had to point out to me how WPXI says ‘Pittsburgh 11’. (See how long it takes you to figure it out.)

WIIC’s problems long have been linked to a lack of audience identification. The past few years have been spent publicizing the ’11’ in WIIC. The campaign was successful enough to cause some folks who write me to spell WIIC as W11C – a spelling distortion that is questionable at best.”

Barbara Holsopple, Pittsburgh Press (November 28, 1980)

Holsopple obviously learned that “Pittsburgh 11” is P for Pittsburgh and XI – the Roman Numeral for 11. But the two I-ed callsign seemed to reference the 11 for many years. The “We’re the ONES to watch!” catchphrase highlighted the center letters WIIC. And then there’s this one below which has been recreated and modified for use on a t-shirt. No doubt a nod to Cardille’s “Chiller Theatre” and perhaps even his and the station’s appearance in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

Although it happened a few days late, for their 50th anniversary in 2007, WPXI moved down from its perch on “Television Hill” at the apex of Pittsburgh’s Fineview Neighborhood. Originally they had every intention of moving from there completely – tower and all. But neighbors in the Summer Hill neighborhood, virtually next to WPGH-TV (which is actually in Reserve Township at 750 Ivory Avenue where WENS was) objected to another tower with WPGH so close by and KDKA-TV’s towers on the other side of I-279. It would have also forced WSHH-FM (99.7) and WWSW-FM (94.5) to find other tower sites.

The LEEDs Certified “green” building at 4145 Evergreen Road has a studio to transmitter link with a perfect line of sight to 341 Rising Main Avenue (the real address once known as “11 Television Hill”). Most of the working parts of the building – the news room, lobby and studios were torn down to save on taxes and what remains is likely the original transmitter building for the TV station. Plus there is a separate structure for the two radio station transmitters. Cox Media Group sold the tower and the site to IWG Towers Assets II, LLC in 2015. County records had it owned by “W I I C TV CORP” previously.

WPXI’s original digital allocation was Channel 48 but the 2019 repack moved the signal to Channel 23. The legal ID is “WPXI-TV Pittsburgh, New Castle, Uniontown” showing the two regions where repeater signals are located. But as with all other TV signals, we know them by their analog allocation – now “virtual” 11.