WKYC (Channel 3) for most of its existence was one of 5 network-owned television stations of the National Broadcasting Co. It first went on the air 31 Oct. 1948, as WNBK over Channel 4. A move to Channel 3 was mandated in 1954, when its erection of the most powerful antenna in the Midwest caused interference with other local channels. In a 1955 trade between NBC and the Westinghouse Broadcasting Co., Westinghouse took over NBC's Cleveland outlets, while NBC acquired the former's facilities in Philadelphia. With Westinghouse came the call letters KYW, which were applied to both Channel 3 and its sister radio station, WTAM. Before the exchange was nullified by the FCC a decade later, KYW had moved its studios from the Superior (formerly NBC) Bldg. to the former E. Ohio Gas Bldg. on E. 6th St. Westinghouse launched the "Mike Douglas Show" in Cleveland, where it acquired a national following. When NBC returned to Cleveland as a station proprietor in 1965, it brought the call letters WKYC for the former KYW monogram, which returned to Philadelphia with Westinghouse. Within a few months, WKYC had become Cleveland's first all-color television station. WKYC Radio, however, was sold off by NBC at the end of the 1960s and resurfaced under various ownerships as WWWE. Locally, the station inherited Linn Sheldon's "Barnaby," one of the city's most popular children's shows, from the KYW era. Only 2 years after hiring Paul Sciria as its first full-time news reporter, the station introduced one of the nation's first half-hour newscasts in 1959. Live telecasts from SEVERANCE HALL of the CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA under GEO. SZELL were also featured during that era. In 1986 WKYC became the city's first VHF channel to broadcast in stereo. Network ownership was again severed in 1991, when NBC sold the station to Multimedia, Inc., of Greenville, SC.
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