WFMZ-TV

• 1. Introduction

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  WFMZ-TV, channel 69, went on the air on the 25th of November 1976, making it one of the few locally owned independent television stations still operating in an era when national networks and media conglomerates dominate the landscape. Based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, it serves the Lehigh Valley, a region that sits at a curious crossroads: technically part of the Philadelphia television market, yet close enough to New York City that its over-the-air signal reaches counties inside the New York City market as well. Who owns this unusual station? A local company called Maranatha Broadcasting, which also holds a license for WDPN-TV in Wilmington, Delaware. How does a single independent UHF station manage to air six hours of local news a day, launch the first local all-weather multicast service in the United States, and win Emmy nominations for original documentary work? The answers lie in a half-century of deliberate local focus.

• 2. A Station Reborn on Channel 69

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  The first television station to carry the WFMZ-TV call sign operated on UHF channel 67 starting in December 1954, but it lasted only until April 1955. For more than two decades, the call letters belonged only to a radio station at 100.7 MHz. In February 1975, the company applied again, this time for channel 69, and the application was approved on the 9th of December 1975. The equipment to launch the new television station did not come from scratch. Much of the channel 69 transmitter and gear came from WHFV in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a station that had shut down in May 1975 after a short run. WFMZ-TV debuted the following year running 13 hours a day, focused on family-oriented entertainment, sharing a transmitter site with the WFMZ radio station that had outlasted the original television venture. The FM station would remain co-owned until it was sold in 1997.

• 3. Building 69 News

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  On its opening day in 1976, WFMZ ran two newscasts under the name Newspulse, airing at 7 and 10 p.m. Those programs were rebranded as Channel 69 News in the late 1980s. In 1989, the station added a 5 p.m. edition, and by 1997 the 7 p.m. show had shifted to 6 p.m. A notable expansion came in 1995 with the debut of Berks Edition, a 5:30 p.m. newscast aimed at Reading, which station leadership created because Philadelphia news stations were seen as covering the Allentown area more extensively than the Reading area. That program grew to include a 10:30 p.m. broadcast in 1998, and WFMZ originally produced it from a small newsroom inside the Reading Eagle newspaper. The year 1997 brought significantly enhanced ratings for the station's Lehigh Valley news coverage, and the late 1990s saw the launch of morning and noon news programs focused on the valley. By 2000, WFMZ was running three hours of local news a day; today it airs roughly six. The most recent addition came on the 25th of September 2023, when a new 30-minute 8 p.m. newscast filled a gap that had previously left viewers without local coverage from 6:30 p.m. until 10.

• 4. Reaching Beyond the Lehigh Valley

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  In May 2008, WFMZ became the fourth television station in the Philadelphia media market to broadcast local newscasts in high definition. Three years earlier, in 2005, the station had formed a broadcast partnership with WPVI-TV, Philadelphia's ABC owned-and-operated station on channel 6, allowing the two stations to share news-gathering resources for local stories. A street-level studio opened inside the PPL Center sports arena in Center City Allentown in February 2015, and the station now broadcasts its noon news program from that location. The station also maintains a newsroom on Court Street in Reading and keeps its primary studios and transmitter on East Rock Road on South Mountain in Allentown. Outside the Lehigh Valley, WFMZ is carried on cable systems in New Jersey communities like Phillipsburg and Milford, both technically inside the New York City media market. It also reaches cable subscribers across Schuylkill, Carbon, Monroe, and Luzerne counties, which belong to the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre media market.

• 5. Local Programs and Documentaries

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  Beyond news, WFMZ produces a range of local programs that reflect the specific interests of the Lehigh Valley. The American Law Journal, a call-in show hosted by attorney Christopher Naughton, debuted in 1990 and brings attorneys on air to answer viewer questions. Lehigh Sports Magazine, which covers Lehigh University athletics, began in 1994 and airs during the fall, hosted by Jim Vaughn. The Big Ticket, also hosted by Vaughn alongside Dan Moscaritolo with reports from sports reporter Dave Lesko, covers high school football highlights every Friday at 11 p.m. and has run since 1995. The Freddy Awards, modeled after the Tony Awards ceremony, began on WFMZ in 2003 and recognizes Lehigh Valley high school musical productions each year in a live broadcast hosted by Ed Hanna and Shelley Brown from the State Theatre in Easton. The station's documentary work is produced through a partnership with Julian Farris Films, led by 69 News reporter Jaccii Farris and executive producer Amy Unger. That unit has earned Emmy nominations for films including Boscov: An American Story, Time Bomb: Allentown Gas Explosion, and Aftershocks: Earthquake in Haiti. Since 2008, WFMZ has also served as the broadcaster for select Lehigh Valley IronPigs home games, primarily on Saturdays.

• 6. Multicast and the Spectrum Sale

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  On the 5th of February 2001, WFMZ launched the 69 News Weather Channel, a continuous loop of regional weather, traffic cameras, and news headlines on one of its subchannels. The station described it as the first such multicast weather service in the United States. Unlike other AccuWeather affiliates that blended nationally produced segments with local material, WFMZ's weather subchannel has always been entirely local content. The station's subchannel lineup has shifted over the years. In 2009 it began carrying Retro TV as a subchannel. On the 24th of January 2014, MeTV announced it would move its Philadelphia-market affiliation from WFMZ's 69.3 subchannel to channel 2, now WDPN-TV, though WFMZ had already been simulcasting MeTV since November 2013. Atlanta-based Tuff TV replaced MeTV on 69.3 in April 2014, and by December 2014 the Heroes and Icons network had taken over that slot. The station's analog signal shut down on the 12th of June 2009, in step with the federal transition date for all full-power television stations. WFMZ's standalone digital signal was then sold in the 2016 broadcast incentive auction, and the station entered a channel-sharing agreement with WBPH-TV. To manage the resulting congestion, some of WFMZ's subchannels moved to KJWP, which Maranatha purchased in a separate transaction using proceeds from the spectrum sale, and which now carries MeTV as WDPN-TV.