WCVB version of ABC's "Something's Happening" campaign from 1988
WCVB Chronicle promo using graphics from ABC's "Something's Happening" campaign (1989)
WCVB's version of ABC's "America's Watching" campaign from 1991 #1
WCVB's version of ABC's "America's Watching" campaign from 1991 #2
ABC primetime promo using graphics from the "It Must Be ABC" campaign with WCVB ID bug (1992)
WCVB TV ID 1980
1982 trade advertisement
In 1969, a local group, Boston Broadcasters, won a construction permit to build a new station on channel 5 under the callsign of WCVB-TV. The new channel 5 needed to have a different call sign (due to FCC rules at the time that stated that radio and television stations in the same market, but with different ownership were required to have different call signs). The original channel 5 signed off for the last time on March 18, 1972, and was replaced by the new WCVB-TV early the next morning on the 19th. However, the Herald-Traveler refused to hand over its facilities to the new VHF channel 5, forcing the station to rent tower space for its transmitter from WBZ-TV (VHF channel 4); during the final months of its operation, WHDH-TV was court-ordered to sign off daily at 1am so that WCVB-TV could test its equipment. WCVB used an old International Harvester dealership in Needham to serve as its studio facility, which the station continues to operate from to this day. Boston Broadcasters sold WCVB to Metromedia in 1982 for $220 million, the costliest sale ever made for a local station at the time and in 1986, Metromedia sold its television stations to the News Corporation (then-owners of the 20th Century Fox film studio), which later used Metromedia's group of independent stations to launch the Fox network on October 9. Channel 5 was included in the original deal, but was concurrently spun off to the Hearst Corporation, which had purchased fellow ABC affiliate KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Missouri from Metromedia in 1982. That station was sold to allow Metromedia to acquire WCVB (to comply with FCC rules in effect at the time that limited the number of VHF stations owned by a single company to only five), and it is believed that Metromedia gave Hearst a right of first refusal offer if WCVB ever went up for sale again. Fox would get its own station in Boston in 1987, when it bought WXNE-TV (UHF channel 25) from the Christian Broadcasting Network and renamed it WFXT. This is a unique logo for a TV station as it features a (thick) outlined upward curving arrow, creating a stylized but hidden "5". This logo was designed by Wyman & Canaan (now Bill Canaan & Company.[1]
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