WMTW is the ABC-affiliated television station for Southern Maine and Northern New Hampshire licensed to Poland Spring, Maine. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 8 from a transmitter in West Baldwin, Maine. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable and Comcast channel 8. There is a high definition feed provided on Comcast digital channel 501 and Time Warner Cable digital channel 508. Owned by Hearst Television, WMTW has studios on Danville Corner Road along I-95/Maine Turnpike/Gold Star Memorial Highway in Auburn. It operates secondary facilities in the Time and Temperature Building on Congress Street in Downtown Portland's Monument Square. Syndicated programming on the station includes Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Dr. Phil, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show among others.

History[link]

The station signed-on September 25, 1954 as the third television station in the Portland market. It aired an analog signal on VHF channel 8 under the ownership of Mount Washington Television, a group that included former Maine Governor Horace Hildreth. ^[1] It has always been an ABC affiliate although it aired some DuMont programming for a year. The station's sign-on made Portland one of the smallest markets in the United States with three network affiliates on the analog VHF band. WMTW is also the longest-tenured primary ABC affiliate in New England.

It originally aired from a transmitter on Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast. This gave WMTW one of the largest coverage areas of any station east of the Mississippi River. In addition to its main coverage area of Southern Maine and Northern New Hampshire, it could also be seen in parts of New York State, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The station also had significant viewership across the Canadian border in Montreal, a city with almost five times the population of WMTW's American coverage area. It was considered to be the ABC affiliate of record for Northern Vermont and Montreal until WVNY in Burlington, Vermont signed-on in 1968. However, for some time afterward, WMTW continued to have a large audience in that area and stayed on most Montreal cable systems until the early 1990s.

Its transmitter tower had been originally designed in 1940 by Edwin Armstrong for one of the first FM radio stations in the country. WMTW built a new tower there in the 1960s but Armstrong's tower remained as a standby. Mount Washington Television sold the station to Jack Paar of Tonight Show fame in 1963. ^[2] Initially, barred from appearing on WMTW due to contractual obligations from NBC, ^[2] he later hosted several programs on the station including a Thursday night movie. In 1967, Paar sold WMTW to Mid New York Broadcasting, ^[3] which changed its name to Harron Communications a decade later. ^{[4] [5]}

WMTW had to leave Mount Washington in 2002 due to the Federal Communications Commission's digital television mandate. The FCC requires analog stations to broadcast alongside the digital counterparts until 80% of the viewing audience can watch the digital signal. Had WMTW-DT been built on the mountain, it would have had to operate at low-power due to the lack of commercial electric power (in fact, Harron was legally the power company on the mountain). A low-powered signal would have resulted in an inadequate signal for Portland and the more populated areas of the market. As a result, WMTW built a new tower in West Baldwin and signed-off from Mount Washington for the last time on February 5, 2002. Obviously, the new transmitter site does not serve as large an area as the Mount Washington tower did but it provides a better signal to the highly populated areas of the market. Despite WMTW's departure, two FM stations continue to occupy separate broadcast facilities on the top of the mountain.

Harron announced in December 2003 that it was exiting broadcasting, ^[6] and the station was sold to Hearst-Argyle Television a few months later. ^[7] In 2007, WMTW dropped its longtime use of the -TV suffix which had been used since 1958. On June 12, 2009, it remained on VHF channel 8 when the analog to digital conversion was completed. ^{[8] [9]}

Digital Television[link]

On WMTW-DT2 and live streaming video on its website is The Local AccuWeather Channel. Known as "News 8 NOW", programming consists of a loop of local weather forecast segments as well as regional and national coverage from AccuWeather. There is a live feed of the National Weather Service's Doppler weather radar (based at the Local Forecast Office in Gray) as well as local news and sports headlines. In addition, several public service announcements and station promotions are seen. WMTW-DT2 can be seen on Time Warner Cable and Comcast digital channel 165.

Sister radio stations[link]

Several radio stations have been co-owned with WMTW. The first, on 94.9 FM, was co-owned with the television station from the radio station's launch in 1958 until 1971. This is now WHOM and continues to transmit from Mount Washington. The other two, on 870 AM in Gorham and 106.7 FM in North Windham, served first as news-talk stations and later as all-news stations and were also simulcast on WLAM-AM 1470 in Lewiston. The three stations, branded as "Newsradio WMTW", aired and produced local news and talk programs as well as simulcasts of WMTW-TV's newscasts and the now-defunct news radio service of the Associated Press. The "Newsradio WMTW" stations were sold by Harron Communications to Nassau Broadcasting Partners in 2003. Soon after taking over, Nassau discontinued the format. The 870 frequency is now WLVP and simulcasts an oldies format with WLAM while 106.7 FM is now WXTP. An earlier WMTW-FM was not connected to WMTW-TV (having predated the station by several years) apart from also transmitting from Mount Washington.

Repeaters[link]

In 2005, WMTW activated two analog repeaters. This included W26CQ channel 26 in Colebrook, New Hampshire (with a transmitter northeast of the town in Coleman State Park) and W27CP channel 27 in White River Junction, Vermont (with a transmitter in Lebanon, New Hampshire's Mascoma section) to make up for lost coverage when it signed-off from Mount Washington. Under normal conditions, these translators should have been built before WMTW moved off the mountain in order to comply with FCC regulations. However, Canadian communications authorities had to agree to the proposed locations for the translators and this delayed construction until after WMTW activated its new transmitter in Maine.

Colebrook is part of the Portland market but White River Junction is considered to be part of the Burlington, Vermont/Plattsburgh, New York market. The latter location is within the coverage area of NBC affiliate WNNE, another Hearst-owned station, which serves as a semi-satellite of sister station WPTZ. Although WNNE's transmitter is located on Mount Ascutney (well south of White River Junction) it operates a repeater licensed to Lebanon with a transmitter west of the town on Crafts Hill. FCC regulations do not usually allow two or more stations from two or more different markets have coverage of the same location (in this case, White River Junction). This rule, however, does not apply to repeaters. Incidentally, White River Junction is within the fringe area of another Hearst sister station, WMUR-TV.

Both WMTW repeaters were sold to New Hampshire Public Television in 2009. ^[10] W27CP went silent on July 15 after losing the lease on its tower ^[11] while W26CQ was shut down by Hearst on September 2 in preparation for the sale. ^[12] The latter transmitter returned as an NHPTV relay on November 4. ^[13] W27CP never returned to the air, and its license was canceled by the FCC on September 14, 2011.^[14] More recently, WMTW had a construction permit for a digital fill-in translator on UHF channel 26 to serve viewers that have difficulty receiving the main signal on VHF channel 8. ^[15] The translator serves the immediate part of Portland and some surrounding areas from a transmitter on top of the Time and Temperature Building. On April 26, 2010, the station filed a License to Cover for the new translator which was granted by the FCC on June 1. This essentially allowed it to officially sign-on. ^[16]

News operation[link]

WMTW has traditionally been a distant third place in the Portland market, behind WCSH and WGME. Compared with the area's two other main stations, newscasts on WMTW tend to air in a more fast-paced format. The station promotes each of its shows as having the top stories of the day and a complete weather forecast in the first eight minutes before a commercial break.

Despite not making much of a dent in the ratings, WMTW does operate an award winning news department. In summer 2008, it received a "New England Emmy Award for Outstanding Newscast", the "Edward R. Murrow Award for Continuing News Coverage", and the "Associated Press Station of the Year Honor". WMTW added The Local AccuWeather Channel on August 30, 2007 after launching a new second digital subchannel. This competed with a similar national service, NBC Weather Plus, provided locally by WCSH until December 31, 2008. That station continues offering a continuous loop of local news headlines and weather forecast segments on its second digital subchannel.

In the past through an exclusive partnership with Time Warner Cable, WMTW operated a 24-hour cable news station throughout the Portland market. Known on-air as "WMTW All News Channel", this service repeated local newscasts as seen on the main channel. It did not simulcast live broadcasts that aired on the main station. Instead, the cable channel put up a slide directing viewers to the main station. "WMTW All News Channel" was originally on analog channel 9 but relocated to digital channel 156 on May 5, 2009. Eventually, this service was dropped due to the presence of "News 8 NOW" on WMTW-DT2.

In a more recent attempt to take on WCSH and WGME in order to become more competitive, WMTW has been adapting its news operation to appeal to change in viewer habits. It added a weekend morning show on January 2, 2010 offering an alternative to WCSH. Prior to this addition, the station only aired local weather cut-ins during the weekend edition of Good Morning America. Declining viewership of its weekday midday show resulted in its cancellation and replacement by infomercials a few days later.

The station subsequently reduced its sports department and now only airs a regular sports report during its weeknight newscast at 6. During the high school football season, a second report is added at 11. As of September 12, 2011, WMTW remains one of two Hearst Television-owned properties that has not upgraded its broadcasts to 16:9 enhanced definition widescreen or full high definition level. WCSH was the first in Portland to upgrade local news to widescreen enhanced definition in April 2011 and then to full high definition that October. WGME is now in high definition.

News team[link]

Anchors

• Shannon Moss - weekday mornings
• Erin Ovalle - weekday mornings
• Tracy Sabol - weeknights
• Thema Ponton - weekend mornings and reporter
• Dave Guthro - weekend mornings and reporter
• Meghan Torjussen - weekend evenings and reporter
• Travis Lee - sports weeknights at 6 also sports reporter and producer

News 8 WMTW First Warning Meteorologists

• Matt Zidle - weekday mornings
• Roger Griswold - weeknights
• Mallory Brooke - weekend mornings and Wednesday through Friday morning weather field reporter
• Paul Janus - weekend evenings
• Russ Murley - freelance fill-in
• Dan Solari - freelance fill-in

Reporters

• Dave Guthro - general (rotating weekday mornings)
• Thema Ponton - general (rotating weekday mornings)
• Norm Karkos - general (weekend mornings)
• Meghan Torjussen - general
• Steve Minich - general
• Jim Keithley - general
• Paul Merrill - general
• Kate Amara - live weekday morning Washington D.C. Bureau
• Nikole Killion - Washington D.C. Bureau general
• Sally Kidd - Washington D.C. Bureau general

References[link]

External links[link]

• WMTW
• WMTW mobile
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WMTW