Eyewitness News

Eyewitness News is a style of news broadcasting that is used by local television stations in different markets around the world. It refers to a particular style of television newscast with an emphasis on visual elements and action video. It replaced the traditional "man-on-camera" newscast.

History

Pioneered by Westinghouse

The earliest known use of the Eyewitness News name in American television was in April 1959 when KYW-TV - at the time, based in Cleveland, Ohio and owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting - launched the nation's first 90-minute local newscast (under the title Eyewitness), which was combined with the then 15-minute national newscast. The name was then adopted for use by Westinghouse's other television stations – KPIX in San Francisco, California; WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Maryland; WBZ-TV in Boston, Massachusetts and KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – for their local newscasts.

After the KYW-TV call letters, management, and some staffers moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1965 (the result of a government-ordered reversal of a 1956 station swap involving it and Cleveland's WNBK (the current day WKYC) between Westinghouse and NBC) its then-news director, Al Primo, created the Eyewitness News format. In this format, which was meant to be faster in pace than the standard newscast format (in which an anchor simply read headlines), a reporter in the field would be the "eyewitness" to a news event to the anchor in the studio and the viewer at home. The anchors became personalities instead of presenters with the introduction of banter, or "happy talk" as it was named by Al Primo. Anchors would give their own personal comments in between stories to let viewers know their personalities.

KYW-TV

KYW-TV, channel 3, is a CBS owned-and-operated television station located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation, along with CW station WPSG (channel 57) and several radio stations, including KYW (1060 AM). The KYW stations and WPSG share studios and office facilities located just north of Center City Philadelphia, and KYW-TV's transmitter is located in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia.

History

As WPTZ

The channel 3 facility in Philadelphia is one of the world's oldest television stations. It began in 1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philadelphia's Philco Corporation, at the time and for some decades to come one of the world's largest manufacturers of radio and television sets. Philco engineers created much of the station's equipment, including cameras. When the station began operations as W3XE, it was based within Philco's production plant, at C and East Tioga streets in North Philadelphia, complete with a small studio and transmitter. In 1941, it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now WNBC-TV) in New York City, becoming NBC's second television affiliate, and creating a link between the station and the network that would last for 54 years.

CBS 3

CBS 3 may refer to one of the following television stations in the United States:

CBS

CBS (an initialism of the network's former name, the Columbia Broadcasting System) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is the flagship properties of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City (at the CBS Broadcast Center) and Los Angeles (at CBS Television City and the CBS Studio Center).

CBS is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network", in reference to the company's iconic logo, in use since 1951. It has also been called the "Tiffany Network", alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of its founder William S. Paley. It can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950.

The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations that was purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, and eventually one of the Big Three American broadcast television networks. In 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995, renamed its corporate entity to the current CBS Broadcasting, Inc. in 1997, and eventually adopted the name of the company it had acquired to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself into two separate companies, and re-established CBS Corporation – through the spin-off of its broadcast television, radio and select cable television and non-broadcasting assets – with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls the current Viacom.