WMAR-TV

WMAR-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It works with ABC and is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. The station’s studios and offices are on York Road (Maryland Route 45) in Towson, north of the Baltimore City–Baltimore County border.

The station’s transmitter and antenna sit on a special three-pronged candelabra tower on Television Hill in the Woodberry neighborhood of Baltimore.

WMAR-TV also shows programs from Ion Television on its fifth subchannel. It has sister stations like WPXW-TV in Manassas, Virginia, which serves the Washington, D.C. area, and a satellite station, WWPX-TV, in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

History

WMAR first began broadcasting on October 30, 1947. It was the first television station in Maryland and the fourteenth commercial television station in the United States. WMAR was founded by the A. S. Abell Company, the publisher of the Sunpapers (The Baltimore Sun and its evening counterpart, The Evening Sun) and was the first part of the Sunpapers' expansion into broadcasting. The station's studios, offices, transmitter and tower were initially located at the Bank of America Building in downtown Baltimore; the studios were later shifted into a larger space adjacent to the building. WMAR-TV moved into its present facility, known originally as "Television Park" on York Road, in May 1963.

Channel 2 was an independent station at its launch, largely because at the time it was not clear whether Baltimore would be part of the Washington, D.C. market. In 1948, the Federal Communications Commission made Baltimore a separate media market. On March 29, 1948, WMAR-TV was announced as CBS' third full-time television affiliate. It also had secondary affiliations with ABC and DuMont for its early days. One of WMAR's early local personalities was Jim McKay, who was the first voice heard when the station began its test broadcasts. In 1959, WMAR-TV teamed up with WBAL-TV and WJZ-TV to build the world's first three-antenna candelabra tower. The new 730-foot tower was built on the newly named "Television Hill" in the Woodberry neighborhood of Baltimore.

On March 3, 1981, CBS announced that it would be moving its affiliation to WBAL-TV. After briefly considering becoming independent once again, WMAR-TV quickly cut a deal with NBC to take over that network's affiliation from channel 11. Baltimore's first affiliation switch took place on August 30, 1981.

In June 1994, Scripps and ABC announced a long-term affiliation deal, which resulted in three Scripps-owned stations switching to ABC. WMAR-TV was included in the deal, and Channel 2 would displace Baltimore's longtime ABC affiliate, WJZ-TV. The second switch occurred on January 2, 1995. As a result, channel 2 became one of the few stations in the country to have been a primary affiliate with each of the "Big Three" networks.

In 1996, station management opted not to renew channel 2's carriage of The Oprah Winfrey Show, deciding instead to take a chance on the new Rosie O'Donnell Show. The move proved costly in the long term.

On April 16, 2018, WMAR changed its branding to "WMAR 2" to trade on the station's heritage as Maryland's first television station, and emphasize its "long-standing focus on Maryland and its people." It also adopted a modernized version of the stylized "2" logo it used in one form or another from 1975 to 1998.

Programming

WMAR-TV has had many changes in the shows it airs over the years. When it was with CBS, it sometimes did not show some of the network's morning or late-night shows. Viewers could watch these shows on another station in Washington.

Later, as an NBC affiliate, WMAR-TV chose not to show The Tonight Show for a few years in the 1980s, airing a different show instead. Some daytime shows were also not shown, but people could watch them on other local stations or on a network station in Washington.

When WMAR-TV joined ABC, it changed its schedule again. Some daytime shows were shown late at night, and many Saturday morning shows were not aired. This changed later, and now WMAR-TV usually shows all of ABC's shows. It was also home to a popular charity event for many years.

Sports programming

WMAR-TV had a strong sports department and was the main station for the Baltimore Colts football team in the 1950s. It also broadcast Baltimore Orioles baseball games from 1979 to 1993 and still shows a special Turkey Bowl football game on Thanksgiving morning.

WMAR-TV is especially famous for broadcasting lacrosse games. Starting in 1998, it began showing games from Johns Hopkins University and other local teams. This helped many people in Maryland watch lacrosse, which is a popular sport there. The broadcasts stopped after 2011 when WMAR could no longer afford to produce them without help from a partner.

News operation

WMAR-TV broadcasts local news for 26 hours each week, which is less than other stations in Baltimore. It does not air news on weekday afternoons or on Saturdays, though it does show weather updates on weekend mornings during a national show.

Even though WMAR-TV is the oldest station in Maryland, its news programs have often ranked lowest among the main network stations in Baltimore for many years. Despite this, it was the last station in the area to start broadcasting its news in high definition in 2010 and the first to begin a very early morning newscast in 2011.

Notable former on-air staff

• Curt Anderson – news anchor, 1980–1982
• Andy Barth
• Nelson Benton (1982–1983)
• Keith Cate
• Stu Kerr (1928–1994) – At station 1952–1981, longtime "public face" of the station, "jack-of-all-trades" from various hosts of early morning children's shows – a janitor on The Early Riser, and comic roles as "Professor Kool" and "Bozo the Clown" to "Mr. Fortune" on Dialing for Dollars and weather forecaster.
• Tom Marr – WMAR weekend sports anchor from 1976 to 1979. Former morning news anchor and news director
• Jim McKay – did early first broadcasts in late 1940s
• Uma Pemmaraju
• John Saunders
• Sally Thorner
• Brian Wood

Technical information

WMAR-TV broadcasts from a transmitter on Television Hill in the Woodberry neighborhood of Baltimore. The station’s signal includes several channels.

WMAR-TV stopped its old analog signal on June 12, 2009, when TV stations in the United States changed to digital broadcasts. Its digital signal moved several times since then to different channels.