WPSD-TV

WPSD-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Paducah, Kentucky, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for Western Kentucky's Jackson Purchase region, Southern Illinois, the Missouri Bootheel, and northwest Tennessee. Owned by locally based Paxton Media Group, the station maintains studios on Television Lane in Paducah, and its transmitter is located at Monkey's Eyebrow, Kentucky.

History

The station signed on as WPSD on May 28, 1957, with an analog signal on VHF channel 6. It has been an NBC affiliate and owned by the Paxton family for its entire existence alongside Western Kentucky's major newspaper, The Paducah Sun. The "PSD" letters in the call sign stands for Paducah Sun-Democrat which was the paper's name at the time the station launched in 1957.^[2] It is one of the few television stations in the United States to have retained the same owners (Paxton Media Group) since signing on.

Programming

WPSD initially declined to carry Saturday Night Live. WPSD made a compromise after receiving negative feedback for the preemption; for several years, they delayed the variety show for an hour. In the early 1990s, the station finally decided to air the program at its network-recommended time of 10:30 p.m. CT.^{[citation needed]}

News operation

WPSD serves more than fifty counties in southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, western Kentucky, and northwest Tennessee. Among the area's big three outlets, the station focuses more on Western Kentucky since it is based in Paducah. In addition to its main studios, WPSD operates a bureau on South Illinois Avenue in Downtown Carbondale.

Beginning in 2006, WPSD produced a nightly prime time newscast on Fox affiliate KBSI through a news share agreement, known as Local 6 at 9 on Fox 23 and featured a regional summary of headlines because KBSI is based in Cape Girardeau. For nearly eight years, the broadcast competed with KFVS' own nightly prime time news at 9 seen on the area's low-powered CW affiliates WQTV-LP/WQWQ-LP, which was canceled on July 29, 2007. WPSD's partnership with KBSI expired on September 30, 2010. KBSI entered into a new partnership with KFVS presumably to refocus the prime time production to the Missouri Bootheel area and expand it to 60 minutes. On October 3, 2010, WPSD brought back its own newscast at 9 p.m. to its RTV and Antenna TV. Known as The Nine and seen every night for a half-hour, this was simulcast on those two services. WPSD's newscast at 9 p.m. was canceled in 2019.

Notable former on-air staff

• Sam Champion – now morning weathercaster at WABC-TV in New York
• Jason Lindsey

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WPSD-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 6, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 32,^[4] using virtual channel 6.

Availability

Over-the-air signal

WPSD's over-the-air signal can reach all parts of the western Kentucky, southern Illinois, and northwest Tennessee segments of the Paducah–Cape Girardeau market area. The signal can also be picked up in the southeastern Missouri segment of the market, with the exception of the Poplar Bluff and Farmington areas.^[5]

Former translator

WPSD formerly operated a low-powered VHF analog repeater W10AH (channel 10) in Carbondale, Illinois, from a transmitter (sharing the WSIU-TV-FM tower) on the Southern Illinois University campus, but the station's license has since been canceled by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the mid- to late-1990s.

Out-of-market coverage

In addition to its in-market coverage, WPSD's over-the-air signal can also reach some of the Nashville media market's far western areas, like in Henry County, including Paris. Parts of Trigg County, Kentucky, near the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area can also pick up the station's signal. In Hopkinsville (Christian County (KY)), also part of the Nashville market, WPSD and WPSD-DT3 (its Antenna TV subchannel) is carried on that area's local Charter Spectrum system.^[6] WPSD's main channel is also carried on Mediacom cable channel 15 on that provider's system in the Cadiz and Trigg County areas (including the Land Between the Lakes area), which are also in the Nashville market.^[7][8]

Residents of Dawson Springs (Hopkins County, in the Evansville market), can also pick up the station's signal with an outdoor antenna as that area is just within Grade B signal range of the station's signal area. WPSD is the only station in the Paducah market that can reach that area.^[9] In Webster County, Kentucky, including Dixon (within the Evansville DMA), WPSD-TV's main channel is carried on Spectrum channel 37.^[10]

While broadcasting in analog, the signal had also been known to reach as far as areas in northeastern Arkansas, such as Blytheville, Trumann and Osceola.

Until the 2009 digital television transition, the signal also used to be able to reach the far northern areas of Dyer and Gibson counties in northwest Tennessee, which are respectively in the Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, markets.

References

External links

• WPSD-TV "Local 6"