By Laura Bowen
Published: Nov. 11, 2023 at 12:13 AM EST
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) - In November of 1953, WTAP hit the air. We’ve been covering the Mid-Ohio Valley now for 70 years. It’s a milestone marked by major changes in the industry as well as the station itself.
WTAP talked to key figures of WTAP’s history to better understand what made WTAP WTAP.
At 7:25 on the Wednesday morning of November 11th, 1953, WTAP signed on for the first time.
Our first broadcast was a 25 minute broadcast of news, weather and sports.
We haven’t went off air since, keeping you up-to-date with the latest news and how it impacts your life. Your, story of course, is a big part of ours, from the Silver Bridge collapse in 1967 to the Shell Chemical explosion to JFK campaigning in Parkersburg.
WTAP first hit the air waves from our studio on 7th street in Parkersburg. You’ve seen some of the biggest stories in the country’s history right here on this station.
The stories we share now-a-days look a lot different on screen than they did when the station first aired.
Roger Sheppard, a former WTAP general manager, news director, anchor, reporter, etc., said, “Well of course when WTAP would do its newscasts in the olden days, I guess in the 50s and 60s, there were huge studio cameras and of course they were just black and white.”
Even our anchors’ eye contact has changed.
“In the early days, there were no teleprompters at WTAP. You had your copy on the table in front of you and you looked down and you read it and you tried to have some eye contact with the viewers at the same time,” Sheppard said.
WTAP moved to its current location in August of 1990 at the end of Market Street. The move included state of the art broadcast equipment for the time.
We’ve continuously modernized our technology through the decades, which has brought on multiple changes.
“This was the first television station in West Virginia to do its local newscast in HD. We were the first,” Sheppard said.
Viewers also have more access to our news now. The technological shift from analogue to digital meant more subchannels…think pinpoint weather, Me TV, and our show on Fox.
Former reporter Todd Baucher said, “All these stations in Parkersburg, when there was once only one, meant a lot of choices for people who don’t have cable or satellite or streaming or whatever and just get television off an antenna.”
The TV isn’t the only way to get updated on WTAP’s latest news anymore. Nor do you have to wait for our show. With the onset of the internet, TV news isn’t just TV news.
WTAP got its website in the late nineties.
Baucher remembered, “You worked on a story or maybe two during the day and the aim was for the six o’clock news. And of course now, if you’ve got a breaking story - an ongoing story throughout the day, you’re constantly posting information to the web.”
It wasn’t always possible to get a picture of a fire out 30 minutes after it started.
In the beginning, there was film.
Former sports director Jim Wharton remembered, “In order to get the film developed, we had to drive it to Coolville to a photo-processing plant there and you had to get it there by 1pm in order to get it back in time for the 6pm news.”
And after that…videotape.
Baucher said, “When we had a fire that would happen 11pm in the morning and we have a new news cast, we go out and shoot the fire, rush it back to the station, and put it on what we refer to as ‘raw’ meaning unedited for noon time and hope to the world that no one shouted any profanity or there wasn’t anything weird that happened that shouldn’t go on the air.”
Videotape, through its multiple evolutions, didn’t come without its challenges.
Baucher remembered, “The tape was about 20 minutes long - 15 or 20 minutes and that was fun when we were shooting some kind of a trial in court. We’d constantly have to change the tape every 20 minutes, which would get the people in court all riled up because I had to open up the tape recorder and put a new tape in and I’m not always the quietest person in the world as you can probably tell.”
Wharton remembered, “I don’t know if our views would have seen the movie ‘Broadcast News’ where the producer grabs the tape screaming ‘Out of my way! Out of my way!’ running down the hall and tosses it to the tape operator and he puts it in and has it set just as the anchor is intro-ing the story and a lot of moments like that for our reporters and our anchors waiting, going ‘I hope this story’s ready! I hope this story’s ready!’”
WTAP’s earlier equipment was also heavier and more to carry. For sports, this meant reporters were up in the press box, stationary.
“When they got camcorders, you’d go down on the field - they were lighter, you could go down on the field and you get great dramatic shots - the immediacy of being up close to the action and having the football players come right at you and into the end zone…,” Wharton said.
WTAP sports has gone through a huge evolution since its start.
Football frenzy wasn’t a show until the fall of 2000.
“You know, the Mid-Ohio Valley is a big football area and I thought it would be great to give the fans of all the teams to be able to watch their team’s highlights on a Friday night,” Wharton said.
And day-of post-game highlights are a luxury of the modern day.
“You had a restaurant menu board black and you’d get these white letters, numbers, and you’d stick the name in like PHS Marietta and then you’d put the score over there and you’d have a camera guy shooting that and the director would superimpose the score over the slide of a football…,” Wharton remembered.
From sports to breaking news coverage, telling the story of the Mid-Ohio Valley has been a privilege for the many people that have walked through this station’s doors. Thank you for letting us into your homes and hearts. We look forward to our next 70 years together.
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