WILK-TV and WARM-TV There were originally two ABC network affiliates in northeastern Pennsylvania. WILK-TV, operating on channel 34 and owned by
WILK radio took to the air from
Wilkes-Barre on September 15, 1953. It was followed by Scranton-licensed WARM-TV, broadcasting on channel 16 and owned by future
Governor William Scranton along with
WARM radio, in February 9, 1954. During the late 1950s, WILK-TV was also briefly affiliated with the
NTA Film Network. WILK wanted to get a head start on the other local stations when it signed on in 1953, going on the air at 2 p.m. rather than the 3 p.m. sign on that the other stations did. The engineers got the signal ready by noon and decided to take a break. However, at lunch, they turned on the station to inspect their handiwork, only to find the signal was dead. They rushed back and were able to establish the link by 1:50 p.m., 10 minutes before sign-on. Getting a signal from ABC headquarters in
New York City was a challenge in the early days with no access to
satellites. As a result, WILK set up a microwave tower in
Effort, about east of Wilkes-Barre. From there, the network signal was bounced to the Penobscot Knob transmitter site. Often, station engineers had to adjust the Effort transmitter to accept a signal from WFIL-TV (now ABC
O&O WPVI-TV) in
Philadelphia if they were unable to receive the New York feed. WILK-TV and WARM-TV were both losing money, in large part because their network, ABC, was not on an equal footing with
NBC and
CBS (and would not be until the 1970s). However, they stayed on the air because they were owned by well-respected local radio stations.
Merger and transition By 1955, however, it was obvious that Scranton and Wilkes-Barre were going to be a single television market. On October 17, 1957, WILK-TV and WARM-TV agreed to merge into a single ABC station for Northeastern Pennsylvania. The merged station, then as now, operated under WILK-TV's license, but used WARM-TV's channel 16 in order to provide wider signal coverage at less cost—no small consideration given the station's vast and mostly mountainous coverage area.
Transcontinent Television Corporation, a
Buffalo, New York–based media firm, acquired a 60 percent interest in the merged station; the remaining shares were split between the WARM and WILK groups, with William Scranton as chairman. The merged station, WNEP-TV, was licensed to Scranton, and split operations between WILK-TV's former facility in Wilkes-Barre and a new studio in Scranton. In 1962, WNEP-TV consolidated its operations at a new studio near
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport in
Avoca. WILK-TV's transmitter site at Penobscot Knob was retained by WNEP-TV, and the WARM-TV transmitter was donated a decade later to the area's
PBS member station,
WVIA-TV (channel 44). Meanwhile, the WILK-TV facility was repurposed as a
satellite repeater of WNEP-TV until late summer 1958. The channel 34 assignment was later reallocated to
Binghamton, New York, to be occupied by ABC affiliate WBJA-TV (now
WIVT) beginning in 1962. Despite a power boost to 1.5 million
watts, and an increased coverage area—expanded to 15 counties in northeastern Pennsylvania When Taft purchased Philadelphia
independent station WIBF-TV (channel 29, now
WTXF-TV) in 1969, it sought a waiver to keep both stations. Channel 16's Grade B signal reaches the
Lehigh Valley, which is part of the Philadelphia market. WNEP-TV had also operated an outlying
translator on channel 7 in
Allentown for many years. The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) normally did not allow one company to own two stations with overlapping coverage areas. While it initially granted the waiver, it reversed itself four years later and forced Taft to sell channel 16. A group of WNEP-TV station employees and executives formed
NEP Communications, which bought the station from Taft in late 1973. Soon after NEP took over the station, news director Elden Hale decided to take a regional approach. He billed the station as serving "Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania", and stepped up coverage of the remote portions of the market. These areas had largely been ignored by the other stations in town. He also added the area's first news helicopter. This approach quickly paid off. In November 1976, WNEP surged to first place for the first time in a decade. After briefly falling back to second it returned to number one in 1978, around the same time ABC became the nation's number one network. Apart from a brief period in the mid-1990s when WBRE-TV passed it, it has been number one ever since. NEP also established a remote production company, which operated as an adjunct to WNEP-TV.
The New York Times Company bought the station in 1985. WNEP moved to its current studios in Moosic in 1989; the facility is similar to the building the Times Company built for then-sister station
WHNT-TV in
Huntsville, Alabama, but on a larger scale. NEP Communications retained the production unit, which became
NEP Broadcasting; the company provided remote broadcast facilities for the
Olympics,
FIFA World Cup and the
Academy Awards, as well as a studio production facility in New York City. On January 4, 2007, the station, along with the rest of the Times Company's television division, was sold to
Oak Hill Capital Partners in a $575 million transaction. Oak Hill formed
Local TV as a holding company for its stations. On July 1, 2013, Local TV announced that its 19 stations would be acquired by the
Tribune Company for $2.75 billion; Tribune owns
The Morning Call in Allentown. Although Allentown is part of the Philadelphia television market, WNEP has long claimed the Lehigh Valley as part of its coverage area. The FCC ruled that Tribune could not keep WNEP due to its ban on
newspaper-television cross-ownership within a single market,
The Morning Call serving a city within WNEP's coverage area (although Tribune has maintained cross-ownership waivers for its newspaper-television station combinations in
Los Angeles,
Chicago,
Miami, and
Hartford). Tribune spun off WNEP-TV to Dreamcatcher Broadcasting, an unrelated company owned by former Tribune Company executive
Ed Wilson. However, Tribune will operate the station and provide other services under a
shared services agreement, and will hold an option to buy back WNEP outright in the future. The sale was completed on December 27. Tribune later announced on July 10, 2013, that it would
spin off its newspapers (including
The Morning Call) into a separate company, the
Tribune Publishing Company, in 2014, pending shareholder and regulatory approval. The split was completed in August 2014, though as of yet Tribune has not announced plans to acquire Dreamcatcher outright.
Analog broadcast tower collapse WNEP-TV's transmission tower broadcasting the
analog signal on channel 16 collapsed on December 16, 2007, due to severe ice, winds, and snow at the transmitter location on Penobscot Knob. The tower collapse also destroyed the transmitter building. No one was injured during the incident. Transmission of the digital signal on channel 49 was restored after a brief interruption of power to the tower supporting the digital transmitter and antenna. WNEP's signal on local cable systems and satellite was restored later that day. WNEP-TV partially restored its analog over the air TV signal by January 1, 2008 by broadcasting from the nearby American Tower on Penobscot Knob supporting the WNEP-DT antenna as well as
WOLF-TV/DT's antenna. As the WNEP-TV analog broadcast tower collapsed on December 16, 2007, one of the falling guy wires supporting the WNEP-TV tower damaged the neighboring tower broadcasting WVIA-TV (analog and digital) and
WVIA-FM by shearing off the top section of the WVIA tower supporting the antenna for the analog and digital TV signals. The antenna for WVIA-FM remained intact, as it is located on the lower section of the shared WVIA-FM-TV tower. The WVIA-TV analog signal on channel 44 was temporarily put off the air until service was restored through a back-up tower on Penobscot Knob. The collapse of WNEP-TV's analog tower also severed power to the transmitters for CBS affiliate
WYOU (channel 22) and NBC affiliate
WBRE-TV (channel 28), putting those stations off the air for a time. On June 12, 2009, WNEP was to operate on a new tower which had been completed, though the antenna had not arrived in a timely fashion. Their goal was to have the new facility operating by August 2009, but it was delayed a few months. On December 5, 2009, WNEP turned off channel 49 and moved to channel 50. Moving to channel 50 was necessary so it could alleviate possible interference from
Telemundo O&O
WWSI in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, which at the time broadcast on UHF channel 49. On February 15, 2010, the channel 49 facility was put back into use by WNEP on a temporary basis with FCC approval to accommodate WVIA-TV, which had suffered a partial tower collapse and electrical fire which had destroyed WVIA's transmitter building and the equipment within.
Aborted sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group On May 8, 2017,
Sinclair Broadcast Group—which has operated
Fox affiliate WOLF-TV (channel 56),
CW affiliate
WSWB (channel 38) and
MyNetworkTV affiliate
WQMY (channel 53) since October 2014—entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. The complicated SSA relationships that Sinclair has in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre market with WOLF, WSWB and WQMY – the former two of which are currently the only legal television duopoly in the market – created an ownership entanglement, as WNEP and WOLF rank among the market's four highest-rated stations, and the market has too few independently owned full-power stations to permit a second legal duopoly in any event. (Sinclair CEO Christopher Ripley cited Scranton–Wilkes–Barre as one of three markets, out of fourteen where ownership conflicts exist between the two groups, where the proposed acquisition would likely result in divestitures). To alleviate some of the regulatory issues that the deal incurred by selling certain stations to both independent and affiliated third-party companies, on April 24, 2018, Sinclair announced that it would sell the non-license assets of WOLF-TV, WQMY, and WSWB and the full assets of eight other stations – Sinclair-operated
KOKH-TV in
Oklahoma City,
WRLH-TV in
Richmond,
KDSM-TV in
Des Moines and
WXLV-TV in
Greensboro/
Winston-Salem/
High Point, and Tribune-owned
WPMT in
Harrisburg and
WXMI in
Grand Rapids – to
Standard Media Group (an independent broadcast holding company formed by
private equity firm Standard General to assume ownership of and absolve ownership conflicts involving the aforementioned stations) for $441.1 million. Sinclair concurrently exercised its option to buy WOLF-TV and WQMY to allow Standard Media Group – the latter of which, for regulatory purposes, would have continued to be licensed as a satellite of WOLF-TV – to acquire the stations outright; Standard would concurrently acquire the WOLF-TV license, which is permitted under FCC ownership regulations as WSWB is not ranked as one of the top-four stations in the market. On July 18, 2018, the FCC voted to have the Sinclair–Tribune acquisition reviewed by an
administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties. Three weeks later on August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other
M&A opportunities. Tribune also filed a
breach of contract lawsuit in the
Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the
U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.
Sale to Nexstar Media Group and resale to Tegna Inc. On December 3, 2018,
Irving, Texas–based
Nexstar Media Group—which has owned NBC affiliate WBRE-TV since 1997 and operated CBS affiliate WYOU-TV since 1996 (running the latter through a shared services agreement with
Mission Broadcasting since 1998 after selling the license to acquire WBRE through a grandfathered LMA)—announced it would acquire the assets of Tribune Media for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. Nexstar was precluded from acquiring WNEP directly or indirectly, as FCC regulations prohibit common ownership of more than two stations in the same media market, or two or more of the four highest-rated stations in the market. (Furthermore, any attempt by Nexstar to assume the operations of WNEP through
local marketing or shared services agreements would have been subject to regulatory hurdles that could have delayed completion of the FCC and Justice Department's review and approval process for the acquisition.) As such, Nexstar was required to sell either WNEP or both WBRE and WYOU (separately as it would break the grandfathered LMA) to separate, unrelated companies to address the ownership conflict. On January 31, 2019, Nexstar announced that WNEP, along with
WTKR and
WGNT in
Norfolk, Virginia, would be sold to independent third parties in order to address ownership conflicts involving existing Nexstar properties in both markets. On March 20, 2019,
McLean, Virginia–based
Tegna Inc. announced it would purchase WNEP from Nexstar upon consummation of the merger, as part of the company's sale of nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Tegna and the
E. W. Scripps Company (the latter of which would acquire New York City's
WPIX, which would later be re-acquired by Nexstar) in separate deals worth $1.32 billion; along with Harrisburg sister station WPMT (which was also acquired by Tegna as part of the spin-offs). This made WNEP among the first television properties in Pennsylvania for Tegna. The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16, and was completed three days later. On August 19, 2025, Nexstar announced it would
acquire Tegna itself. Unlike when the Nexstar-Tribune deal occurred, the "top four" rule had been struck down in federal court. The transaction was completed on March 19, 2026. A
temporary restraining order issued one week later by the
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, later escalated to a preliminary injunction, has prevented WNEP from being integrated into WBRE and WYOU. ==Local programming==