Acquisition The new Taft Broadcasting suffered from a high debt load, and in November 1991, it opted to sell its other TV station—
WGHP in
High Point, North Carolina—back to Great American Communications Company, the original Taft Broadcasting. Days later, Taft announced that Tribune Broadcasting had become an "investment partner" in a $19 million cash infusion that also granted Tribune an option to buy WPHL-TV outright. In the new arrangement, Dudley Taft would continue to run the station with the existing management; he told
Broadcasting that the deals were "a response to current conditions that anyone who started business in the late 1980s has had to make". Tribune completed the investment before 1991 closed and then received FCC approval to acquire channel 17 outright, which at the time required a waiver because Tribune also owned
WPIX in New York City. In filings with the FCC, Taft indicated that Tribune was likely the only buyer with enough capital to prevent the station from filing for bankruptcy. Tribune was one of the first affiliate partners for
The WB, a new national television network that launched in January 1995; WPHL-TV was committed to the new network upon its November 1993 announcement. The 76ers switched broadcast partners to WGBS-TV for the 1994–95 season. In 1995, channel 17 became the new home of the
Mummers Parade on New Year's Day, taking over from
KYW-TV after more than a decade.
Inquirer News Tonight In January 1994, WPHL-TV and
Knight-Ridder, publisher of
The Philadelphia Inquirer, announced an association to create and present a nightly, hour-long 10 p.m. newscast utilizing the resources of
The Inquirer. The program was produced by KR Video, a subsidiary of Knight-Ridder, from a newsroom and set at WPHL-TV's studios. After two two-week delays,
Inquirer News Tonight made its first broadcast on September 26, 1994, promising viewers "tomorrow's news now". Its lead anchors came from other cities.
Jim Watkins had last worked in
Cincinnati, and Victoria Hong came from
Buffalo; both departed by the end of 1995.
Inquirer News Tonight was beset with difficulties in making the specialties of a newspaper work in a television news format;
The Inquirer television critic, Jonathan Storm, found the quality of stories delivered by the print and broadcast journalists uneven. The Newspaper Guild's insistence that
Inquirer staffers be compensated led to a boycott that began in December 1994 and ended in August 1995; the boycott was later cited as a reason for the program's demise. Other contributing factors included baseball and hockey strikes that deprived
Inquirer News Tonight of sports lead-ins at launch; a lack of a sound business plan; and low ratings against WTXF-TV's established 10 p.m. newscast.
WB17 News at Ten and news outsourcing After being shortened to 30 minutes in June 1996, the
Inquirer News Tonight partnership was disbanded. The last edition of
Inquirer News Tonight aired on December 29, 1996; the next day, WPHL-TV assumed full control of the news department, retaining three-fourths of the staff, and began airing the
WB17 News at Ten in its stead. The weeknight co-anchors of
Inquirer News Tonight, Steve Highsmith and
Toni Yates, were assigned to anchor the weeknight and weekend editions of the retooled newscast. In 1997, channel 17 became the television home of
Philadelphia Eagles preseason games, pre- and postgame shows, and coaches' shows; the relationship lasted seven years before KYW-TV took over in 2003. The growth of The WB as well as a desire to protect the 10 p.m. newscast put an end to the station's relationship with the Phillies; ratings had declined since the first season in 1993, when the Phillies won the National League pennant. After the 1998 season, the Phillies and WPHL-TV attempted to negotiate a renewal, but channel 17 offered to telecast just 35 to 40 games a season. This was unsatisfactory to the club, leading to a deal for 70 games on
WPSG. Over the course of the early 2000s, WPHL-TV continued tinkering with its newscast, which was behind WTXF-TV in the ratings. In 2000, Leslie Glenn moved from Tribune-owned
WLVI to become WPHL-TV's general manager. She moved to rebrand the station as "Philadelphia's WB17", committed to an expansion of the 10 p.m. news to an hour, and expressed a desire to add more newscasts in other dayparts. At the time, of Tribune's stations in the top six television markets, WPHL was the only one with just one daily newscast. Sportscaster Mike Dardis was named news anchor, replacing Highsmith, who moved into a role of chief political correspondent, and
Mike Missanelli, a sports talk host at
WIP, replaced Dardis on sports. The hour-long news debuted September 12, 2001, nearly a week ahead of schedule, after the
September 11 attacks. In the first major ratings survey after the move to an hour, WPHL had a 3% share compared to WTXF's 7%. The newscast was trimmed back to 30 minutes on January 1, 2004, after Glenn was replaced by Vincent Giannini of WPIX; Giannini believed the newscast had been more successful and more differentiated as a half-hour product. By February 2005, the ratings competition at 10 p.m. had become more lopsided, with WTXF attracting a 9% share and WPHL a 3% share. On September 21, 2005, WPHL-TV fired its entire 30-person news staff, effective December 9, and outsourced its 10 p.m. newscast to
NBC-owned WCAU. The continued low ratings no longer supported the costs to maintain a standalone news department. The move was part of an expansion of an existing relationship between NBC and Tribune; Tribune's
WBZL in Miami had been airing a newscast from
the NBC station there since 1997, and simultaneous with the Philadelphia move, Tribune outsourced the newscast at
its WB affiliate in San Diego. On December 12, the WCAU newscast launched, retaining the title
WB17 News at Ten but featuring WCAU on-air presenters including
Vince DeMentri,
Lori Delgado, and
Vai Sikahema on weeknights and meteorologist
Amy Freeze on weekends.
From WB to MyNetworkTV On January 24, 2006, the merger of The WB and rival
UPN into
The CW was announced. Twelve CBS-owned UPN stations and 16 Tribune Broadcasting stations were chosen as charter affiliates of The CW, but in Philadelphia, WPSG was chosen over WPHL-TV. WPHL-TV and Tribune-owned stations in two other conflict markets that had similarly been bypassed—
WATL in Atlanta and
KTWB-TV in Seattle—signed affiliation agreements in May with
MyNetworkTV, set up by
Fox Television Stations to serve its own ex-UPN outlets and other displaced stations. The station rebranded as "MyPHL17" ahead of the affiliation change. For the first time since 1998 and the third time overall, the Philadelphia Phillies returned to WPHL-TV beginning with the
2009 season, coming off their
World Series win the year before; the three-year deal included 45 regular-season baseball games a season. The relationship ended after the 2013 season when the Phillies signed a 25-year rights deal with Comcast SportsNet (now
NBC Sports Philadelphia); Comcast by that point owned NBC and placed some games on WCAU instead. On October 31, 2011, WPHL-TV debuted a morning news program, using Tribune's
EyeOpener format. This combined local inserts with a national program, produced out of Tribune-owned
KDAF in Dallas, and was launched there and in Philadelphia and three other markets. For 2018, WPHL-TV joined WPVI-TV as a broadcaster of
Philadelphia Union soccer, with WPVI producing the telecasts but WPHL broadcasting most games. The deal with both broadcasters was renewed in 2020, but after the 2022 season, all local television rights agreements in
Major League Soccer were discontinued to make way for MLS's 10-year deal with
Apple. WPHL continued its association with the club by airing a weekly coaches' show,
Union Insider, in 2023. ==Nexstar ownership and CW switch==