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WKYC (channel 3) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way (a section of Lakeside Avenue in Downtown Cleveland named after the station's longtime political reporter who retired in 2016), WKYC on Twitter Tom Beres to retire - Cleveland Scene and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.
As a result of frequency reallocations resulting from the Federal Communications Commission's 1952 Sixth Report and Order,"TV coverage; RTMA predicts expansion." Broadcasting - Telecasting, May 19, 1952, pg. 78. WNBK was moved to channel 3, swapping frequencies with fellow NBC affiliate WLWC (now WCMH-TV) in Columbus to alleviate same-channel interference with another NBC station, WWJ-TV (now WDIV-TV) across Lake Erie in Detroit. After construction was completed on the station's new transmitter in Parma,"WNBK (TV) constructing $1 million transmitter." Broadcasting - Telecasting, June 15, 1953, pg. 68. [4] the channel switch took place on April 25, 1954."WNBK (TV) goes to ch. 3; using new Parma plant." Broadcasting - Telecasting, April 19, 1954, pp. 84, 86. [5] [6]WNBK advertisement. Broadcasting - Telecasting, April 26, 1954, pg. 45. [7]
In a reverse of what took place in 1956, some radio and television staffers who worked for Westinghouse in Cleveland moved to Philadelphia along with the KYW call letters. This included news reporter Tom Snyder, news director Al Primo, and daytime talk show host Mike Douglas. Other Westinghouse employees—such as Linn Sheldon, Clay Conroy (who played Barnabys sidekick "Woodrow the Woodsman" before getting a spinoff show of his own), and staff announcer Jay Miltner (who had been with the station since its inception in 1948)—remained in Cleveland. NBC also relocated many of their top Philadelphia radio and television executives and some on-air personalities to Cleveland, such as meteorologist Wally Kinnan. Kinnan's arrival displaced Dick Goddard, who had been with channel 3 since 1961. Goddard moved to Philadelphia with Westinghouse but returned to Cleveland in early 1966 and joined WJW-TV (channel 8). Evening sports anchor Jim Graner, who had joined the station in 1957 while also serving as the color commentator for the Cleveland Browns radio network, remained through the transition; he stayed on until his death in 1976. To this day, the Philadelphia stations insist they "moved" to Cleveland in 1956 and "returned" to Philadelphia in 1965 after the trade was voided.
At the same time, channel 3 enjoyed several technical advances with NBC's parent company, RCA (and after 1986, General Electric). It was Cleveland's first television station to broadcast full-time in color television on September 13, 1965 (almost immediately after NBC regained channel 3 from Group W), the first to broadcast in stereo in 1985, and the first VHF station to closed caption its local newscasts for the hearing-impaired in 1990.
The Gannett Company purchased Multimedia on December 4, 1995. Under a December 1998 Put option with NBC, Gannett increased its stake in WKYC-TV to 58% in April 1999 and to 64% in December 2000; it acquired the remaining 36% of the station from NBC in 2001. WKYC accomplished another first in Cleveland television history by becoming the first station in Northeast Ohio to broadcast in high-definition in 1999. Soon after Gannett bought full control of the station, it moved from its longtime studios in the former East Ohio Gas building on East Sixth Street in downtown Cleveland to its state-of-the-art Lakeside Avenue studio on the shores of Lake Erie, which Channel 3 refers to as its "digital broadcast center".
Around the first week of October 2012, Gannett entered a Carriage dispute against Dish Network regarding compensation fees and Dish's AutoHop commercial-skip feature on its Hopper digital video recorders. Gannett ordered that Dish discontinue AutoHop on the account that it was affecting advertising revenues for WKYC. Gannett threatened to pull WKYC from Dish in Cleveland should the skirmish continue beyond October 7 and Dish and Gannett fail to reach an agreement. The two parties eventually reached an agreement after extending the deadline for a few hours.
On September 23, 2019, WKYC debuted a new logo ("circle 3" as seen above), began referring to their production operations as "WKYC Studios"—an umbrella brand encompassing their on-air and digital platforms, and began incorporating more lifestyle and human interest reports in their newscasts (under the branding of "3 News"); the station also now uses the "3" brand for general entertainment programming. The New 3 News - More of what you love - WKYC.com
In January 2020, WKYC began a 5 p.m. newscast, bringing in former ESPN personality and Sandusky, Ohio native Jay Crawford as a co-anchor. In September 2022, channel 3 moved Crawford to its newly established 4 p.m. newscast, and signed former CNN anchor and Bellevue, Ohio, native Christi Paul as a co-anchor at 5 p.m.
On August 19, 2025, Nexstar Media Group announced their purchase of Tegna Inc. for $6.2 billion. In Cleveland, Nexstar owns WJW and WBNX-TV.
One show that made the jump from Philadelphia to Cleveland was the award-winning documentary series Montage, produced and directed by Dennis Goulden. This nationally acclaimed series of over 250 episodes investigated the issues and lifestyles of the Cleveland community during the 1960s and 1970s.
On July 1, 2011, WKYC became Cleveland's television outlet for the Ohio Lottery's daily drawings, as well as its Saturday night game show Cash Explosion; the rights returned to the lottery's former longtime broadcaster WEWS-TV (which had carried the drawings from the early 1970s until WKYC assumed the rights) on July 1, 2013. Ohio Lottery Returning to WEWS, Akron Beacon Journal, June 18, 2013.
In March 2013, the station made national headlines when it preempted NBC's Thursday night sitcom lineup for two weeks with Matlock telefilms. Coming so shortly after it was announced about NBC's then sagging ratings, the decision was perceived to be a result of the lineup's poor performance, though WKYC's manager reminded many who had not noticed that the station has typically preempted the lineup for Matlock telefilms quite often for the past ten years (usually to provide "make good" ad slots for local advertisers whose pre-scheduled inventory was preempted by breaking news or sports coverage), and the move had nothing to do with ratings, and that NBC had begun to push new programming on those March evenings without much advance notice; WKYC had originally scheduled the films when it was expected the night would carry mainly encore programming.
Currently, the station's only preemptions outside of breaking news and weather situations are mainly for local sports, including a package of Cleveland Guardians games and over-the-air simulcasts of Cleveland Browns games from ESPN's Monday Night Football.
WKYC previously provided studio operations for the regional sports network, then known as SportsTime Ohio—owned by the team itself until 2013—which aired the remainder of the team's games on cable television and satellite and simulcast the games broadcast by WKYC. During this time, WKYC aired a weekly half-hour Indians-themed program, Indians Tonight, on Sundays at 11:35 p.m. Matt Underwood and former outfielder Rick Manning served as the announcing team for the Indians telecasts. All Indians games and other related programs were broadcast in high definition. In addition to Indians games produced in-house by channel 3, the station aired select Indians games through NBC's broadcast contract with MLB, first from its 1948 sign-on until 1989, and then for postseason games only from 1995 to 2000.
For many years, the station has also partnered with the Browns to carry preseason games and coach's shows since then, outside of five seasons (including two short-lived season deals with WOIO in 1999 and 2004, the latter of which ended before the 2005 season due to team displeasure with the station's coverage of its ownership). WEWS carried the team's programming and preseason games from 2015 until 2018. The Browns returned to WKYC with the start of the 2019 regular season as part of a deal lasting through the 2021 season.
For much of the time between NBC's repurchase of the station and the dawn of the 21st century, WKYC-TV's news department was usually a very distant third in the ratings, well behind WJW-TV and WEWS. Part of the reason was that during most of its second stint as an NBC-owned station, it served mainly as a farm system for NBC, with almost no local talent. Given Cleveland's status as a mid-major television market, most of the promising reporters or anchors that NBC employed at WKYC could end up being promoted to other higher-profile NBC-owned outlets, especially New York City flagship WNBC-TV or WMAQ-TV in nearby Chicago. Many WKYC alumni went on to long and successful careers with NBC; most notably, current Today weather anchor Al Roker served as WKYC's chief weatherman from 1978 to 1983. As a result of this practice, turnover at channel 3 was very high, and it was unable to establish any real talent continuity. In contrast, its two major competitors, WJ(K)W and WEWS, both had long-established anchor teams who often stayed together for a decade or more. It was by far NBC's weakest owned-and-operated station.
From 1974 to 1984, WKYC tried to use the Action News branding several times while also using the music and graphics associated with the other NBC-owned stations, which employed the NewsCenter name. On March 19, 1984, the station dropped the Action 3 News name and adopted its current newscast moniker, Channel 3 News. WKYC also adopted a new logo and a new slogan called "Turn to 3"; the accompanying jingle was composed by Frank Gari. The "Turn to 3" jingle and image campaign was borrowed by many TV broadcasters around the world—most notably Detroit's WXYZ-TV. Various anchors—such as Virgil Dominic, Doug Adair, Mike Landess, Dave Patterson, Mona Scott, Judd Hambrick, Leon Bibb and Dick Feagler—set designs, and imaging campaigns were tried out, usually with little to no success.
Two of the few long-tenured personalities during this time included Joe Mosbrook and Del Donahoo. Both joined WKYC in 1967 (Donahoo from KXSP in Omaha) and enjoyed long tenures at the station. Mosbrook retired in 2002, while Donahoo was co-host of Today in Cleveland with Tom Haley until 1997 and a feature reporter (under the "Del's Folks" banner) until 2006.
In what was a somewhat controversial move, in September 1999, WKYC expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to one hour. This aggravated viewers because NBC Nightly News was pushed back from its long standing start time of 6:30 pm, down to 7 pm. This practice would be modified in July 2000 when Nightly News was moved back to its traditional 6:30 p.m. slot, and the second half-hour was used to start a 7 p.m. newscast, which continues to air.
WKYC finally became a factor in the Cleveland television news race in 2003, after it had picked up the then brand new Dr. Phil program and placed it in the 5 p.m. time slot. This move proved to be very successful since all of the other local major network affiliates were broadcasting news at 5 p.m. and this gave viewers an alternative; it also allowed WKYC to be able to get many viewers to change channels at the end of WEWS's 4 p.m. broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show so as to watch Dr. Phil (which was a spinoff of Oprah) at 5 p.m. (the syndication contracts for both shows disallowed them from airing against each other). During the broadcast of Dr. Phil, WKYC heavily promoted its 6 p.m. newscast, which began to experience sharp ratings increases, which then trickled down to the 7 p.m. newscast.
In early 2004, viewers began turning away from WJW and WEWS' hard-hitting newscasts to the more traditional WKYC. This helped channel 3 rise to first place in the news ratings for the first time in decades; all of its newscasts won their timeslots. WKYC even managed to push WJW's popular morning newscast into second place. This continued until May 2005, when WKYC made two major changes in their newscasts: the station had its reporters extend the length of their stories, hoping to provide more detail; in attempt to combat the common viewer complaint that "all news is bad", WKYC also started inserting more "positive" stories into their newscasts. The combination of the two resulted in less "hard" news, and resulted in a drop in viewership. Over the summer of 2005, while Dr. Phil was in repeats, WKYC lost the top spot at 6 p.m. to WEWS.
Another reason for the sustained success was that channel 3 had a measure of stability at the anchor desk for the first time in decades. From 2000 to 2007, its weeknight news team consisted of Tim White and Romona Robinson, chief meteorologist Mark Nolan and sports director Jim Donovan. The long-standing team was broken up in 2007 when Nolan was reassigned to anchor the morning newscast, and weekend meteorologist Betsy Kling was promoted to weeknights. In December 2008, White's contract was allowed to lapse and Robinson anchored the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts alone until her departure at the end of 2011.
On January 3, 2011, WKYC expanded its weekday morning newscast by a half-hour, to 4:30 a.m. (WJW expanded its morning newscast into that timeslot on that same day). On January 16, 2012, former CBS News reporter/anchor Russ Mitchell became the new primary weeknight anchor and managing editor. On April 2, 2012, Kris Pickel became the new weeknight co-anchor with Mitchell at 6 and 11 pm, marking a return of the traditional two-person anchor team at WKYC after three-plus years of solo anchors. Kris Pickel's start date In 2015, Pickel left WKYC and was replaced by Sara Shookman, who was previously a reporter/weekend morning anchor for channel 3.
On January 22, 2013, WKYC began using the AFD No. 10 broadcast flag to present its newscasts and other station programming in letterboxed widescreen for viewers watching on cable television through television sets; this change accompanied the switch to Gannett's new standardized station graphics package.
In 2016, after 37 years of serving as the station's political reporter, longtime channel 3 newsman Tom Beres announced his retirement after covering the election. The city of Cleveland then honored Beres by naming the section of Lakeside Avenue in front of the WKYC building "Tom Beres Way". Tom Beres honored by Cleveland city Council - WKYC.com
On May 10, 2021, channel 3 honored alumnus Al Roker—who was in Cleveland reporting on the city's reopening efforts following the COVID-19 pandemic—by naming the radar tower on top of the WKYC building the "Roker Tower", with WKYC chief meteorologist Betsy Kling presenting him a plaque to commemorate the occasion live on the Today Show. Al Roker gets radar tower named after him - MSN.com (Microsoft News)
On March 25, 2022, in recognition of his 50th anniversary as a TV newsman, the city of Cleveland renamed a section of Parkway Avenue on the east side of Cleveland "Leon Bibb Way". Bibb—who spent a good portion of his career at WKYC and was their senior reporter/commentator at the time of the dedication—had grown up in a home near the street. A Cleveland icon: 3News' Leon Bibb gets street renamed in his honor - WKYC.com
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The "-TV" suffix was removed from the WKYC call sign on June 16, 2009. As part of the SAFER Act, WKYC kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.
On October 16, 2009, the Windsor Star had notified readers that digital subchannels of the Detroit and Toledo stations would be added, while the Cleveland stations (such as WKYC) and some Toledo stations would have to be dropped from the listings to make room for them, starting with the next issue of the TV Times, released the next day. The only Cleveland local station remaining in the Windsor-area TV Times is WUAB.
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