WINK-TV, channel 11, is the CBS-affiliated television station for Southwest Florida, licensed to Fort Myers. Its transmitter is located north of Fort Myers Shores near the Lee and Charlotte County line. The station is locally owned by the McBride family and their Fort Myers Broadcasting Company along with WINK-FM. WINK-TV has studios on Palm Beach Boulevard (a.k.a. S.R. 80) in Fort Myers.
Overview
WINK-TV can be seen in the market on Comcast cable channel 5. Its coverage area includes Lee, Collier, Sarasota, Hendry, Glades, Charlotte, DeSoto, Highlands and Hardee. Unusually, though, it is not referred to as "CBS 5" on air, unlike rivals WBBH, WZVN, and WFTX are, being referred as "NBC 2", "ABC 7", and "Fox 4", respectively.
In the Tampa Bay market, WINK-TV is one of two Fort Myers stations carried by Comcast cable systems in Venice and Wauchula. It is the only Fort Myers station on Comcast systems in Sebring. This is due in part to the fact that CBS affiliate WTSP has a signal that cannot be seen well in Sarasota, Hardee, and Highlands Counties (all parts of the Tampa Bay DMA). WTSP's transmitter is located in Holiday, in the northern part of the Tampa Bay market. In general, WINK-TV's aerial coverage area extends as far north as southern Polk County.
WINK-TV clears just about the entire CBS schedule. Due to an hour-long news at Noon during the week, WINK-TV airs two of CBS's soap operas out of pattern: The Bold and the Beautiful airs at 10:30 A.M. (normally airs at 1:30 P.M.) and The Young and the Restless airs at 1 P.M. (which is half an hour later than most CBS affiliates).
History
WINK-TV was founded in March of 1954 as a sister station to WINK radio (AM 1240 and FM 96.9). It was the first television station in southwest Florida, and is currently the fifth-oldest surviving station in the state (behind Miami's WTVJ, Jacksonville's WJXT, Orlando's WKMG-TV and West Palm Beach's WPTV). At the time of the station's beginning, southwest Florida was underpopulated and people had to rely on television stations from Miami and Tampa Bay. Stations from these markets were and continued to be obtainable with large outdoor antennas.
WINK-TV was the only station in the area for 14 years and is still the only full-powered VHF station in the market. Due to Fort Myers being sandwiched between Miami to the east and Tampa Bay to the north, WINK-TV was fortunate to gain the only VHF license allocated to the area. As such, it originally carried programming from NBC, ABC and DuMont along with CBS (DuMont folded in 1956). It lost NBC when WBBH-TV signed on in 1968 but continued to share ABC with WBBH until WEVU-TV (now WZVN-TV) signed on in 1974.
News operation
WINK-TV has been the dominant news station in Fort Myers for nearly all of its history. This is largely because it is the market's only VHF station. Until cable television came to the area in the 1970s, WINK-TV was the only station that put a clear signal to much of the area. Due to the duopoly of WBBH and WZVN, WINK-TV primarily competes with WBBH.
Starting on March 26, 2007, WINK-TV began to produce a nightly 10 o'clock news on WXCW. This was the third 10 P.M. news established in the market (after FOX affiliate WFTX and MyNetworkTV affiliate "WNFM") and became ranked a strong #2 within days of its debut. On May 25, the WZVN-produced news on WNFM stopped airing. This was due to Comcast's frequent technical difficulties, which hindered the show's ratings, as well as the popularity of the WINK NEWS production on WXCW-TV at 10pm.
On October 20, WINK-TV became the first station in Southwest Florida to broadcast local news in high definition. The station purchased new high definition studio cameras, field cameras, weather computers, and graphics to complete the launch. It is the only station broadcasting local news in full HD. Back on July 12, WZVN began to broadcast its local news in 16x9 standard definition. However, it is not true high definition. WBBH followed soon after with its own launch of 16x9 standard definition news.
On January 7, 2008, several news programming changes were made. WINK-TV started showing The Early Show in its entirety because CBS now requires all of its affiliates to do that. The Early Show received a makeover and hopes to compete against its rivals, Today and Good Morning America. WINK-TV expanded its morning news on WXCW-TV from 7 to 9 A.M. It also began to repeat its Noon news at 1 o'clock on that station. In addition, WINK-TV launched the market's first weeknight 7 o'clock news.
In addition to their main studios, WINK-TV operates two news bureaus. The Charlotte County Bureau is located in the Charlotte Sun Herald newsroom in Port Charlotte. The Naples / Collier Bureau is located on 8th Street South in downtown Naples. The station's weather radar is called "SKY Tracker Doppler HD" and is located next to the WINK-TV studios (it is also used on WXCW).
WINK's microphones can be seen regularly on CSI Miami when there are press conferences at the crime lab.
News team
Chris Cifatte and Lois Thome anchor on weeknights at 5 and 6.
WINK-TV's chief meteorologist.
Anchors
- Rob Spicker - weekday mornings
- Sarah Augusthy - weekday mornings
- Lindsay Liepman - weekdays at Noon
- Chris Cifatte - weeknights at 5, 6, and 11
- Lois Thome - weeknights at 5, 6, and 7
- "Eye on Education" segment producer
- Trey Radel - weeknights at 7 and 10
- Stacey Adams - weeknights at 10
- Lisa Mishler - weeknights at 11
- Kyle Jordan - weekend mornings
- Holly Wagner - weekend mornings
- Jennifer Stacy - weekend evenings at 6 (SAT), 6:30 (SUN), 10, and 11
- weekday "Eye on your Health" reporter
- Jeremiah Jacobsen - weekend evenings at 6 (SAT), 6:30 (SUN), 10, and 11
WINK-TV SKY Tracker Weather Team
Sports
- Clayton Ferraro - Director seen on weeknights at 6, 7, and 11
- Randy Scott - weekend evenings
Reporters
- Melissa Cabral - Eye on Education
- Josh Carroll - fill-in reporter
- WINK radio weekday afternoon anchor
- Judd Cribbs - Feature reporter
- Nick Fokianos - Web
- Nicole Papageorge - Charlotte County Bureau
- Miriam Zamorano - Traffic
- Cristin Severance - Cape Coral
- Maggie Crane
- Mike Essian - Collier County Bureau
- Tami Osborne - Collier County Bureau
- Laura Kadechka - Crime beat reporter
- Althea Paul
- Nick Spinetto
- Mike Walcher
- Melissa Yeager - Call For Action reporter
External links
References
- ^ The Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook says March 18, while the Television and Cable Factbook says March 6.
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