Slogan Your News Leader First air date April 2, 1966 | Channels Digital: 24 (UHF) | |
Branding JET 24 (general)
JET 24 Action News (newscasts) Subchannels 24.1 ABC
24.2 Laff
24.3 Escape Owner Nexstar Media Group
(Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc.) | ||
WJET-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for Pennsylvania's Northwest Region. Licensed to Erie, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 24 from a transmitter at its studios on US 19/Peach Street in Summit Township. WJET's over-the-air signal covers the city of Erie and its suburbs, Conneaut, Ohio, and nearby communities in Chautauqua County, New York. The station has been cut from Time Warner Cable in the Ohio market, being replaced by WTAE-TV from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, WJET-TV operates Fox affiliate WFXP (owned by Mission Broadcasting) through a local marketing agreement (LMA) and the two share studios.
Contents
History
WJET-TV signed-on as the third station in Erie during the 6 p.m. hour on April 2, 1966. Owned by Jet Broadcasting along with WJET radio, it aired an analog signal on UHF channel 24 and the first program shown was a 24-hour movie marathon. The station immediately joined ABC which had been shared as a secondary affiliate on NBC station WICU-TV and CBS outlet WSEE-TV until this point. In January 1998, Nexstar acquired WJET-TV. Later that year, it began performing non-programming functions for Mission Broadcasting-owned WFXP as was standard for most Nexstar stations. That station was then consolidated into WJET's facilities.
On April 3, 2006 the station celebrated its 40th anniversary. It began airing its digital signal on UHF channel 58 in high definition in 2008. WJET's broadcasts became digital-only, effective June 12, 2009. It is carried on cable in London, St. Thomas and other communities in Ontario, Canada near Lake Erie. In recent years, the station has been bumped to high dial positions on cable systems in those locations. WJET-TV was once available on cable in the Hamilton, Niagara, and Grand River areas but was dropped by the early 2000s.
WJET-TV continues to supply its former radio sister with newscast support during the day, even though the two have been under separate ownership for several years.
The station celebrated its 50th anniversary in April 2016.
On June 15, 2016, Nexstar announced that it has entered into an affiliation agreement with Katz Broadcasting for the Escape, Laff, Grit, and Bounce TV networks (the last one of which is owned by Bounce Media LLC, whose COO Jonathan Katz is president/CEO of Katz Broadcasting), bringing the four networks to 81 stations owned and/or operated by Nexstar, including WJET-TV and WFXP.
News operation
Unlike most ABC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone, WJET-TV did not air a full two-hour weekday morning show until the start of September 2014, when Good Morning Erie began to start at 5 a.m. On Friday nights at 11:20 (11:15 during the high school football season), it airs a local sports highlight show called Friday Night Lights. When the station began operating WFXP, it took over production of that station's nightly half-hour prime time broadcast (known as Fox 66 News at 10). This had previously been produced by WICU through a news share agreement; WICU's 10 p.m. newscast now airs on WSEE-DT2. On September 10, 2007, WJET-TV began airing an hour-long weekday morning show at 8 on WFXP (called Fox 66 News in the Morning). This is the only local newscast in the area broadcasting in the time-slot.
In June 2011, the station rolled out a new logo and on-air graphics, replacing a logo used since the early 1980s and graphics that were used for over 10 years. On October 23, 2013, WJET-TV began broadcasting newscasts in HD.