KYW-TV

KYW-TV (channel 3), branded as CBS Philadelphia, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division alongside WPSG (channel 57), an independent station. The two outlets share studios on Hamilton Street north of Center City, Philadelphia; KYW-TV's transmitter is located in the city's Roxborough section.

KYW-TV, along with sister station KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, are the only CBS-affiliated stations east of the Mississippi River with "K" call signs.

The channel 3 facility in Philadelphia is Pennsylvania's oldest television station. It began in 1932 as W3XE, an experimental station owned by Philadelphia's Philco Corporation, at the time and for some decades to come one of the world's largest manufacturers of radio and television sets. Philco engineers created much of the station's equipment, including cameras. When the station began operations as W3XE, it was based within Philco's production plant, at C and East Tioga streets in North Philadelphia, complete with a small studio and transmitter. In 1941, it began sharing programs with W2XBS (later WNBT and now WNBC) in New York City, becoming NBC's second television affiliate, and creating a link between the station and the network that would last for 54 years.

On July 1, 1941, W3XE received a commercial license—the third in the United States, the first outside of New York City, and the first not owned and operated by a network—as WPTZ. The station signed on for the first time on September 1, becoming the first licensed television station in Pennsylvania. Philco then moved WPTZ's studios to the penthouse suite of the Architect's Building, at 17th and Sansom streets in downtown Philadelphia, while retaining master control facilities at the Philco plant. The station originally broadcast from a tower in the Philadelphia suburb of Wyndmoor. It significantly cut back operations after the U.S. entered World War II, but returned to a full schedule in 1945. Channel 3 relocated its entire operation to the Wyndmoor transmitter facility during World War II, when the station aired little programming. It then became one of three stations (along with WNBT and Schenectady, New York's WRGB, now a fellow CBS affiliate) that premiered NBC's regular television service in 1946, although all three stations did share occasional programs just before and during the war. When full broadcasting was resumed, the station reactivated its studio in the Architect's Building, remaining there until 1947. WPTZ then moved into unused space at 1619 Walnut Street in Center City, where KYW radio was housed. What is now KYW-TV has been based in Center City ever since.

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owner of Philadelphia's longtime NBC Radio affiliate KYW, purchased WPTZ in 1953 for a then-record price of $8.5 million. The WPTZ call letters are now used for the NBC affiliate in Plattsburgh, New York.

In May 1955, Westinghouse agreed to trade WPTZ and KYW radio to NBC in exchange for WNBK television and WTAM AM-FM in Cleveland, and $3 million in cash compensation. NBC had long sought an owned-and-operated television station in Philadelphia, the largest market where it did not own a station. It had made several offers over the years for the Philadelphia stations, but Westinghouse declined each time. After being rebuffed by Westinghouse on several occasions, NBC threatened to drop its affiliation from WPTZ and Westinghouse's other NBC television affiliate, WBZ-TV in Boston, unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade. NBC took over operation of WPTZ and KYW in late January 1956; on February 13, 1956, channel 3's call letters were changed to WRCV-TV (in reference to the RCA-Victor record label; KYW radio adopted the WRCV calls as well).

Shortly after NBC took control of channel 3, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collapsed the Lehigh Valley, most of northern Delaware and southern New Jersey (including Atlantic City) into the Philadelphia market. NBC realized WRCV-TV's existing tower was inadequate for this enlarged market. In 1957, channel 3 moved to a new 1,100-foot (335 m) tower in Roxborough. The tower was co-owned with WFIL-TV (channel 6, now ABC owned-and-operated station WPVI-TV) and added much of Delaware, the Lehigh Valley, and southern New Jersey to the station's city-grade coverage. The new transmitter enabled channel 3 to broadcast in color for the first time.

However, almost immediately after the trade was finalized, Westinghouse complained to the FCC and the United States Department of Justice about NBC's alleged coercion and a lengthy investigation was launched. On September 22, 1959, the Justice Department issued a decision which, in part, forced NBC to divest WRCV-AM-TV by the end of 1962. Several months later in early 1960, NBC announced it would trade the WRCV stations to RKO General in exchange for its Boston outlets, WNAC-AM-FM-TV. RKO would also acquire NBC's WRC-AM-FM-TV in Washington, D.C. in a separate but related sale, and NBC would replace Washington in its TV station portfolio with then-independent station KTVU in the San Francisco Bay Area, to be purchased separately by the network. As regulators sifted through that multi-level transaction, Philco Corporation, the original operators of WPTZ and by this point owned by the Ford Motor Company, interjected itself into the dispute by first protesting the FCC's 1957 renewal of NBC's licenses for the WRCV stations. Then, in May 1960, Philco filed an application with the FCC to build a new station on channel 3. By October 1961, the purchase of KTVU, and the contingent sale of the WRC stations, had collapsed following objections from NBC's existing San Francisco affiliate, KRON-TV; the WRCV-WNAC trade itself was not affected, however the transactions involving NBC and RKO, along with other related applications by both companies, had been set for hearings by the FCC the preceding May.