WCSH (channel 6) is a television station in Portland, Maine, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Congress Square in Downtown Portland, and its transmitter is located on Winn Mountain in Sebago. Together with WLBZ (channel 2) in Bangor, which simulcasts most of WCSH's local newscasts, it is known as News Center Maine.

WCSH is the oldest operating television station in Portland, signing on in December 1953. It was an outgrowth of WCSH radio, one of NBC's charter affiliates when it was constituted as a radio network in 1926, and broadcast from its namesake, the Congress Square Hotel in downtown Portland, for nearly 25 years. Founded by Henry P. Rines and sold to Tegna predecessor Gannett Company in 1997, it has generally been the highest-rated station in TV news in the market since the mid-1980s.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its four-year freeze on television station applications in April 1952, four bids had already been received to start new stations in Portland, which was allocated two commercial very high frequency (VHF) channels and a third on the new ultra high frequency (UHF) band. One of these came from the Congress Square Hotel Company, owner of Portland radio station WCSH (970 AM), which had filed for channel 11 in 1948 but amended its application when only VHF channels 6 and 13 were assigned. In October 1952, the FCC ordered comparative hearings to decide who should be given construction permits for channels 6 and 13. Two groups sought each channel; Congress Square's application was rivaled by one from the Oliver Broadcasting Company, which owned station WPOR.

The third VHF channel in southern Maine was channel 8 at Poland Spring, and activity around this channel would proceed to unblock channel 6 in Portland. The FCC granted a permit in early July 1953 to Mount Washington Television, a group headed by former Maine governor Horace A. Hildreth containing principals from Oliver as shareholders. Oliver withdrew its channel 6 application on July 30, 1953, and the FCC immediately awarded the Congress Square Hotel Company a permit for channel 6, WCSH-TV. This was the second construction permit for a Portland TV station, with WPMT (channel 53) already being built.

Because WCSH had conditionally purchased television equipment 18 months prior, it was assured delivery of its order to put channel 6 on the air by the end of 1953. WCSH-TV announced its intention to be Portland's NBC affiliate, matching WCSH radio—which had carried NBC's very first program when the radio network began in November 1926 and previously had been part of the WEAF chain that preceded it. The transmitting facility would be erected in Falmouth, while WCSH's quarters in the Congress Square Hotel were extensively refitted to house the television station: a large radio studio was converted for television use, and a new studio was created out of a former storage room to house a kitchen for cooking shows.

The first test pattern was sent out on November 29, and on December 20, 1953, WCSH-TV began broadcasting. The station's broadcasting activity steadily increased in its early years, with such local shows as the home decorating program Your Home and You; Youth Cavalcade; the noontime women's program Living Down East; The Dave Astor Show, a teen dance program; and early and late evening newscasts. By January 1955, it was broadcasting 18 hours a day and had become a secondary affiliate of the DuMont Television Network in its final years of operation after WPMT closed the month before. The Rines family, who had founded WCSH radio and television, also owned the Maine Broadcasting System with radio stations WRDO in Augusta and WLBZ in Bangor. It expanded its TV holdings north in 1958 when it bought WTWO, an independent station in Bangor owned by Murray Carpenter, and made it into an NBC affiliate as WLBZ-TV.

After 50 years of radio and television operations in the Congress Square Hotel, WCSH opted to move its broadcasting businesses into more modern quarters. The studio portion of the hotel complex had become overcrowded despite multiple additions. In 1977, WCSH moved one city block to occupy a four-story building at 1 Congress Square, which received a two-story addition containing studio space; WCSH radio moved to separate facilities in Scarborough. The Maine Broadcasting System continued to own the radio station until 1981, when it was sold and changed call letters; WLBZ radio in Bangor was also sold, while the television properties were retained. Particularly beginning in the 1980s, WCSH made its mark as the dominant station in Portland-market ratings, even if it sometimes irked NBC. The station was heavily protective of its 6 p.m. newscast, resulting in far more frequent preemptions of network sports events. In 1994, WCSH did not air 38 percent of NBC's 502 hours of sports programming that year—the most of any of NBC's 213 affiliates and more than double the preemption rate of WSMV-TV in Nashville, Tennessee—which the network begrudgingly tolerated because the station delivered strong performance for the network's daytime and prime time entertainment shows. Events as diverse as the second games of NBA doubleheaders and golf tournaments were not aired to provide a consistent airing of the 6 p.m. NewsCenter and to air movies which drew more viewers.

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