WHAM-TV — Rochester, New York
WHAM-TV, virtual channel 13, is the ABC-affiliated television station serving Rochester, New York, branded as 13 WHAM ABC and 13 WHAM News, with The CW carried on subchannel 13.2 as CW Rochester. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, it operates alongside Fox affiliate WUHF (channel 31), with which it shares studios on West Henrietta Road (New York State Route 15) in Henrietta, with a Rochester mailing address. WHAM-TV's transmitter is on Pinnacle Hill, on the border between Rochester and Brighton. The station signed on September 15, 1962, as WOKR — a name read as We're OK Rochester — and adopted the historic WHAM-TV call sign in 2005, reviving letters first used on Rochester television from 1949 to 1956 by the station now known as WROC-TV. For many years 13 WHAM has been Rochester's leading television news brand, built on remarkable anchor longevity.
Overview and News Leadership
In a competitive five-station market, WHAM-TV's distinction is ratings leadership in local news, a position it has held for many years. General manager Chuck Samuels, at the time of Sinclair's acquisition, described WHAM publicly as the number one news brand in the market — a claim consistent with the station's long record. That leadership rests substantially on continuity: lead anchor Don Alhart joined the station in 1966, only four years after its sign-on, becoming one of the longest-serving anchors in American television, alongside longtime colleagues including Ginny Ryan and Doug Emblidge. The station's website, 13wham.com, is among the most visited local news sites in the Rochester area, and a second site, cwrochester.com, supports the CW subchannel. WHAM-TV also produces news for WUHF, extending the 13 WHAM brand to Fox prime-time and morning dayparts.
Sign-On as WOKR in 1962
Channel 13 signed on at 4 p.m. on September 15, 1962, as WOKR, a primary ABC affiliate on VHF channel 13. Its owner, Channel 13 of Rochester, Inc., was an unusual consortium of eleven local groups — including Flower City Television Corporation, the Rochester Educational Television Association, Genesee Valley Television Company, Star TV, Community Broadcasting, Heritage Radio and Television Broadcasting, Main Broadcasting, Federal Broadcasting Systems, Citizens Television Corporation, Rochester Broadcasting and Rochester Telecasters — each holding equal shares. The shared-time and competing applications for channel 13 had involved educational interests that later built WXXI-TV on channel 21 instead. In March 1970 Flower City Television bought out its partners, simplifying ownership. As WOKR, the station gave Rochester a full-time ABC service for the first time, completing the city's three-network VHF line-up alongside NBC on WROC-TV and CBS on WHEC-TV at that time.
Ownership Through the WOKR Decades
Flower City sold WOKR to Post Corporation, a Wisconsin-based media conglomerate, in 1977. George N. Gillett Jr. purchased the station in August 1984 for Gillett Holdings. Hughes Broadcasting Partners acquired it in June 1991, and Portland, Maine-based Guy Gannett Communications acquired it in April 1995. The next sale created a regulatory detour: Guy Gannett sold most of its stations to Sinclair Broadcast Group, which already owned Rochester Fox affiliate WUHF, at a time when television duopolies were not yet permitted. Sinclair therefore spun channel 13 off to the Ackerley Group, with the acquisition closing in April 1999. Ackerley also owned stations in Syracuse and Binghamton, linking WOKR's fortunes to the wider upstate New York group that included WIXT (now WSYR-TV) in Syracuse and the station that became WIVT in Binghamton. Through all these changes the WOKR name, the ABC affiliation and the newsroom's market position remained stable.
Clear Channel Era and the WHAM-TV Name
The Ackerley Group merged with Clear Channel Communications on June 14, 2002, bringing channel 13 under common ownership with Rochester's WHAM radio (1180 AM), the city's oldest and best-known radio station. Speculation began immediately that WOKR would adopt the WHAM-TV call sign, unused on television since 1956. On January 10, 2005, channel 13 signed off as WOKR at 1:42 a.m. and returned to the air at 4:59 a.m. the same morning as WHAM-TV. The rebrand unified Rochester's leading television newsroom with its heritage radio news brand, and the two outlets maintained a news partnership even after their ownership separated. Clear Channel sold its entire television group to Newport Television, controlled by Providence Equity Partners, in a deal completed in 2007–08, and WHAM-TV operated under Newport until Sinclair returned to the picture five years later.
Sinclair Ownership and the WUHF Duopoly
In December 2012 Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired the non-licence assets of WHAM-TV from Newport, with the licence held by affiliated Deerfield Media — FCC filings in recent years list Sinclair as owner through WHAM Licensee, LLC — finally achieving the combination with WUHF that FCC rules had prevented in 1998–99. WHAM-TV took over sales operations for WUHF, and when the previous shared-services agreement between WUHF and WROC-TV expired, WUHF's newscasts moved to WHAM production. From January 1, 2014, Fox Rochester has carried 13 WHAM News at 10 and the morning programme Good Day Rochester from 7 to 9 a.m., both produced by WHAM's newsroom from the West Henrietta Road studios. WHAM-TV also produces a 10 p.m. newscast and morning programming for its own CW subchannel service. The result is that a single newsroom — Rochester's largest — now supplies local news across ABC, Fox and CW outlets in the market.
News Operation: 13 WHAM News
13 WHAM News airs a full schedule on the main channel, including morning, noon, early-evening, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. editions, plus the Fox and CW productions described above. Its identity has been shaped by unusually long anchor tenures, most notably Don Alhart's service beginning in 1966, and by familiar pairings such as Ginny Ryan and Doug Emblidge on evening newscasts. That stability contrasts sharply with the turnover typical of local television and is frequently cited by Rochester viewers as a reason for trust in the brand. The newscasts were historically titled NewsCenter 13 and NewsSource 13 during the WOKR era before the unified 13 WHAM News name was adopted in 2005. Beyond Rochester, the station's reach was once international: for many years WOKR was one of three Rochester stations offered on cable in Ottawa–Gatineau and eastern Ontario, until the microwave relay system supplying those signals was discontinued in September 2003, and WHAM remained the ABC affiliate carried in several central Ontario communities including Belleville, Cobourg and Lindsay until January 2009, when Buffalo's WKBW-TV replaced it.
Programming and the CW Subchannel
Channel 13.1 carries ABC programming in high definition — Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, prime-time entertainment, college football and NBA coverage, and late-night — supplemented by syndicated titles that have included Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra and Rachael Ray. Subchannel 13.2 carries The CW as CW Rochester, seen also on cable channel 16 on most basic systems in the Rochester area, with an HD feed on cable. Subchannel 13.3 carries Charge!, Sinclair's action-oriented multicast network, in current listings. The CW subchannel has its own local programming contribution through WHAM-produced news extensions, giving CW Rochester a local presence unusual for a subchannel service. The combination of ABC, CW and Charge! on one transmitter, plus news production for Fox affiliate WUHF, makes WHAM-TV's Henrietta facility the programming engine for a substantial share of Rochester broadcasting.
Technical Details and Digital Transition
WHAM-TV is licensed under FCC facility ID 73371. It broadcasts digitally on VHF channel 9 with virtual channel 13, at 30 kilowatts effective radiated power from an antenna 155 metres above average terrain on Pinnacle Hill. Its analogue service used VHF channel 13 continuously from 1962 to 2009 — a single-channel stability its Rochester competitors did not enjoy. Its digital signal began on UHF channel 59 in 2002, moved to VHF channel 13 at the analogue shutdown on June 12, 2009, and then to VHF channel 9 in the spectrum repack, retaining virtual channel 13. In the ATSC 3.0 arrangement for Rochester, WUHF serves as a lighthouse station carrying next-generation versions of the market's major signals, including WHAM-TV's ABC service, while WHAM's own transmitter hosts ATSC 1.0 subchannels for partner stations such as WUHF's Antenna TV service — a reciprocal hosting pattern now common among cooperating station groups.
Coverage and Community Role
WHAM-TV covers metropolitan Rochester and Monroe County, the Finger Lakes and the Lake Ontario shoreline, reporting on the region's universities — the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology and others — its health systems, the Rochester Red Wings and Americans (Amerks) sports teams, and the lake-effect weather that defines local winters. As the market's leading news brand, 13 WHAM carries an outsized role in emergencies, elections and major civic debates. Its long-standing partnership with WHAM radio (1180 AM), which continues under separate ownership through iHeartMedia, links television reporting with Rochester's heritage radio newsroom. Community franchises, school and weather closings, and investigative reporting promoted under a breaking news and weather authority slogan form the core of its local service.
Legacy
WHAM-TV's story connects two eras of Rochester television. The call letters began with the city's first station in 1949, disappeared in 1956, and returned in 2005 to a different station that had spent 43 years building its own reputation as WOKR. That second WHAM-TV kept what made WOKR successful — ABC affiliation, VHF channel 13 and an exceptionally stable anchor team — while adding Sinclair ownership, a Fox duopoly partnership, CW and Charge! subchannels and the market's most extensive cross-channel news production. For worldnm.com readers, channel 13 shows how a call sign can be a piece of civic heritage in its own right: Rochester viewers who watched WHAM-TV in the early 1950s and viewers who watch 13 WHAM News today are, in name at least, watching the same station — a continuity no other Rochester outlet can claim.
