Its first official broadcast day was Nov. 11, 1953, Veteran's Day. Its initial location was at 123 West 7th Street, near Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital. The station had a number of owners in the early days, including the Zanesville (OH) Publishing Company, which also owned WHIZ-TV at the time. Zanesville Publishing bailed WTAP out when it teetered on the edge of going off the air in the mid-1950s.
It held ownership for about a decade before a group of local businessmen bought the station. They eventually sold it to Benedek Broadcasting in about 1980. (See BENEDEK entry.) At some point in time, WTAP radio went on the air from the same building, on AM frequency 1230. This was later spun off and sold, initially becoming WKYG-AM. After 37 years on Seventh Street, WTAP moved from its original location to a former industrial research building at the foot of Market Street in the summer of 1990. That was done under the direction of then-General Manager Keith Bland. Long-time WTAP on-air personality, Glenn Wilson, suggested and got the city's approval to rename the last block of Market Street "Television Plaza," and the new building was given the address of One Television Plaza. (Some on-line mapping data bases still show the address as 100 Market Street.) A little know fact is that the "street" in front of WTAP is not a street at all. It's private property! WTAP owns the half of it that borders our property, and the owner of the large parking lot across the street (Jim McCutcheon) owns the other half! WTAP is carried on multiple cable systems in roughly a 50-mile radius of Parkersburg, stretching as far east as West Union, WV (Doddridge County); as far south as Pt. Pleasant, WV (Mason County); as far north as Guernsey County, OH; and as far west as Athens, OH. It is carried free, over-the-air on digital channel 15.1. All NBC HDTV programs can be seen on Suddenlink and CAS Cable's HDTV tier. And many of those HD programs can also be seen free, over-the-air on digital channel 15.1. FOX Parkersburg can be seen on many cable systems and digital channel 15.2 over the air. Our MyNetwork station, which we call “My5,” can be seen on some cable systems and free, over-the-air on digital 15.3.
