WEAR
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| WEAR (ABC) | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Slogan: Your Clear Choice for News | ||
| Pensacola, Florida | ||
| Analog 3 / Digital 17 | ||
| Owner | Sinclair Broadcast Group | |
| Founded | 1954 | |
| Joined ABC | 1954 | |
| Signal Radius | Four counties in northwest Florida, portions of southwestern Alabama and extreme southeastern Mississippi | |
| Callsign Meaning | Drawing attention to the word "ear." W-E-A-R | |
| Former Affiliations | None | |
| Former Callsigns | None | |
| Major Mobile/Pensacola Stations | ||
| WKRG (Mobile) | WEAR (Pensacola) | WPMI (Mobile) |
| WALA (Mobile) | WBPG (Pensacola) | WJTC (Mobile) |
WEAR is the ABC affiliate for the Pensacola, Florida, Mobile, Alabama, and Fort Walton Beach, Florida viewing area. The station first went on the air on January 13, 1954. It is the only major affiliate in the Mobile-Pensacola-Fort Walton Beach market to be broadcast from Pensacola as opposed to Mobile.
As a Pensacola-based station, their newscasts tend to focus on coverage of the Northwestern Florida area as opposed to WKRG and WPMI, which predominately feature news concerning the southern Alabama area. WEAR is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, who blocked out a Nightline broadcast in 2004 because it was cited as anti-war rhetoric. Sinclair has also decided to prohibit WEAR from broadcasting Jimmy Kimmel Live in the late night time slot. WEAR instead shows reruns of popular sitcoms such as Will and Grace.
The WEAR news desk is headed by Bob Solarski, who has been anchor since March 1994, and is also the host and producer of Channel 3 News This Week with Bob Solarski, Sara Baumgartner who co-anchors the 10 PM news, meteorologist Allen Strum, and sports director and anchor Dan Shugart. The news director is Peter Neumann, who worked as news director at WEAR from 1979-1980, returning to WEAR in June of 1984, and has been there since.
Another key news anchor is Sue Straughn, who is one of the few black female news anchors in the area. She started at the station in 1972 as a clerk typist and now helms the five o'clock and six o'clock newscasts.
WEAR's transmitter operates at a power of 100kW. Analog TV signals can be received over the air via aerial antenna by tuning to channel 3. Digital TV signals from WEAR can be received on antenna channel 17.
External link
- Official site (http://www.weartv.com/)