KDKA – on screen TV Channel Identity is no more

March 21, 2023 Off By Eric O'Brien

KDKA changed their graphics and news music package today, just a few weeks after revealing their newly remodeled news room. The CBS O&O station is focusing more on its online identity – “CBS News Pittsburgh”, with the callsign KDKA still included in the graphics. To be fair, this is happening at CBS stations across the country, but if you’ve read this site for a few years, you know such changes don’t really go over very well in Pittsburgh. Particularly for the heritage “KD” call letters…! Almost since the day Westinghouse took their name out of the broadcast world, viewers feared the TV station would lose its identity as KDKA.

Surprise… the call letters remain. In fact, for what it’s worth, CBS retains whatever rights they hold to the heritage calls and gave their blessing to Entercom, now Audacy, to retain use of them for the radio station where the callsign was first used. Even the big corporations know the importance of those letters and I have no doubt they will remain in place for some time to come.

What IS missing from the TV station’s new graphics is the number “2”. Of course, KDKA hasn’t been “Channel 2” since 2009 when the FCC ordered all analog TV signals to be turned off in favor of the digital allocations. After 13 years, it really doesn’t make sense for TV stations to identify by the channel number anyway. Ironically while KDKA has maintained 1 digital frequency since channel 25 was licensed, several other local stations have been “repacked” at least once and as new technologies roll out for broadcast TV, I suspect repacks will happen again and again until all of the outlets are stuffed in a much smaller tier of frequencies.

Additionally, one is able to get most local programming in other outlets. The internet…. social media… on screens small enough to fit in your pocket to as large as they come using technology that doesn’t require a broadcast tower. Therefore it would not surprise me if “KDKA-TV” is only the top of the hour legal ID graphic one of these days. But even then, most Pittsburgh viewers will call it KDKA… I’m “Acrisure” of it!