WESH is the NBC affiliate in Orlando, Florida. It is licensed to Daytona Beach, with studio facilities in Winter Park. It is currently owned by Hearst-Argyle Television along with the area's CW affiliate, WKCF. WESH's transmitter is located in Orange City, Florida. The tower is the tallest man-made structure in Florida, at 1,740 feet. The station also serves as the default NBC affiliate for the Gainesville market, and can be seen on the fringes of the Tampa Bay and Jacksonville markets.
WESH was the first station in Orlando to carry an on-site RADAR facility, SuperDoppler 2 as opposed to relying on National Weather Service RADARs. It is installed on top of the tower located at the Winter Park broadcast studio. Today it also promotes a VIPIR 3D RADAR system, taking advantage of the fact that the RADARs at Melbourne, Tampa, Jacksonville and Miami can all reach Orlando, in addition to SuperDoppler 2. The primary news anchors at WESH are Wendy Chioji, Martha Sugalski, and Jim Payne. The position of "Chief Meteorologist" was formerly held by Dave Marsh, who retired on July 31, 2006, after 37 years at WESH. Tony Mainolfi was named the new "Chief Meteorologist" on May 3, 2007.
WESH first went on the air on June 11, 1956. Businessman W. Wright Esch (for whom the station is named) won the license, but sold it to Perry Publications of Palm Beach just before the station went on the air. The original studio was located in Holly Hill, near Daytona Beach.
WESH has always been an NBC affiliate. However, WESH's original tower was only 300 feet high, which was tiny even by 1950s standards. This limited its coverage to Volusia County. As such, it shared the NBC affiliation in Central Florida with WDBO-TV (now WKMG-TV). It finally became the sole NBC affiliate for the Central Florida market on November 5, 1957. On that day, the station activated a new 1,000-foot tower in Orange City. WESH's tower is located farther north than the other major Orlando stations because of FCC rules requiring a station's tower to be within 15 miles of its city of license.
WESH called its news department "NewsCenter 2" for most of the 1980s, and it's eleven o'clock newscast was called the "NewsCenter 2 Nightcast". The station then switched to "Newschannel 2" in the 1990s before adopting the current "WESH 2 News" in 2005. Also in 2005, it began pronouncing the call letters as a word.
WESH-TV announced that it would launch a new 7 a.m. weekday newscast on WKCF-TV, CW-18, on January 12, 2007. CW-18 is one of the top CW affiliates in the country.
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Please relate your experience at the location, or any stories you may have that relates to that station (e.g. you appeared as a child in a local program, you were interviewed on-camera for a news story, etc.).
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