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On May 1, 1983, WGR-TV added a 'Z' to its call sign, thus becoming WGRZ-TV. At the time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would not permit stations with different owners to share the same call sign. In the early 1980s, in preparation for an ownership change, the station changed its call letters.

In 1972, the station moved into its current Downtown Buffalo facility at 259 Delaware Avenue. The repeater on Channel 6 continued until the Channel 2 transmitter was moved from Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo to the South Wales transmitter site, which greatly improved signal coverage into the population center of the mountainous Chautauqua region south of Buffalo. Transcontinent merged with Taft Broadcasting in 1964.ĭuring the 1960s, WGR-TV also operated a repeater station on VHF Channel 6 in Jamestown, New York.

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Over the years, WGR Corporation bought several other radio and television stations across the country, including WNEP-TV in Scranton– Wilkes-Barre, WHAM-TV in Rochester (the call letters of which Transcontinent would change to WROC-TV, and is of no relation to the current station using the WHAM-TV call sign) and WDAF-AM/ FM/ TV in Kansas City, and eventually became known as Transcontinent Broadcasting. Originally a simulcast of its AM radio sister, it began airing its own programming under the WGRQ call sign in 1973. In 1959, WGR-TV launched an FM radio station, WGR-FM (96.9 MHz, now WGRF). The station also carried some shows from the DuMont Television Network, until it shut down in 1956.

Viewers could easily receive the station's VHF channel 2 signal, and WGR-TV now had more syndicated and network program options. The failure of WBUF was a blow to UHF but served as a boon to WGR-TV locally.

WBUF was an experiment by NBC to see if UHF television was yet viable if enough investment were placed into a UHF station the experiment was not a success, and in September 1958, the station facility was donated to a public broadcaster to become WNED-TV, and NBC reaffiliated with WGR-TV.ĪBC programming was not available in Buffalo for another two months until WKBW-TV (channel 7) signed on in November of that year as a full-time affiliate of that network. WGR-TV itself began its existence using the tower and transmitter of another defunct UHF station, the short-lived WBES-TV on channel 59. UHF signals also did not travel as well as VHF, making it hard for viewers outside of Buffalo and its adjacent suburbs to get a clear picture.

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UHF television technology was in its infancy, and most people did not understand how to receive the signals or had antennas designed to pick up UHF channels. All television reception at the time was via set-top or rooftop aerial antennas. Most TV sets could not receive channels above 13 or needed a special device to do it. In January 1956, WGR-TV became an ABC affiliate after NBC moved its programming to the company-owned WBUF. In 1955, WBUF-TV, which was dark at the time, was sold to NBC. WGR-TV started out as an NBC affiliate sharing the 184 Barton Street studios of UHF outlet WBUF-TV (Channel 17). The station first signed on the air on August 14, 1954, as WGR-TV, owned by the WGR Corporation, along with WGR (550 AM). WGRZ-TV studios in downtown Buffalo, New York as seen in August 2021.

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