WTAP-TV (channel 15) is a television station in Parkersburg, West Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Television alongside two low-power stations: Fox affiliate WOVA-LD (channel 22) and CBS affiliate WIYE-LD (channel 26). The three stations share studios on Market Street (official address is One Television Plaza) in downtown Parkersburg; WTAP-TV's transmitter is located in Independence Township, Ohio. History The station signed on on Veterans Day 1953. WTAP aired an analog signal on UHF channel 15 and, early in its life, aired programming from all four major networks of the time—NBC, ABC, CBS and DuMont. Then as now it was a primary NBC affiliate. WJPB-TV in Fairmont (channel 35, now sister station WDTV on channel 5) launched four months later and took on exactly the same affiliation. Original plans called for WTAP to join WJPB and turn the Parkersburg and Clarksburg areas into one giant television market. However, the area is a very rugged dissected plateau and neither station's signal was strong enough to carry across the terrain. Additionally, Parkersburg and Fairmont are apart, and UHF stations do not carry very well across long distances. As a result, WTAP currently remains the only full-power commercial station based in Parkersburg. The only other outlets licensed to the city are the aforementioned low-power Fox and CBS affiliates, and outlying translators of West Virginia Public Broadcasting and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. By the mid-1950s, it was obvious that Clarksburg–Weston–Fairmont and Parkersburg–Marietta were going to be separate markets. However, WTAP retained secondary affiliations with ABC and CBS until 1970, when it became a sole NBC affiliate. As it was the sole commercial station in town, area cable systems have long piped in stations from outlying markets. Suddenlink's system in Washington County, Ohio (home to Marietta) supplements the area with stations from Columbus, as does the Parkersburg–Marietta DirecTV feed. CAS Cable and Suddenlink's systems in Wood and Pleasants counties in West Virginia supplement coverage with stations from the Huntington–Charleston market. The station's first studios were on West 7th Street in downtown Parkersburg near Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital. It had a number of owners in its early days including the Zanesville Publishing Company which bailed WTAP out when it almost went off-the-air in the mid-1950s. It held ownership for about a decade until a group of local businessmen bought the station. The station was acquired by Benedek Broadcasting of Hoffman Estates, Illinois in