WBNS timeline and notable personalities who worked there

• Jonathan Winters, comedian

• Rod Serling, "Twilight Zone" host

• Chuck White, first African-American TV personality in Ohio, famous for his role as "Mr. Tree" on the children's show "Luci's Toyshop"

• Dana Tyler, who went on to become WCBS–TV anchor of CBS' flagship station in New York

• Jack Hanna, who had his TV career start with "Hanna's Ark"

• Bob Orr, former CBS News senior correspondent in Washington, D.C.

WBNS Timeline

• October 1933: WCAH Radio is purchased by the Wolfe family, owners of The Columbus Dispatch and WBNS radio. With the intention of making this a television station, they change the station's call letters to those used for WBNS radio, derived from the historical Wolfe family businesses — banks, newspapers and shoes — hence, Wolfe's Banks News & Shoes.

• January 1948: With Channels 3 (now 4) and 6 already assigned to the Columbus market, The Wolfe family applies for an FCC license to operate WBNS Television on Channel 10. Ground is broken for the studio and transmitter building at 525 Olentangy River Rd. The station starts with 24,300 watts of power. The building is 142 by 62 feet.

WBNS radio had been a CBS affiliate for almost 20 years, so Channel 10 immediately joins the CBS television network.

• August 1948: The first antenna is erected — a 595-foot tower.

• October 1949: Chet Long, the station's first anchor, reports the news throughout the day at WBNS Radio and arrives at the 10TV studios for his 7 p.m. evening televised newscast. Says Bill McCormick (10TV news personality, 1960s), "He was a major hit — even though he only sat behind his desk to tell viewers the news of the day without any script. He was so well informed after having reported the news so many times during the day that he had the ability to just tell it to us thousands of people watching TV. He was one of a kind."

• Oct. 5, 1949: Staff announcer Bill Pepper signs WBNS-TV on the air, uttering these 11 words: "This is WBNS television signing on for its first broadcast day." Pepper remains the solo anchor at 11 p.m. until Roy Briscoe joins him as co-anchor in 1964. Pepper is replaced by Lou Forrest in 1975.

WBNS-TV inaugurates its regular programming with coverage of the 1949 World Series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers. This was a historic game: In the ninth inning of Game 5, the Ebbets Field lights were turned on for the first time. The first scheduled Series night game would not be held until 1971.

At first WBNS-TV didn't sign on until 3 p.m. That was the time movie theaters opened and it was thought no one would be watching TV before then.

• 1950s: The 1950s is a period of new programming that is keyed to local interests. "Look to Lazarus" is a 30-minute daily daytime show featuring new products, celebrity guests and a different set each day. "Homemaker’s Hobnob" fills an hour in the mornings with talk and music featuring Bob Marvin (who later starred as Flippo the Clown). All Cleveland Browns games are filmed and edited down to a 30-minute program once a week. "Haft's Wrestling" airs once a week, complete with a live remote from ringside in Memorial Hall, the first home of COSI. "Aunt Fran's TV Babysitters"(Fran Norris) entertains young viewers.

• October 1950: WBNS-TV becomes the first television station in central Ohio to broadcast in color with the CBS Saturday afternoon football games.

• 1950: Bob McMaster is hired as WBNS-TV's first weatherman. He is an engineer at Battelle Memorial Institute with no previous broadcast experience, but gained basic weather knowledge while studying lightning for the Army during WWII.

• August 1951: Tom Gleba signs on as "Interplanetary Host" for WBNS-TV's "Flash Gordon" series. Known as "Captain Z," he goes on to become the noon news broadcaster and eventual public service director.

• 1955: WBNS TV's antenna height is increased from 595 feet to 839 feet. The tower is the tallest structure in Columbus at the time.

• 1956: The first station news vehicle is a station wagon that carries bulky equipment to accommodate 16mm film cameras and 35mm still cameras.

• 1957: Chuck White makes history as the first African-American television personality in Ohio. He later becomes a 50-year veteran of WBNS TV. He hosts "Gather Round," a folk music program that airs Sunday afternoons. He goes on to become the voice of the puppets on "Luci's Toyshop" and eventually co-anchors the 7 p.m. news with Chet Long.

WBNS-10TV gets more powerful, as visual power is increased to 315,000 watts. The station can now deliver a signal to a radius of 65 miles in all directions. Also during this year, WBNS is the first TV station in Ohio to install a teleprompter.

• 1959: Joe Holbrook is named chief meteorologist and is known for using a black marking pen to outline weather trends on a map.

• 1960s: Variety programming is the trend as the 1960s usher in live musical variety programs like Flippo the Clown, starring Bob Marvin (aka Flippo the Clown) and Chuck White, and subsequently another musical program called "Chuck White Presents," which airs at 10 p.m. "Luci’s Toyshop," the premiere children’s show of the early 1960s, features Luci Gasaway (Van Leeuwen) and her puppets, whose characters are brought to life by White, who goes on to become 10TV's Public Affairs Director.

• 1967: 10TV begins using color locally. The first live local color telecast out of the WBNS TV studio features Flippo the Clown.

• 1970: First Anchor Team: Tom Ryan and Roy Briscoe are the first co-anchors to deliver WBNS-10TV newscasts.

• 1972: "Luci's Toyshop," a live, locally produced children's show that had aired weekday mornings on WBNS TV since 1960, ends its run.

• 1974: Fritz Peerenboom, "the Nite Owl," comes to 10TV and hosts Nite Owl Theater until 1991.

• 1975: Lou Forrest replaces Bill Pepper.

• Aug. 21, 1975: WBNS-TV's first microwave live news broadcast involves the first live truck in the market. Dubbed the "RapidCam," the truck brings live reports from the Ohio State Fair to viewers.

• 1976: Marlynn Singleton becomes the first female anchor at the station.

• 1979: WBNS is the first local TV station and second in the state to acquire a news helicopter. It is called Sky Cam and its original pilot was Robert "Terry" Alt, who would continue flying with WBNS-10TV for more than 30 years.

• 1980: WBNS programming debuts the broadcast career of Jack Hanna, who appears on WBNS-TV with his daughter Kathy and the zoo animals on "Hanna’s Ark."

• June 1980: Jerry Revish makes his debut on 10TV.

• July 23, 1980: Dave Kaylor joins 10TV on the anchor desk, replacing Dave Layman as news anchor. Kaylor is first teams up with Lou Forrest and subsequently co-anchors the news with Dana Tyler in 1986.

• 1981: Dana Tyler begins as a WBNS reporter.

• 1985: Bob Orr, who worked as a reporter and anchor for 10TV, is paired with newcomer Carol Costello.

• 1987: The first satellite truck makes reporting possible from any location. Dana Tyler and Dave Kaylor start a statewide road show, "Heart of Ohio," in the truck, setting a national precedent for local stations.

• 1991: Andrea Cambern begins a 20-year reporting and anchor career with WBNS-TV.

• March 8, 1993: Angela Pace begins anchoring at Channel 10. Previously an anchor for WCMH-TV, she is first an anchor with Dave Kaylor, then with Jerry Revish, and remains on-air until 2006. Afterward she continues as the station's director of community affairs.

April 1993: During the Lucasville prison riot, inmates allow only 10TV anchor Bob Orr and 10TV engineer Pat Ingram inside.

• 1995: The station launches Columbus' first television website, then known as www.wbns10tv.com and later shortened to www.10TV.com.

• May 1997: WBNS-10TV helps launch the Ohio News Network, one of the first 24-hour statewide news networks in the country.

• June 9, 1997: Angie Kucharski becomes the first female news director in the Columbus TV market.

• 1998: WBNS debuts a new "Chopper 10" helicopter: The Bell 407, equipped with an ultra-sensitive FLIR camera, produces better photographs with less light and crisper pictures.

• March 1998: The digital era begins as WBNS becomes the first station in Ohio to broadcast a digital signal full time.

• Sept. 5, 1998: WBNS becomes the first television station in the nation to broadcast in full AC3/HDTV (true high definition) when it presents a live telecast of the OSU-West Virginia football game.

• Oct. 5, 1999: The station marks its 50th anniversary.

• Aug. 18, 2005: Dave Kaylor retires after 25 years on the anchor desk. A farewell special becomes the most-watched show of the night in the Columbus TV market.

• July 3, 2006: Chris Bradley signs on as chief meteorologist.

• Aug. 5, 2006: Chuck White announces he will retire at the end of the year.

• Aug. 31, 2006: Angela Pace ends 27 years as a newscaster and becomes director of community affairs.

• Nov. 7, 2008: Anchorwoman Heather Pick loses a courageous and public battle with breast cancer at the age of 38. She appears on the noon newscast for the last time on Oct. 6 from home, wearing a pink wig in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

• February 2009: The station becomes the first broadcaster in Ohio to launch mobile broadcasting, giving consumers the chance to see 10TV programming on digital television-enabled phones.

• June 12, 2009: WBNS launches a new local weather channel, Doppler 10 Now, on the station's Digital Channel 10.2. It combines the resources of WBNS with national weather provider AccuWeather, and operates 24 hours a day. This is the station's first full-time multicast channel.

WBNS also says goodbye to analog broadcasting as TV stations throughout America power down their analog signals. This is a move made by the FCC to open up bandwidth for first responders and mobile technologies. After the switch, stations are able to split — or multicast — their digital signal, thus creating an opportunity for new programming.

• Jan. 3, 2011: 10TV adds an early morning newscast, expanding its weekday morning newscast to 2½ hours, starting at 4:25 a.m.

• June 2012: Following the departure of Andrea Cambern in May, WBNS welcomes Kristyn Hartman to the main anchor desk with Jerry Revish.

• Aug. 31, 2012: Statewide cable news channel ONN — Ohio News Network — signs off forever at noon, bringing an end to a 15-year run. It is shutting down because "the cable news consumer has many different methods of gathering news and information compared to when ONN was launched in 1997," says Tom Griesdorn, president and general manager of ONN and of WBNS-TV, in a message to employees. ONN has 45 employees, the vast majority of whom work at 770 Twin Rivers Dr. in a facility shared with WBNS-TV.

• July 5, 2017: Yolanda Harris joins WBNS-TV as a news anchor, replacing Kristyn Hartman, who left the station in March after five years. Harris, a Columbus native, had a combined 24 years at WSYX-TV (Channel 6) and WTTE-TV (Channel 28) in Columbus.

• Nov. 19, 2018: Eugene C. "Gene" D'Angelo Jr. dies at age 90. He served as chairman and president of WBNS-TV from 1972 to 1993.

• Dec. 5, 2018: Channel 10 chief meteorologist Chris Bradley dies at his home in Worthington after a 20-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia. He was 53.

• June 11, 2019: The Wolfe family announces the sale of WBNS and the rest of its Dispatch Broadcast Group to TEGNA, a company created in 2015 when the Gannett news organization spun off its broadcast group.

• May 27, 2020: Former WBNS-TV meteorologist Mike Davis was sentenced to four to six years in prison on four convictions related to possession of child pornography.

• Jan. 24, 2022: Karina Nova, a morning anchor leaves for a new job at a station in San Francisco.

• Feb.22, 2022: TEGNA, which owns WBNS and 63 other stations announces that it is being acquired by Standard General for $5.4 billion.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: WBNS timeline and notable personalities who worked there