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WLBZ is the callsign of the NBC affiliate broadcasting on channel 2 in Bangor, Maine.
The station signed on in September 1954 with the call letters WTWO. Shortly after signing on, the station gained an affiliation with the CBS network. In 1963, when the station was sold to the Maine Broadcasting System, the current callsign was introduced (matching their then-co-owned radio station, now WZON) and the affiliation was switched to NBC, matching its new sister station WCSH in Portland.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, the station was perhaps best known as the home of Eddie Driscoll. Driscoll hosted many programs on the station, and was known for his improvisation skills and sense of humor.
Also in the 1970s, WLBZ added a UHF transmitter in the border town of Calais, allowing cable systems in Atlantic Canada to distribute the station by a microwave link from the border. This immediately doubled or even tripled its coverage area and viewership. Most Canadian cable systems dropped WLBZ after 1996, with the last ones doing so in 2004. The Maine Broadcasting System sold both WLBZ and WCSH to Gannett in 1997.
Beginning in the 1980s, a large amount of WCSH programming started to appear on WLBZ. The two stations today share most of their newscasts (under the NewsCenter name), while the only newscasts still produced in Bangor (which air weekdays at 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.) are broadcast from a set and use graphics and music exactly similar to that used by the Portland station. Very little Bangor-specific programming is now produced by the station, which has led rival stations WABI and WVII to attack them for a lack of localism.
External Link
WLBZ website (http://www.wlbz2.com)
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