SYRACUSE - Starting Monday, the local CBS affiliate will be moving from it's longtime home on channel 5 (WTVH) to a new channel.
CNY Central announced CBS 5 is moving to a new station, WKOF 15.1, as of December 1.
Even though it'll be on channel 15, the station says it will retain the "CBS 5" branding. The station also says most viewers won't notice the change - cable, satellite and streaming TV services will continue to get the same direct feed they've always received from the station. But viewers who watch over the air will need to have their TVs rescan the airwaves to find WKOF if they haven't already done so.
Per FCC records, WKOF signed-on as a brand new station in July 2025. For the time being, it has been carrying the ROAR network, which has also been airing on WTVH subchannel 5.3. Records list the owner of WKOF as "WSTQ Licensee," which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group.
That means the move of the CBS affiliation from WTVH to WKOF will consolidate the ownership of the entire CNY Central cluster of stations under Sinclair, which already owns NBC 3 (WSTM) and CW6 (WSTM 3.2).
Although WTVH has been part of CNY Central since 2009, it has legally remained under the ownership of Granite Broadcasting all along. Per FCC rules in effect at the time, the same company could not own both WSTM and WTVH outright, so the owners of the stations entered into a shared services agreement, where the owner of WSTM would operate WTVH on behalf of Granite.
As of this writing, its unclear what will happen with the WTVH 5.1 signal once CBS moves over to WKOF. While Granite Broadcasting used to own a handful of stations across the country, it sold-off the rest of its portfolio years ago, leaving WTVH as its only remaining property.
CNYRadio.com / CNYTVNews.com has reached out to Sinclair for further comment; we'll update the story if/when we hear anything.
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