WBRE-TV, channel 28, is the NBC-affiliated television station for northeastern and north central Pennsylvania, licensed to Wilkes-Barre. Its transmitter is located in Mountaintop. Owned by Nexstar Broadcasting, the station has studios on South Franklin Street in downtown Wilkes-Barre. WBRE is sister to CBS affiliate WYOU which is owned by Mission Broadcasting but operated by Nexstar through a joint sales agreement (JSA).
Like most stations in the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton market, WBRE must rely on repeaters to serve its coverage area. The market is one of the largest east of the Mississippi River and is very mountainous.
On January 1, 1953, WBRE signed on becoming the first television station in the market. It led the ratings throughout the 1950s until ABC affiliate WNEP-TV jumped ahead of it in 1959. However, WBRE jumped back in the lead in the early-1960s and went back and forth for first place with WDAU-TV (now WYOU) until the late-1970s. In 1972, disaster struck at WBRE when...
