WRGB (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Schenectady, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of CBS.

The two stations share studios on Balltown Road in Niskayuna, New York; WRGB's transmitter is located on the Helderberg Escarpment west of New Salem.

By 1930, GE had begun audio transmission on shortwave; one of these transmitters, W2XAF, was pressed into service during off-hours for further television experiments, which continued through the 1930s.

Toward the end of that decade, General Electric teamed up with other experimental broadcasters to adopt an all-electronic TV standard that was created by RCA.

In 1938, General Electric announced plans to build and operate a standalone TV station, and applied for an FCC license.

WRGB signed on for the first time on February 26, 1942; becoming the second outside of New York City (after WPTZ in Philadelphia, now KYW-TV) and the fourth overall in the United States.

The longest-running locally produced children's television show, Freihofer's Breadtime Stories was broadcast on the station starting November 21, 1949.

In April 1983, 55 years of General Electric ownership ended when it sold WRGB to Universal Communications Corporation which was owned by Forstmann Little and John D. Backe, a former CBS president and then president of Tomorrow Entertainment (GE would re-enter the TV business upon its purchase of RCA, then-parent company of NBC in late 1985, which WRGB was formerly affiliated with).

At that point, Providence Equity Partners relinquished its stake in Freedom Communications, making its purchase of WXXA legitimate.

Freedom announced on November 2, 2011, that it would bow out of television and sell its stations, including WRGB, to Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Many channel 6 stations would then promote this avenue for commuters to listen to their morning and early evening newscasts, or severe weather and breaking news coverage on their car stereos, including WRGB.

[9] The station received an experimental special temporary authorization from the FCC to allow it to test the FM audio system but it had to cease operations when it was found to cause RF interference with the digital TV signal.

WRGB has also filed applications for three digital replacement translators to fill in some of the coverage-loss areas, which have all been granted construction permits.

In April 2003, WRGB signed a joint sales agreement with the area's fledgling UPN affiliate WNYA several months prior to that station's sign-on in September.

On June 19, 2006, Freedom Communications announced the purchase of current CW affiliate WCWN from Tribune Broadcasting for $17 million.

The waiver was granted on November 22,[16] and the purchase was finalized on December 6, giving the Capital Region market its first duopoly.

Starting in 2013, WTEN broadcast the telethon, shortened again to two hours and retitled the MDA Show of Strength, as it moved to ABC from syndication for the event's remaining two years, ending after the 2014 edition.

Its newscasts were anchored for over 40 years by the venerable Ernie Tetrault (who was immortalized in the 1992 film Sneakers directed by one-time WRGB intern Phil Alden Robinson).

After Tetrault's retirement in 1993, the station was quickly eclipsed by WNYT and for several years in the mid-1990s fell to third place, mirroring a nationwide trend that saw CBS' ratings drop in the wake of losing rights to the National Football League while NBC was buoyed by blockbuster shows like Seinfeld and ER, along with NBA, NFL and Olympics coverage.

In recent years, the Capital District has seen a spirited three-way battle for news leadership, with WRGB, WTEN, and WNYT regularly trading the number-one spot.

On April 17, 2006, it was announced that WNYA would begin airing an hour long extension of WRGB's weekday morning newscast at 7 known (at the time) as CBS 6 First News on UPN Capital Region.

This could be seen as a pre-emptive move by WRGB to fend off a challenge by WXXA who had announced their plans to launch weekday morning news two weeks earlier.

After becoming a sister station, it was rumored that WCWN would add a WRGB-produced 10 p.m. broadcast to challenge WXXA's long time dominance at that hour.

This became a reality on September 24 when WRGB launched a weeknight 10-minute block in high definition featuring the top stories of the day along with an updated weather forecast.

In February 1996, it became the first Capital District station to put forecasts on the World Wide Web with the launch of a website.

WRGB won an Emmy Award for Chief Meteorologist Steve Lapointe's near-nonstop work over two days which made sure there were no fatalities in the otherwise devastating weather.

WRGB was the last in the market to bring a degree-holding meteorologist onto its staff with the purchase of the station by Freedom, not doing so until several years after WTEN and WNYT did.