What does WKMG stand for?

ORLANDO, Fla. – Did you know, WKMG News 6 is the oldest news station in Central Florida? We didn’t always have these call letters, though.

The station’s first broadcast was on July 1, 1954, under the call sign WDBO-TV. It eventually changed to WCPX-TV, and it’s now WKMG-TV.

While our call letters may seem random, they’re actually intentional. The ‘W’ is part of FCC policy where broadcast stations have to start their call letters with a “K” or a “W.”“K” call signs can generally be found at stations in the West and “W” is limited to stations in the East.

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The KMG part stands for Katharine Meyer Graham.

Graham’s father, Eugene Meyer, originally left The Washington Post to her husband, Phillip Graham. When Graham died, she took over in 1963 with only newspaper reporting experience. She quickly learned she would have to prove herself every day.

“I thought the way men thought because I’d been brought up in that world,” Graham told News 6 in a decades-old interview. “I thought they were in charge and bright and I was a sort of second-class citizen.”

Her biggest challenge was a showdown with President Richard Nixon and the U.S. government during the Vietnam War.

“No reporter from the Washington Post is ever to be in the White House, is that clear?” Nixon infamously said.

As depicted in the Steven Spielberg film, “The Post,” Graham had to decide whether to publish what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study revealing the truth about the war.

Graham’s son Don, Chairman of Graham Holdings Co., was a young reporter at The Washington Post at the time.

“It was fascinating to listen to her as the first time she learned the Pentagon Papers had been given to The Washington Post,” Don Graham told News 6′s Erik von Ancken in 2022.

“A day later she had to make the decision, are we going to publish the story, and the Attorney General of the United States sent her a message: If you publish this and you are convicted of a crime as a result, the government could take away your television stations which are 1/3 of our company.”

Katharine Graham was unsure about her decision to publish the papers, according to her son.

“My mother was oddly a CEO, but was a very, very self-doubting person,” Don Graham said. “A lot of CEOs have big egos and she never did. She was always saying to herself ‘I wonder if I’m getting this right, I wonder if I’m not about to make some terrible mistake.’ So here she had the full opportunity to think to herself of maybe the negative consequences of what she was doing.”

After publishing the papers, Katharine Graham was vindicated a month later by the Supreme Court.

Shortly after, through solid journalism and a commitment to truth-telling, Katharine Graham and The Post changed the course of history yet again, exposing the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon’s resignation.

“The fact that I was a woman made me more conspicuous,” Katharine Graham said.

In 1980, she was named the most influential woman in the country.

Katharine Meyer Graham passed away in 2001.

Here at WKMG today, many women are in leadership positions, including our News Director, Allison McGinley.

She started off as an intern in 1994 and has worked several positions in the newsroom, including the assignment desk, producing, running the investigative unit, and then her promotion to news director in 2015.

During her time here, she said she has only worked under one female news director and knows about another one who worked at the station.

“I am proud to say five Orlando newsrooms are now run by women. I’m not suggesting women are better news directors than men, it’s simply amazing to me that as I look back on my career and only had one female ND, now hundreds of local journalists are led by females,” said McGinley.

Next month, she will mark 30 years at News 6.

“When I pull into our parking lot every morning, I see those call letters- WKMG. I am reminded in that moment what an honor it is to be working at Katharine Graham’s namesake station. I am also reminded of the responsibility we have to serve Central Florida with the same level of compassion, ethics, and drive to defend the First Amendment that she exhibited her entire career.”

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