soon after nep took over the station, news director elden hale decided to take a regional approach. he billed the station as serving "northeastern and central pennsylvania," and stepped up coverage of the remote portions of the market. these areas had largely been ignored by the other stations in town. he also added the area's first news helicopter. this approach quickly paid off. in november 1976, wnep surged to first place for the first time in a decade. after briefly falling back to second it returned to number one in 1978, around the same time abc became the nation's number one network. apart from a brief period in the mid 1990s when wbre-tv passed it, it has been number one ever since. nep also established a remote production company, which operated as an adjunct to wnep-tv.