by 1955, however, it was obvious that scranton and wilkes-barre were going to be a single television market. in late 1957, wilk-tv and warm-tv agreed to merge into a single abc station for northeastern pennsylvania. the merged station, then as now, operated under wilk-tv's license, but used warm-tv's channel 16 in order to provide wider signal coverage at less cost—no small consideration given the station's vast and mostly mountainous coverage area. transcontinent television corporation, a buffalo, new york-based media firm, acquired a 60 percent interest in the merged station; the remaining shares were split between the warm and wilk groups, with william scranton as chairman. the merged station, wnep-tv, was licensed to scranton, and split operations between wilk-tv's former facility in wilkes-barre and a new studio in scranton. in 1962, wnep-tv consolidated its operations at a new studio near wilkes-barre/scranton international airport in avoca. wilk-tv's transmitter site at penobscot knob was retained by wnep-tv, and the warm-tv transmitter was donated a decade later to the area's pbs member station, wvia-tv (channel 44).