SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah television personality, who also worked as a weatherman in eastern Idaho, has been sentenced to five years in prison on federal child pornography charges for his role in operating a Web site with photos of scantily clad little girls.

Matthew John Duhamel, 33, was convicted in February on one count each of transportation, receipt and possession of child pornography in a non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell. He was sentenced Thursday.

“This was exploitation of children,” Campbell said. “It went way across the line.”

Duhamel went by the name Matthew McCoy when he worked in TV. Last year, he bought time on a Salt Lake City TV station for his own late-night program. He also worked for the Idaho Falls CBS affiliate KIDK-TV until about 2003 and briefly as a forecaster for KUTV in Salt Lake City.

He was convicted, along with business partner Charles Philip Granere, 27, of Orem for running a child modeling Web site that depicted girls as young as 9 years old dressed in underwear and high heels and striking sexually explicit poses.

Federal agents estimated between 2,000 to 3,000 people paid $22 a month to access photos on the Web site.

Granere pleaded guilty to one count of transportation of child pornography and was sentenced in May to five years in prison.

Both men must register as sex offenders when they’re released from prison.

Duhamel contended the pictures — at least some of which were taken at his home in Bountiful — weren’t pornography because the girls weren’t naked. A federal judge rejected the argument, saying the law doesn’t make nudity a condition of pornography.

Investigators said they were led to Duhamel and Granere while investigating cases involving child modeling Web sites in North Carolina and Indiana. The Utah charges were filed in March 2006.

At his sentencing Thursday, Duhamel apologized.

“Anybody that knows me knows that I’m a good person. I know I’m a good person,” he said. “When I’m imprisoned, I plan to do some good.”