WVNS-TV

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WVNS-TV
Beckley / Bluefield / Lewisburg, WV
Branding	CBS 59 West Virginia FOX
Slogan	Your Town, Your State, Your Future
Channels	59 (UHF) analog, 8 (VHF) digital
Affiliations	CBS (September 29, 2001- ) FOX - DT2 (December 24, 1996-September 28, 2001, September 13, 2006- ) My Network TV (Secondary) - DT2
Owner	West Virginia Media Holdings
Founded	August 12, 1995
Call letters meaning	West Virginia News Station
Former callsigns	WVGV-TV (1995-1996) WVSX (1996-2003)
Former affiliations	The WB (1995-1996) FOX (1996-2001)
Website	cbs59.com

WVNS-TV is the CBS network affiliate in the Beckley-Bluefield market. Its analog signal is on Channel 59, and its digital (DTV) signal is on Ch. 8. The station is licensed to Lewisburg, West Virginia, although its studios are locared in Ghent, WV and transmitter is located on Keeney's Knob, between Alderson, West Virginia and I-64.

WVNS-DT is also the market’s FOX affiliate, carried on digital subchannel 8.2. The FOX affiliation, was acquired due to a summer 2006 retransmission dispute between WVAH (FOX 11 in Charleston) and the TV cable company in Beckley, and also the demise of the FOXNet cable network on September 12, 2006. The FOX affiliate is carried on many area cable systems, including Beckley, on channel 10 and Bluefield, on cable channel 2.

In addition, the FOX DT2 subchannel is a secondary affiliate of My Network TV, with the station currently airing My Network TV's 2 hour prime time block weeknights at 11:00 PM and Saturday's prime time programming early Sunday morning at 12:30 AM.

[edit] History

The station signed on as WVGV-TV, standing for "West Virginia's Greenbrier Valley" on August 12, 1995, as an affiliate of the WB. The station was originally set to sign on as a FOX affiliate, but FOX cancelled when the sign-on was delayed past the start of the fall season in 1994. Due to difficulty in selling advertising time in the WB's then primarily urban-oriented programming, and the difficulty in competing with a UHF signal in a market used to receiving VHF stations, the station was not successful. By the time most of the cable systems in the market were prepared to carry the signal, the station had agreed to be sold and was taken "dark" in order to relocate the studios from Lewisburg to Ghent, between Beckley and Bluefield, and to relocate the transmitter site from Cross Mountain to a more central location to better serve Beckley and Bluefield as well as Lewisburg.

The station sale to High Mountain Broadcasting Corp. was approved by the FCC in May of 1996, network affiliation changed to FOX, and its call letters were changed to WVSX, standing for "West Virginia's Super FoX".. WVSX first returned to the air on Christmas Eve, 1996, but due to problems with the transmitter's unique power supply design, did not transmit regularly until after January 1, 1997. The station continued to struggle financially. The station changed its affiliation to CBS on September 29, 2001.

On February 28, 2003 the station was again sold, this time to West Virginia Media Holdings, where it forms the southern part of a four station statewide network. The callsign was changed on June 7, 2003 to WVNS-TV, standing for West Virginia News Station. The WVNS callsign is shared with an FM radio station in Nashville, TN.

Bluefield/Beckley/OakHill is a relatively small television market. The station has continued to slowly but steadily grow in audience, even though neighboring CBS stations have always been "imported" by cable systems, cable is required for receipt of acceptable television anywhere in the market, and by the absence of either DBS company providing the signal of local stations in the market. Further, the local economy makes advertising sales as hard to come by as in all of the adjacent television markets.

The station has begun to produce its own newscasts, taking advantage of the new statewide network to share news content from sister stations WOWK relative to state government news and Marshall University sports, and WBOY relative to West Virginia University sports. The weather cast is provided from the WOWK studio.

Before WVNS was flipped to CBS, WDBJ in Roanoke, VA and WOWK in Huntington, WV had served as the market's CBS affiliates.

[edit] Logos

Logo when Channel 59 was a FOX affiliate

CBS 59 logo before call sign change to WVNS

3/24/06 Additional information verified from BIAfn's "Investing in Television Market Report", Broadcasting (& Cable) Yearbook 1997, FCC TV Query and CDBS records at www.fcc.gov, and from Sid and Carol Shumate, "tsunami@tidalwave.net".

(2) 9/3/06 Information on new FOX affiliation from users4.ev1.net/~chipk/CW.html/ and a story from 9/12/2006 The Register Herrald newspaper

[edit] External links

• Station website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WVNS