| Milwaukee, Wisconsin | |
|---|---|
| Branding | CBS 58 (general) CBS 58 News (newscasts) Ten at 10:00 (10 p.m. newscast) |
| Slogan | Only CBS 58 (general) First. Fast. When Seconds Count.; Just Ten Minutes of Your Day (newscasts) |
| Channels | Digital: 46 (UHF) Virtual: 58 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | (see article) |
| Affiliations | CBS |
| Owner | Weigel Broadcasting (WDJT-TV Limited Partnership) |
| First air date | November 10, 1988 |
| Call letters' meaning | Debra Jackson and John Torres (original license holders) |
| Sister station(s) | WBME-TV, WMLW-CA, WYTU-LD |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 58 (1988-2009) WYTU-LP 63 (June 2009-December 2009, analog lifeline) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1988-1994) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 322 m |
| Facility ID | 71427 |
| Website | http://www.cbs58.com |
WDJT-TV, channel 58, is the CBS-affiliated television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin broadcasting on UHF digital channel 46, that displays WDJT's virtual channel as its former analog channel assignment of 58 via PSIP. Its transmitter is located within Milwaukee's Lincoln Park next to WISN (channel 12)'s tower, with the station's signal covering southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha.
WDJT was until the digital transition the only UHF affiliate of CBS in the state of Wisconsin, but retains the highest PSIP channel number in the digital age. The station also gathers news for CBS Radio in Milwaukee due to the lack of any area radio station broadcasting the network's radio newscasts (WOKY had broadcast the network's hourly newscasts until a September 2008 format change, but does not have a news division), and has a forecast and advertising agreement with the stations of the Milwaukee Radio Alliance, which includes WLDB, WLUM-FM, and WMCS.
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WDJT signed on the air on November 10, 1988 as an independent station. Its call letters were selected in honor of its original owners, Debra Jackson and John Torres. Jackson died before the station took to the air, and Torres decided to sell controlling interest to Weigel in order to get more financing. (Weigel became the station's sole owner shortly after its sign-on.) At that time, its programming fare consisted of second-hand reruns of sitcoms, first-run syndicated shows, and a movie library. Locally based show The Bowling Game also moved to the station in 1989 after a two year hiatus from WVTV, airing intermittently until 1991.[1]
As an independent, WDJT found the going difficult against WVTV and WCGV. Milwaukee, despite its relatively large size, wasn't big enough for what were essentially three independent stations (Fox affiliate WCGV was essentially programmed as an independent, as Fox wouldn't air a full week's worth of programming until 1994). It was also hampered by a weak signal transmitting from the tower atop of the then Marc Plaza Hotel (a tower originally utilized by WVTV and currently used by low-power WMKE-CA). This essentially limited channel 58's coverage area to Milwaukee itself and its close-in suburbs such as Cudahy, Waukesha and West Allis. The few syndicators who otherwise would have been willing to air their programming on channel 58 largely shied away due to its weak signal. The station also came to the air three years before must-carry rules were put into place, thus until 1993, area cable systems chose not to carry it due to a lack of compelling programming or viewership.
The Milwaukee television market was in for a major shakeup in 1994 when New World Communications announced that most of its stations, including Milwaukee's WITI, would become Fox affiliates. CBS approached all four of Milwaukee's major stations--WTMJ-TV, WISN-TV (who was affiliated with CBS from 1961 to 1977), WVTV (which ironically was a CBS O&O in the 1950s) and WCGV. None of those stations were interested, however although Gaylord Broadcasting (the owner of WVTV's license who no longer controlled the station by that time) switched two of its other stations (KTVT in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and KSTW in Tacoma, Washington) to CBS. This left CBS to negotiate with the city's lower-profile independents, WJJA (now WBME) and WDJT, as well as religious WVCY-TV. After negotiations with both WJJA and WDJT fell through, CBS made an abortive attempt to buy WVCY before its ownership group decided not to sell.
With days to go before WITI was to join Fox, and faced with having to pipe in WISC-TV in Madison, WFRV-TV in Green Bay or WBBM-TV in Chicago for cable customers, the network finally affiliated with WDJT, even though it didn't even have a news department. CBS faced similar situations in Atlanta, Austin, Cleveland and Detroit. In all these cases, the longtime CBS affiliates all switched to Fox. While CBS was able to land on higher-profile stations in Atlanta, Austin and Cleveland, it was unable to do so in Detroit or Milwaukee.
As WDJT had not expected to go to CBS, a hastily made logo with the CBS Eye to the left of WDJT's italic Times New Roman '58' of the time in red (and later yellow) was the station's logo for the next year and a half, along with a neutral image campaign using default CBS graphics while channel 58 built a news department and looked for upgraded studio facilities. The switch took place on the afternoon of December 11, 1994 (the same day CBS moved its Detroit affiliation to WGPR-TV, now WWJ-TV).
WDJT's CBS affiliation caused major shuffles among area cable systems as they worked to quickly add it to their systems; it took until March 1995 for some Marcus Cable (the precursor to Charter Communications) cities to carry WDJT. As a result, many Milwaukee-area viewers without set-top or housetop antennas missed several major events, including the PGA Tour, Grammy Awards, Daytona 500, Big Ten Basketball, and the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments, all of which were CBS properties. The only major weekday effects of the move of CBS from WITI to WDJT were that The Young and the Restless, which had been on a one-day delay at 9am weekdays since the early 1980s on Channel 6, moved to the network-mandated 11am time on WDJT, along with full clearance of CBS This Morning for the full two hours, of which WITI pre-empted the first hour. Donahue moved to the station in September 1995 from WITI as WDJT's first true high-profile syndication acquisition, though most of the station's product outside of network hours continued to be made up of low-profile sitcoms and syndicated programs rejected by all other Milwaukee stations.
In early 1996, WDJT moved to a new studio on 60th Street, right on the line between Milwaukee and West Allis, from its original studio facilities on the top floors of the Marc Plaza, which is now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center. It also launched a news department. In that year WDJT also began to carry Judge Judy in its first season which gave the station its first ratings traction outside of network hours, though it moved to WITI by September 2000 as that station decided to move away from an afternoon schedule dependent on "tabloid" talk shows.
Three years later in 1999, the station's current Lincoln Park transmitter was put into service, giving the station an over-the-air signal comparable to the city's five other major commercial stations. Weigel would use this tower to launch two additional low-powered sister stations to WDJT (see below).
In 2007, WDJT gained national attention[2] after its live news truck broke through ice on Big Muskego Lake in Muskego while covering a story on ice safety. The estimated cost of repair was $250,000. A week after, the station would air a public service announcement on ice safety which premiered during CBS' Super Bowl XLI coverage, making light of the situation by referring to their news department as providing "the most in-depth coverage in Milwaukee."
In 2010, WDJT once again made the news when one of the station's live trucks drove away from a scene with its telescoping mast raised and into high voltage electrical transmission lines.[3] The two occupants of the vehicle were able to escape unharmed. This was the second time a WDJT truck hit electrical lines, the first time was in April 2005[4] when a truck hit wires in nearby Waukesha, causing the top of the mast to snap off.
In July 2011, WDJT relaunched its Web site through Broadcast Interactive Media.
The station asked CBS Sports to allow them to carry as many New York Jets games as were available for the 2008 season, since that team acquired former Packer quarterback Brett Favre on August 7, 2008, and expected high viewer interest from Milwaukee viewers for Jets games. Since CBS holds the rights to the AFC contract, the majority of Jets games are carried on that network. Station general manager Jim Hall asserted that the Jets were the station's "adopted team".[5]
On August 29, 2008, WDJT became the first commercial Milwaukee television station to produce a local program in High Definition without the assistance of Milwaukee Public Television or other stations in the Hearst Television chain, as WISN has done in the past. The one hour program was called 105 Years in the Making,[6] a program which was produced in conjunction with the Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary celebration that weekend.
In late May 2010 the station became the fourth commercial operation in the market to be able to air their syndicated programming in high definition, which currently includes all syndicated programming on the weekdays and weekends except for acquired barter programming such as Cold Case Files, Cold Squad and repeats of E! True Hollywood Story.
On July 22, 2010 the Milwaukee area experienced a major flash flooding event which caused major damage in several parts of Milwaukee County. Although Weigel's studios in West Allis didn't suffer any damage at all, the Weigel transmitter in Lincoln Park, only a few hundred feet from Lincoln Creek suffered flooding damage within the transmission shed, forcing the station off the air for the majority of three days while the equipment was dried out and repaired. The analog transmitter for WMLW-CA was used to relay WDJT's signal in some form to viewers, along with WTMJ offering the use of their 4.3 subchannel to transmit WDJT programming to a majority of the Milwaukee market as a thanks for an incident in 2009 where WTMJ was taken off-air by a lightning strike and Weigel offered them the use of a WBME subchannel temporarily. This TV and Shorewest TV were also off-the air until July 25, when WDJT resumed full operations over the Weigel transmitter.
WDJT-TV is owned by Chicago, Illinois's Weigel Broadcasting. The company also owns full-power WBME (Channel 49) and two LPTV stations, Spanish-language Telemundo affiliate WYTU (Channel 63) and independent WMLW-CA (Channel 41), in the Milwaukee market.
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 58.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | Main WDJT-TV programming / CBS |
| 58.2 | 480i | 4:3 | Simulcast of co-owned WMLW-CA |
| 58.3 | This TV | ||
| 58.4 | Shorewest TV |
58.4 & 58.5 were returned to the PSIP channel map in May 2009 to map them permanently into channel maps on digital converter boxes and television sets for the possibility of future use.
Dish Network began carrying the station in high definition on October 28, 2010; the provider had not carried it until then due to Weigel's retransmission consent pricing being higher than Dish would agree to (though what terms Dish came to Weigel are unknown).
WDJT had carried a digital subchannel called Me-TV Milwaukee, which features a lineup of classic sitcoms and dramas resembling that of sister station WWME-CA (Channel 23) in Chicago. The station launched on March 1, 2008 on WDJT-DT3 until October 30, 2008. In mid-April 2008, Weigel acquired Racine-licensed home shopping station WJJA (Channel 49), and immediately began to move Me-TV to that station, changing the station's calls to WBME. The simulcast was maintained until a new digital transmitter for WBME on the Weigel tower was turned on in mid-October.[8][9][10][11]
On November 1, 2008 Weigel launched the digital subchannel network This TV in Milwaukee on WDJT-DT3 in cooperation with MGM Television, which provides the network with many programs from their archives, with its programming relying largely on movies. The introduction "man on the street" promotions for the network were recorded throughout Milwaukee, and This TV's imaging voice is that of Robb Edwards, formerly of WTMJ Radio and WOKY, and the public address announcer at Miller Park. Thus in technicality WDJT can be considered a This TV O&O.
Brookfield-based Shorewest Realtors is one of the largest real estate agencies in southeastern Wisconsin, and as an offshoot of earlier locally produced cable shopping channels which often featured their listings along with those of other agencies, created Shorewest TV in October 2005[12] as digital cable and video on demand became commonplace and allowed Shorewest the ability to buy their own channel slot on Time Warner Cable.[13]
In the form of the cable channel, basic pictorial tours of local homes and real estate classified by region or house types were presented using information compiled on a database used by both the channel and Shorewest's website,[14] with narration given by agents encouraging viewers to call for more information on the property presented, along with limited advertising for partner contractors and programs from local homebuilders and mortgage providers. The VOD version of Shorewest TV (except for homes in Rock County, which is outside the Milwaukee viewing area) was discontinued with the launch of 58.4 in order to encourage viewership of the terrestrial channel and a common schedule allowing easy DVR recording of a regional block. Independent agencies affiliated with Shorewest (such as Sheboygan's Shorewest-United Realtors) continue to maintain a presence on their local VOD systems.
On October 13, 2009, Shorewest and Weigel Broadcasting launched Shorewest TV over digital channel 58.4 under a time-lease arrangement in order to increase their Shorewest TV's audience to all possible households in southeastern Wisconsin.[15] Charter Communications, which already carried the video-on-demand version of the service, also added the subchannel in this form to their systems. As is the current case with many digital subchannels (including This TV and others in the Milwaukee area), the channel is not carried over Dish Network or DirecTV.
The format of Shorewest TV has remained the same over-the-air, although to address license concerns regular breaks featuring public service announcements are taken (which are intermixed with promos for Weigel's Milwaukee stations), while Shorewest TV carries the E/I-compliant program Green Screen Adventures, which was produced by WCIU, seven days a week at 7am. In the past Shorewest TV was moved to WBME-DT2 during NCAA multicasting periods to address multicasting bandwidth concerns and does see quality reductions at some times to allow WDJT to devote more bandwidth to certain CBS programming. Since July 2010, some paid programming slots have been offered throughout the day over 58.4, usually at times where main channels have more viewership, and not for more than a half-hour every few hours.
WDJT-TV shut down its analog TV transmitter on June 12, 2009 as mandated by the FCC,[16] and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel 46.[17] However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers displays WDJT's virtual channel as 58.
On June 12, 2009, the station shut down its analog transmission over full-power channel 58 at 11:59pm exactly, as required by law. However, the station decided to convert their low power signal on WYTU-LP (Channel 63) at 9am on the same day to carry WDJT's programming schedule; the Telemundo schedule now transmits exclusively on digital television over WYTU-LD digital channel 17 and WBME 49.4.[18] This was to provide some kind of 'lifeline' service under special dispensation by the CBS network to those who had not yet made the conversion. On December 31, 2009, the simulcast on Channel 63 was discontinued at the end of the dispensaton, and WYTU-LP was converted to an analog translator of WBME's main schedule.[19]
Currently, WDJT produces a total of 22 hours of local newscasts per week (with 4 hours on weekdays {2 hour morning newscast, ½ hour newscast at noon, 5 p.m., 9 p.m. on WMLW, and 10 p.m.} and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays), which by a large margin, is the lowest newscast output out of the Big Four network affiliates in the Milwaukee area (by contrast, WITI offers 49½ hours, WTMJ offers 40½ hours and WISN offers 31½ hours of news each week).
Unlike most CBS affiliates in the Central Time Zone, WDJT does not carry a weeknight 6 p.m. newscast; WDJT did carry a 6 p.m. newscast from the news department's creation in 1996 until the acquisition of the Sony-produced game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! in the fall of 2005, when the station chose to air both shows during the 6 p.m. hour. Although this is unusual scheduling in the Central Time Zone due to the reduction of an hour out of early primetime, it is the common default scheduling for stations in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones and is also shared with WLUK-TV in Green Bay, which also carries both shows at the same time. WDJT also does not carry a weekend morning newscast, and with Fox affiliate WITI-TV (channel 6) reinstating its weekend morning newscasts in April 2011, two years after their March 2009 suspension,[20] WDJT is currently the market's only Big Four affiliate without a newscast in that daypart. For the Saturday Early Show and CBS Sunday Morning, forecast inserts are pre-recorded after the 10 p.m. news to air the next morning, except during ongoing severe weather events. Until the launch of a half-hour noon newscast on September 12, 2011[21], the station also did not air a weekday noon newscast also unlike most CBS affiliates, opting instead to fill the noon half-hour with a lower-profile syndicated show.
The station uses the Ten at Ten format for its late newscast, emphasizing the top stories and weather in the first 10 minutes of the program. WDJT has won regional Emmy awards, along with honors from the Associated Press for best newscast presentation. In 2009, the station began to carry the syndicated Mr. Food cooking segments on their morning newscasts, bringing back the feature to the Milwaukee market after a three year hiatus when WITI dropped the segments.
WDJT, during the 2007 World Series produced a 9 p.m. newscast for sister station WMLW-CA, in an attempt to attract non-Baseball viewers who would normally watch news on WITI-TV (but due to pre-emptions were not able to during the World Series).[22] The station then introduced a full-time 9 p.m. newscast on WMLW, beginning on January 1, 2008. WDJT also produces both a 10-minute Spanish language newscast for co-owned Telemundo affiliate WYTU-LP; several of WDJT's reporters are bilingual.
Until April 2011, the station also produced an 11-minute late evening newscast for sister station and ABC affiliate WBND-LP (channel 57) in South Bend, Indiana called "News at 11:00" featuring video shot locally in South Bend and then edited and written by anchor McCormack and executive producer Adam Wilhelm in Milwaukee. At that time WBND launched a full news operation from South Bend, though the imaging and format for that operation is very similar to WDJT's.
As of October 10, 2010, with WISN-TV's upgrade to 16:9 standard-definition widescreen newscasts, WDJT is the last remaining major network-affiliated station in the Milwaukee area that has yet to upgrade to widescreen or high-definition newscasts, though the station's promotions have begun to air in the format, and the current graphics package is optimized for 16:9 display.
On July 25, 2011 (after a two-day test by WYTU's news segments the week before), the station's news operation moved to a newly built extension of the Weigel facility, including a new set optimized for HD broadcasting and a fully equipped weather center designed for display on television. The station is continuing the process of upgrading their master control and mobile cameras to HD by late 2011, which would make it the final station in the market to convert to the format after WISN's June 28 conversion. As of December 4, however, the newscasts remain in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition with high definition graphics. On December 9, they debuted a new HD bug and 16:9 formatted sports ticker, presumably in preparation for the HD launch.
Current anchors
First Alert Weather
In addition to providing forecasts for WDJT, the First Alert Weather team also provides weather forecasts for FM radio station WLDB (93.3 MHz.).
Sports team
Reporters
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