| Fort Wayne, Indiana | |
|---|---|
| Branding | NBC 33 (general) Indiana's NewsCenter My Fox Fort Wayne (on DT2) |
| Slogan | 24/7 News Source |
| Channels | Digital: 18 (UHF) Virtual: 33 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 33.1 NBC 33.2 Fox (primary) MyNetworkTV (secondary) |
| Owner | Granite Broadcasting Corporation (WISE-TV License, LLC) |
| First air date | November 21, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning | "WISE" as in wisdom |
| Sister station(s) | WPTA, WMYD |
| Former callsigns | WKJG-TV (1953-2003) |
| Former channel number(s) | 33 (UHF analog, 1953-2009) 19 (UHF digital, 2003-2009) |
| Former affiliations | NBC Weather Plus (on DT2) |
| Transmitter power | 320 kW |
| Height | 224 m |
| Facility ID | 13960 |
| Website | incnow.tv |
WISE-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station for Northeastern Indiana licensed to Fort Wayne. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 18 (or virtual channel 33.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter at its studios on Butler Road in Northwest Fort Wayne. The station can also be seen on Frontier FiOS channel 4 and Comcast channel 13. There is a high definition feed offered on Frontier FiOS digital channel 504 and Comcast digital channel 1013. Owned by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation, WISE-TV operates ABC affiliate WPTA (owned by the Malara Broadcast Group) through a local marketing agreement (LMA) and the two outlets share studios. Syndicated programming on this station includes Anderson, Dr. Phil, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and Swift Justice With Nancy Grace among others.
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It operates the area's primary Fox and secondary MyNetworkTV affiliate on a second digital subchannel. Known on-air as My Fox Fort Wayne, this can also be seen on Frontier FiOS channel 9, Mediacom channel 62, and Comcast digital channel 252. There is a high definition feed provided on Frontier digital channel 509 and Comcast digital channel 1018. Syndicated programming on WISE-DT2 includes The New Adventures of Old Christine, George Lopez, Frasier, The Nate Berkus Show, and The Wendy Williams Show along with others. It claims to use the "EISE" call sign for "official identification purposes," although the legal callsign for the station remains WISE-TV.
Current programming seen on WISE-DT3 remains unclear. With the addition of Fox to WISE-DT2, it was upgraded to a 720p high definition feed. In order to preserve the bandwidth allowing two HD digital channels, it was announced WISE-DT3 (featuring national NBC Plus and local "The VIPIR Channel" weather forecasts) would be combined with WPTA's third digital subchannel. It is unknown if the two services will be merged in anyway or one will be dropped since WPTA-DT3 has been offering a 24-hour local weather channel known as "Indiana's NewsCenter Now". [1] [2]
| Channels | Name | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33.1 | WISE-HD | 1080i | 16:9 | Main WISE-TV programming / NBC |
| 33.2 | WISE-DT2 | 720p | "My Fox Fort Wayne" |
The station was founded on November 21, 1953 as WKJG-TV and aired an analog signal on UHF channel 33. It was the first television station in Fort Wayne and affiliated with NBC. The station was owned by William Kunkle, publisher of The Journal Gazette, along with WKJG radio (AM 1380 and FM 97.3). Veteran Indiana sportscaster Hilliard Gates was the first person seen on the new television station. On September 30, 1971, the radio stations were sold. Their call letters became WMEE-AM and WMEF-FM respectively. Today, the FM station has the calls WMEE. The AM station went through a variety of call signs including WQHK, WHWD, and WONO. It went back to the original WKJG on November 3, 2003 and is currently Fort Wayne's ESPN Radio affiliate.
For a time in the 1970s, WKJG-TV was owned by Tony Hulman along with WTHI-TV in Terre Haute. When Hulman died in 1977, WKJG was bought by Joseph R. Cloutier a longtime executive with Hulman's company. After Cloutier's death, the station was bought by a trust fund called the Corporation for General Trade. Cloutier's son Joseph A. Cloutier became the majority share holder with 51%. That company continued to own WKJG until it was sold in 2003. Through all these changes in ownership, Gates remained General Manager until 1990 doubling for most of that time as a sportscaster. John Siemer a newscaster and announcer at the station was known at that time as "Engineer John" who introduced cartoons.
On January 13, 2003, the Corporation for General Trade was sold for $20 million to New Vision Television. The station changed its call letters to WISE-TV on May 26 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. WISE-DT went on-the-air in 2003 on UHF channel 19 becoming the first commercial digital channel in Fort Wayne. A new transmitter with a stronger signal and new high definition options was installed on the tower. The station was sold again in March 2005 to the Granite Broadcasting Corporation for $44.2 million. Since the company already owned WPTA, it divested the channel to the Malara Broadcasting Group for $45.3 million. A local marketing agreement was established that called for Granite to provide operation services to WPTA as well as for Malara's other new station, KDLH in Duluth, Minnesota.
Malara files its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports jointly with Granite which has led to allegations that Granite uses Malara as a shell corporation to evade Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules on duopolies. The FCC does not allow common ownership of two of the four largest stations in a single market. Additionally, Fort Wayne has only six full-power stations which are too few to allow duopolies in any case. After emerging from bankruptcy in Summer 2007, Granite stock was taken over by privately owned hedge fund Silver Point Capital of Greenwich, Connecticut. Silver Point Capital now controls Granite broadcasting according to a Buffalo, New York news article printed on September 16, 2007. According to the same article, Granite will be sold to other parties and many of its stations have been laying-off employees or cutting salaries up to 20%.
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that the networks would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined service would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be sister to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming Independent. It was also created to compete against The CW.
CBS affiliate WANE-TV aired UPN on a second digital subchannel. The Fort Wayne affiliate of The WB was cable-only "WBFW" (provided through The WB 100+) and co-owned with WPTA by the Malara Broadcast Group. It was announced in March 2006 that "WBFW" would affiliate with The CW via The CW Plus (a similar operation to The WB 100+). WPTA decided to create a new second digital subchannel to simulcast "WBFW" and offer access to CW programming for over-the-air viewers. On September 18, The CW debuted on that station which began using the WPTA-DT2 calls officially. On September 5, 2006, WISE-TV moved NBC Weather Plus from its second digital subchannel to WISE-DT3 in order for it to become the area's affiliate of MyNetworkTV.
On December 1, 2008, NBC Weather Plus was shut down and WISE-DT3 (known on-air as "Indiana's NewsCenter Weather Plus") reverted to a 24-hour local news and weather channel called "INCnow". [3] Carrying local and state news, weather radar, and sports headlines, the channel allowed Indiana's NewsCenter to air breaking news without disrupting regular network programming. It had been possible after the national service folded that WISE-DT3's function would be assumed by the preexisting "Pinpoint VIPIR HD Channel" on WPTA-DT3. This featured rotating weather maps with audio from the National Weather Service.
On December 3, 2008, it was announced that viewers in Grant County, Indiana would no longer be able to view WISE-TV on Bright House Networks in Marion, Gas City, and Jonesboro after December 31, 2008. [4] The station shut down its analog signal on February 17, 2009. Its existing digital signal on UHF channel 19 was moved to a post-transition digital channel (18). [5] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WISE-TV's virtual channel as 33.
On July 25, 2011 Nexstar Broadcasting (owners of WFFT-TV) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Granite Broadcasting, claiming the company is trying to monopolize ad sales through its shared services agreement with WPTA (owned by Malara Broadcasting) and the five network affiliations that will be shared between WPTA and WISE (WPTA already carries ABC and CW programming, while WISE will add Fox programming to its MyNetworkTV-affiliated digital subchannel on August 1, 2011 (WFFT lost the Fox affiliation due to a dispute between Fox/News Corporation and Nexstar over reverse compensation payments during negotiations to renew WFFT's affiliation agreement with Fox), as well as the NBC affiliation on its primary channel). Nexstar is seeking a judgment that would force either WPTA-TV or WISE-TV to give up at least one of the three Big Four affiliations it currently has.[6]
After being taken over by Granite, WISE-TV's news department was promptly folded and combined with WPTA. The company fired those who worked at WISE-TV with the exception of lead anchor Linda Jackson who was integrated into the WPTA operation. This station began airing a weeknight newscast at 7 which was the first and, at the time, the only one in the state of Indiana. On September 11, 2006, this was replaced with an extra episode of Dr. Phil due to low ratings. In November 2005, after several months of using the "Alive" news brand on both stations, WPTA debuted a new set in the basement of its studios formerly used to tape public-affairs programs such as Impact. With it came a new branding for the newscasts, Indiana's NewsCenter.
When WPTA took over production of news on WISE-TV, there was initially a significant decrease in ratings. WANE-TV was the market's news leader for several years after that according to Nielsen Media Research since it was the only other local news operation in the area. This was most easily attributed to continued viewer resentment towards WPTA and Granite for the elimination of WISE-TV's news department and arguably its identity and history. However, WPTA management said the changes were part of a longer-term plan that would need up to five years to take hold with viewers. Part of the plan to win back viewers included new technology such as text messaging, an improved website with more online video, and upgrading weather equipment to a VIPIR system.
Eventually, the changes started to take hold and ratings began to drastically improve. In the November 2007 sweeps period, WPTA and WANE-TV were nearly neck-and-neck in the Fort Wayne television news ratings race with WANE-TV continuing to show a slight lead. Starting July 24, 2006, WISE-TV began airing a weeknight prime time newscast at 10 for a half-hour on its NBC Weather Plus subchannel. With the September 2006 change to MyNetworkTV on WISE-DT2 and the addition of The CW on WPTA's second digital subchannel, the show (known as Indiana's NewsCenter Prime News) became part of those channel's schedules through a simulcast. On May 18, 2009, WISE-TV and WPTA became the first two stations in Fort Wayne to air local newscasts in 16:9 enhanced definition widescreen. Although not truly high definition, the aspect ratio matches those of HD television screens.
Currently, WISE-TV co-produces newscasts with WPTA that are essentially the same in terms of coverage and format. Simulcasted shows on both stations include weekday mornings (except for first half hour at 5 a.m. on WPTA), weeknights at 6, and weekends. WPTA airs separate weekday noon as well as weeknight 5, 5:30, and 11 o'clock news. This channel does not air broadcasts weeknights at 5 and 5:30 unlike most NBC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone. Weekend simulcasts can be pre-empted on one channel due to network obligations. WISE-DT2 offers rebroadcasts of the entire weekday morning show at 7, midday noon news at 1, and weeknight 6 o'clock newscast at 6:30. WISE-TV and WPTA operate a weather radar known as "Pinpoint VIPIR HD" at the studios.
Anchors
Pinpoint VIPIR HD Weather (all have the AMS Seal of Approval)
Sports team
Multimedia journalists
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