WTTO

WTTO, channel 21, is the CW affiliate for the Birmingham/Anniston/Tuscaloosa, Alabama market. It broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 28, however through the use of PSIP technology, digital television receivers display WTTO's virtual channel as 21. It is licensed to Homewood, a Birmingham suburb. Its transmitter is located on Red Mountain.

The station operates a full-time satellite for the western part of the market, WDBB (channel 17). It is licensed to Bessemer, another Birmingham suburb, but primarily serves the Tuscaloosa area. It broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 18. Its transmitter is located near Windham Springs. WDBB is only mentioned in WTTO's legal IDs.

Both stations are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which also owns sister station WABM, the local MyNetworkTV affiliate.

History

In Central Alabama, channel 21 was originally allocated to Gadsden as WTVS. It was one of the earliest UHF television stations, but could not gain any foothold and soon went dark because UHF tuning was optional at the time.^[3] The WTVS callsign was ultimately used by the PBS station in Detroit, Michigan.

WTTO began originally on April 21, 1982 as Alabama's second independent station (and the Birmingham market's first), signing on a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile. It was a typical UHF independent that aired numerous cartoons, movies, and sitcoms. The first program it broadcast was a rerun of the 1970s action series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It quickly became the strongest independent station in Alabama, and one of the strongest in the nation. The station's original owner, Chapman Broadcasting, sold it to Arlington Broadcasting in 1983. It was sold to HR Broadcasting in 1987. Despite being one of the strongest independent stations in the country, WTTO turned down the Fox affiliation when that network started up. Even without Fox, the station continued to prosper. HR Broadcasting sold WTTO to Abry in 1989.

Meanwhile, WDBB had its start in October 1984 as an independent station licensed to Tuscaloosa, also serving Birmingham. The station was owned by Dubose Broadcasting (hence its call letters) and operated from studios on Jug Factory road on the southern edge of Tuscaloosa. In the fall of 1985, WDBB gained the broadcasting rights to the Alabama Crimson Tide's football and basketball coaches shows. The shows had aired on WBRC and then WAPI, later WVTM, and this was a major coup for the upstart station.

In 1986, the station moved its city of license to Bessemer and built a new tower there in an attempt to improve its coverage in the Birmingham area. It signed on WNAL-TV (channel 44) in Gadsden as a satellite to serve the northern part of the market. The Fox network launched soon afterward, and WDBB/WNAL became the Birmingham area's Fox affiliate. However, neither station decently covered Birmingham and couldn't get on several large Birmingham-area cable systems.

In January 1991, Fox moved its affiliation to WTTO after all efforts to get better cable coverage for WDBB/WNAL failed. Soon after, WDBB and WNAL began simulcasting WTTO for all but two hours of the broadcast day. By 1993, WNAL and WDBB simulcasted WTTO which nonetheless only called itself "Fox21". WDBB then moved back to its original transmitter near Tuscaloosa, but remained licensed in Bessemer. Within a few years, WTTO was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country.

While WDBB broadcast much of the same programming as WTTO, the Tuscaloosa station operated its own local news department twice during its history. First as NewsCenter 17 and then as WDBB 17 News. WDBB 17 News directly competed with then-CBS affiliate WCFT-TV (which, incidentally, had been Chapman's flagship station) for West Alabama viewers. The newsroom and studio were housed at WDBB's studio. Talent such as Dan Cates and Don Hartley, who were already known from previous stints on other TV and radio stations, were part of the news department. Later on, they were joined by Gene Lively, longtime anchor at WVTM.

Abry merged with Sinclair in 1994. A few months later, Sinclair began a Local marketing agreement with WABM, which joined UPN in 1995. Meanwhile, that same year, New World bought WBRC from Citicasters. At the same time, it bought WVTM from Argyle. This posed a serious problem for New World. It not only owned two stations in the same market, but now owned more stations than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed. A few months later, however, New World and Fox reached a deal in which New World would switch most of its stations to Fox affiliates. This gave New World a chance to solve its Birmingham ownership problem by selling WBRC directly to Fox.

WBRC had been an ABC affiliate for decades, and ABC didn't want to lose too much share in what had been one of its strongest markets. It originally wanted to affiliate with WTTO, which by this time had become the third-highest rated station in Birmingham. However, at the time Sinclair didn't budget for local newscasts on its stations (it would not own any Big Three stations for another year). Also, Sinclair was only interested in ABC's prime time shows, sports, and ABC News, not a full affiliation. ABC turned down this offer out of hand in late 1995 Soon afterward, WDBB's separate newscast was shut down. The newsroom and studio were vacant until late 1997, when upstart WJRD moved into WDBB's former facilities to re-launch local news for West Alabama. Some of WJRD's talent were former WDBB staffers who had been let go two years earlier. WJRD is now WVUA-CA.

WTTO and WDBB continued as Fox stations until WBRC's affiliation deal with ABC ran out in September 1996. The two stations then became independents, though WTTO held onto Fox Kids after WBRC didn't pick it up. In the meantime, WNAL was sold to Fant Broadcasting and became the CBS affiliate for Gadsden and northeast Alabama. That station is now WPXH-TV, the Ion Television station for central Alabama.

In February 1997, WTTO and WDBB affiliated with the WB network. Before then, Birmingham had been one of the largest markets without a WB affiliate.

In the late 1990s, WTTO gradually moved away from movies, classic sitcoms, and cartoons to more talk/reality shows, court shows, as well as recent sitcoms (which they ran all along). WTTO dropped Fox Kids programming in the Fall of 2000 and WBRC did not pick it up. That year Fox stopped requiring its own stations from carrying it whether or not another station could be found. The main reason for this change was because the stations were having a tougher time making a profit running such programming. This was due to new FCC regulations in terms of the amount of ads allowed during children's programming as well as the content of such advertising. This made advertisers for children rely more on cable and caused syndicators to move their programming to cable.

Still WTTO continued cartoons in the afternoons as they ran Kids' WB programming until that ended nationwide in January 2006. The CW4Kids still runs on Saturday mornings. In September 2003, WTTO finally began to produce its own local newscast, titled "WB21 News at 9:00". However, in October 2005, the market's CBS-affiliate, WIAT, began producing the newscasts for WTTO. The newscast was cancelled October 13, 2006.

The WB merged with UPN in September 2006 to form The CW, a network featuring programming from both networks. Sinclair announced on May 2, 2006 that WTTO would become the CW affiliate. As a CW affiliate, the station was branded as "CW21". On February 17, 2009 at 11:59 PM, WTTO and WDBB ceased to transmit their signals in analog format on channels 21 and 17. The stations are now exclusively available in ATSC digital format.

Newscast Titles (WDBB)

• NewsCenter 17 (1980s–?)
• WDBB 17 News (Early 1990s-?)

Tower

The WTTO Tower is a 609.6 m (2000 ft) tall guyed mast structure used for communication purposes. It was finished in 1986 and is located in Windham Springs, Alabama, in the U.S. at .

See also

• Tallest structures in the U.S.

References

External links

• Tower Site of the week; "A Quick Jaunt Through Birmingham, Alabama" (2002)
• Listing 1050693 in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Antenna Structure Registration database
• Listing 1035175 in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Antenna Structure Registration database
• WTTO website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WTTO
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WDBB
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WTTO-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WDBB-TV
• Program Information for WTTO at TitanTV.com