| Evansville, Indiana | |
|---|---|
| Branding | Local 7 (general) Eyewitness News (newscasts) |
| Channels | Digital: 28 (UHF) Virtual: 7 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 7.1 Independent/Me-TV |
| Owner | Mission Broadcasting, Inc. (operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc.) |
| First air date | August 21, 1956 |
| Call letters' meaning | TeleVision of Western Indiana |
| Sister station(s) | WEHT |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 7 (VHF, 1956-2009) |
| Former affiliations | ABC (1956-1995) Fox (1995-2011) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 905 ft (276 m) |
| Facility ID | 3661 |
| Website | www.tristatehomepage.com |
WTVW, virtual channel 7, is an independent television station based in Evansville, Indiana. The station broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 28, mapping to virtual channel 7 via PSIP, from a 905 ft (276 m)-tall transmitter located just outside of Chandler; its studios are located on Marywood Drive in Henderson, Kentucky. WTVW is currently owned by Mission Broadcasting, and operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group (which owned the station from 2003 to 2011) under a shared services agreement.
Before becoming an independent station, WTVW was affiliated with the Fox network from December 3, 1995 to June 30, 2011;[1] before that, WTVW served as Evansville's original ABC network affiliate. The current WTVW schedule includes syndicated programming and about 28 hours per week of locally-produced newscasts.
Contents |
| Channel | Name | Video | Aspect | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | WTVW-DT | 720p | 16:9 | Main WTVW programming (carries some Me-TV programming) |
With a lack of network affiliation and much syndicated high definition programming, WTVW's signal now airs in a 4:3 form of 720p stretching the image to fit a 16:9 TV.
WTVW began operations on August 21, 1956 as an ABC affiliate locally owned by Evansville Television, Inc. and operating on VHF channel 7.[2] It was Evansville's third television station, and the first on the VHF band. In its early years on the air, WTVW fought an attempt by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deintermix the market, which would have moved the station to UHF channel 31 (making Evansville a UHF island; its rivals, WEHT and WFIE, had operated on UHF since their inceptions in 1953)[3] and reallocated channel 7 to Louisville, Kentucky.[4]
Evansville Television went into bankruptcy in 1959, putting WTVW in the hands of a trustee;[5] in 1962, the station was acquired by Polaris Corp.,[6] which merged with Natco Corp., a subsidiary of Fuqua Industries, in 1966.[7] Fuqua decided to leave broadcasting in 1979;[8] the following year, WTVW was purchased by Charles Woods, owner of WTVY-FM-TV in Dothan, Alabama.[9] Banam Broadcasting, a subsidiary of BankAmerica, assumed ownership of the station in 1993.[6]
Banam sold WTVW to Petracom Broadcasting in 1995.[10] A 20-percent equity stake in Petracom was purchased by Fox soon afterward,[11] eventually leading to a three-way affiliation swap in which WTVW ended its 39-year ABC affiliation and joined Fox on December 3, 1995, with ABC moving to former CBS affiliate WEHT and CBS moving to former Fox affiliate WEVV.[12] (WTVW is one of three original ABC affiliates in the state of Indiana to have switched affiliation to Fox, the other two being WAWV-TV in Terre Haute and WSJV in South Bend).
Petracom sold its stations to Quorum Broadcasting in 1997.[13] Quorum attempted to sell WTVW to GNS Media in 2003; GNS was owned by former Liberty Corporation executive Neil Smith,[14] and if the deal went through WTVW would have been operated under a joint sales agreement by Liberty-owned WFIE.[15] In the meantime, on December 31, 2003 Quorum merged with Nexstar Broadcasting,[16] which announced in January 2004 that the sale to GNS had fallen through.[17]
On May 11, 2011, Fox announced that it would leave WTVW and, as of July 1, 2011, affiliate with a subchannel of WEVV-TV that already had an affiliation with MyNetworkTV (WEVV's main channel will remain with CBS); the move comes as Fox has been aggressively seeking shares of retransmission earnings gained by its affiliates as part of affiliation agreements, an approach that has openly irked WTVW owner Nexstar.[18] WTVW became an independent station[12] branded as "Local 7", with primetime programming including Inside Edition, The Insider, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit during the week, westerns on Saturdays, and movies on Sundays.
The Western programming and overnight classic television programming (which consists of twenty-two hours per week of the station's schedule at present) is provided by Me-TV, a Weigel Broadcasting network which mainly airs on digital subchannels in most of the network's markets, though in WTVW's case the programming is recorded from the national feed and aired later in the station's schedule to compensate for current-day syndicated rights.[19] It is unknown at this time if WTVW will continue to air programs from Me-TV when Evansville's WTSN becomes a Me-TV affiliate in November 2011.[20]
The station would also introduce increased local programming, including coverage of local high school and college sports.[21] The shift made Evansville one of the only television markets in the United States with only four out of the six broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and The CW) having primary affiliations in a five station-market, with the remaining two (Fox and the MyNetworkTV program service) as digital multicast channels, along with one of the few markets where an analog-era VHF station has no network affiliation while all the market's UHF stations do. Nexstar would subsequently be stripped of its Fox affiliations in Springfield, Missouri (KSFX-TV) and Fort Wayne, Indiana (WFFT-TV) as well, and Nexstar decided to drop the Fox affiliation from its Terre Haute, Indiana affiliate (WFXW), which would regain its former ABC affiliation under the new callsign WAWV-TV.[22][23] The last Fox network program to air on WTVW was a repeat of Glee. All Fox programming moved to WEVV-DT2 when that show ended at 9 p.m. CDT.
On August 8, 2011, Nexstar announced it would purchase WEHT from Gilmore Broadcasting Corporation while selling WTVW to Nexstar's sister company Mission Broadcasting, effectively placing WTVW under the co-management of the station that accepted the ABC affiliation that WTVW formerly carried prior to affiliating with Fox.[24] As a result, Nexstar will operate two stations in the Evansville market, WEHT and WTVW; the two stations will be operated from the WEHT studios in Henderson, Kentucky.[25] Papers filed by Nexstar to the FCC have placed a requirement that news programming can amount to only 15% (equivalent to 25 hours per week) of WTVW's overall schedule (the recent expansions to the weekend 6 p.m. newscast, as well as the upcoming expansion of the weekday morning newscast would amount to news consisting of 21% of the station's schedule);[26] this will be accomplished by eliminating newscasts in time periods in which WEHT airs newscasts.[27] The transactions were completed on December 1, 2011.[28]
WTVW can be picked up by antenna in every county in Southeastern Illinois, Southwestern Indiana, Northwestern Kentucky, and just about every county bordering these regions. Its viewing area consists of all ten Southeastern Illinois counties, all eleven Southwestern Indiana counties, all nine Northwestern Kentucky counties and two more in South Central Indiana: Crawford and Orange, two more in North Central Kentucky: Breckinridge and Grayson, along with Butler County, Kentucky in south-central Kentucky, as well as Crittenden County and the adjacent Hardin County in Southern Illinois.
The station currently carries 23½ hours of local newscasts per week (with four hours on weekdays, 1½ hours on Saturdays, and two hours on Sundays); in addition to its main studios, WTVW (through WEHT) also operates a news bureau in Owensboro. The two stations operate a Doppler weather radar across the street from the Henderson facility. Randy Moore, the station's general assignment reporter and former weeknight anchor, is the longest-serving member of WTVW's on-air news team, having been with the station since 1980; with the merger of WTVW and WEHT's news operations, Moore will now be seen on both stations, serving primarily as anchor for the 5-7 a.m. weekday newscast on WEHT.
Throughout its history, the station has always operated a local news department. Branded for years as Eyewitness News until 1995 and again since 2011, the station changed branding to Fox 7 News following the affiliation switch. News was expanded to two hours on weekday mornings, plus the addition of a 5 p.m. newscast. Newscasts came and went, with the cancellation of the midday news in the late 1990s, then later the 5 p.m. and finally, the morning news. For a few years this left only the 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. newscasts (the 10 p.m. news had earlier been 'moved' into the 9 p.m. timeslot and expanded to an hour). However, in March 2002, the morning and midday newscasts made a return, under the names Fox 7 Morningside and Fox 7 Midday, respectively. In 2006, the morning news, now known as A.M. Evansville, expanded to three hours, the midday newscast moved to a later time slot and a 6:30 p.m. weeknight newscast was added to the schedule.
The news branding changed a number of times as well, from Fox 7 News to Fox 7 First News in 1998, then back to Fox 7 News in 2000. The station once briefly used WTVW NewsChannel 7 starting in 2004, before again returning to the Fox 7 News title in 2005. The branding was changed once more to Fox 7 WTVW News for a time in 2007 before again reverting to Fox 7 News. Just prior to the end of its Fox affiliation, in June 2011, the Fox 7 News branding was phased out; the station temporarily referred to its newscasts as News 7 in the last weeks of the affiliation,[12] before changing it to Local 7 News on July 1. As an independent station, WTVW then expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to seven nights a week on July 9 (previously, the station's lone weekend early evening newscast was a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast on Saturdays, which expanded to one hour with the expansion), while A.M. Evansville added a fourth hour on September 19, 2011, under the name Local 7 News Lifestyles, while the 5-8 a.m. newscast was renamed Local 7 News This Morning.[21][29]
With the sale of WTVW to Mission Broadcasting and WEHT to Nexstar Broadcasting and the consolidation of their news operations at WEHT's studios,[25] WTVW no longer airs newscasts against WEHT's, resulting in the morning newscast having been shortened to two hours (the 8 a.m. hour will retain the Lifestyles format) and the 6 p.m. newscast being shortened to a half-hour 6:30 p.m. newscast[27] (though the Sunday 6 p.m. newscast remains on WTVW, as WEHT airs ABC programming at that time).[30] Existing evening anchors Randy Moore and Julie Dolan will be moved to the morning newscasts on both stations (with Dolan also co-hosting Local 7 Lifestyles with Stefanie Martinez and anchoring the noon newscast), while WEHT anchor Brad Byrd will anchor the 6:30 and 9 p.m. newscasts (co-anchoring at 6:30 with Shelley Kirk); other on-air staff members from WEHT were carried over to the newscasts on WTVW, and vice versa. The two stations rebranded their newscasts as Eyewitness News, the title WTVW had used as an ABC affiliate from 1974 to 1995, on December 1, 2011; as a result of the consolidation of WTVW and WEHT's news operations, this leaves the Evansville market with only two local news operations amongst three stations, the other belonging to NBC affiliate WFIE (CBS affiliate WEVV-TV, which began running newscasts starting in 1992, had shut down its news operation in 2001).[27][30][31][32]
Anchors
Eyewitness News First Warning Doppler Weather
Sports team
Reporters
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