WVTV

WVTV (Channel 18) is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA and serves as Southeast Wisconsin's The CW Television Network affiliate. The station broadcasts from the Milwaukee Public Television tower on Milwaukee's northeast side with WMVS/WMVT, along with WCGV (Channel 24), WVTV's sister station. WVTV's signal covers most of the market including the cities of Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha. WVTV is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group under the holding company WCGV, Inc..

History

Early years (1953–1965)

On October 3, 1953, the station went on the air as WOKY-TV on channel 19. The station was owned Bartell Broadcasters, Inc., and aired some programming from the ABC and DuMont networks. On October 21, 1954, CBS, then affiliated with WCAN-TV, purchased WOKY-TV for $335,000^[1] and announced it was moving its affiliation there. The purchase resulted in a call letter change to WXIX (for 19 in Roman numerals), effective on February 27, 1955. For four years, WXIX was the CBS O&O in Milwaukee, but struggled because of UHF's light penetration into homes at the time, though it did better than comparable UHF stations. The station shifted to its current Channel 18 position in 1958 in a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) channel alignment change. Shortly afterwards, CBS began to look for a stronger VHF station affiliate, and in 1959 signed an affiliation deal with WITI Channel 6. WXIX went dark, but went back on the air on July 20, 1959 after being purchased by Gene Posner, the owner of Cream City Broadcasting and others. From this point on WXIX was an independent station, and in 1963 changed its call letters to WUHF after another ownership change.

The WXIX calls now reside on Cincinnati's Fox affiliate Channel 19, with the WUHF call letters now based on Rochester, New York's Channel 31 (another Fox station), a sister Sinclair station to Channels 18 and 24.

Independent era (1966–1998)

Gaylord Broadcasting bought the station in 1966, and changed its call letters to WVTV. This started Channel 18 on its path to become one of the most popular independent stations in the country, with strong local programming such as The Bowling Game (which would eventually be syndicated across the Midwest), along with a strong slate of syndicated programs such as cartoons, classic off network sitcoms, more recent sitcoms, drama shows, sports, and movies. Being a Gaylord station, the channel focused on programming geared towards a rural and suburban audiences of the station's outer ring of coverage, as opposed to the more urban fare presented by Milwaukee's other stations. Long-time staples on WVTV included Hee Haw (which was produced by sister division Gaylord Entertainment), The Lawrence Welk Show as well as syndicated reruns of Green Acres and The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith remains an ever-unchanging part of the station's daytime lineup.

The station aired the CBS version of The Merv Griffin Show after WISN-TV rejected it, and after Griffin was cancelled by CBS, The Dick Cavett Show which had been pre-empted by then ABC affiliate WITI. The station also aired The Tonight Show from 1984 until 1988, due to WTMJ (Channel 4) being denied permission by NBC to air the program at a later time so that they could air syndicated programs after their late news.

As cable became more popular, WVTV's signal started to be carried on most cable systems in Wisconsin. This resulted in the station becoming Super 18 in 1987, with the tagline 'Wisconsin's Superstation'. WVTV was also the longtime home of the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks, and area college sports teams. The station was carried on Green Bay area cable systems until June 2007, when WWAZ (Channel 68) replaced it [1].

The station had a one-hour primetime newscast called The 9 O'Clock Nightly News starting in 1989, which featured anchors Liz Talbot and Duane Gay. Previously the station aired news and weather in a capsule format of two-to-five-minute segments in between programming (example).

WVTV continued to be the leading independent station until Fox's programming over on competitor WCGV (Channel 24) became popular. The station's ownership went into a state of flux after Gaylord decided to leave the television business (except for its stake in The Nashville Network). By 1994 the station would agree to enter into a local marketing agreement with WCGV, which was owned by Abry Broadcasting. The stations merged operations together into WVTV's studios at N. 35th St and Capitol Drive, and the newscast on WVTV was discontinued shortly thereafter. Duane Gay would then move on to WISN (Channel 12), where he continued on as a reporter, even after being diagnosed with a vicious form of soft tissue cancer in 1997; Gay would continue to work for Channel 12 in any capacity he physically could, and spoke well of his time at WVTV until he died on April 26, 2005 [2].

WVTV was originally supposed to be a charter The WB affiliate in January 1995. However, the New World/Fox affiliation deal in 1994 (which included Milwaukee's WITI (Channel 6) shifted network affiliations in many markets, which included Dallas/Fort Worth, where Gaylord owned then-independent KTVT (Channel 11). Because New World's KDFW (Channel 4) in that market shifted from CBS to Fox, Gaylord took the CBS affiliation for KTVT, then used that leverage to gain CBS affiliation for their Seattle–Tacoma station, KSTW (Channel 11).

Though WVTV was relatively unaffected by all of these shuffles and didn't take the CBS affiliation for Milwaukee (which eventually went to then-small WDJT (Channel 58)), Warner Bros. decided to not honor affiliation deals for Gaylord stations, keeping WVTV an independent and forcing Milwaukee viewers to watch The WB on cable via Superstation WGN, which was then carrying the network nationally on cable. At this time Channel 18 was airing more syndicated talk shows during the day, and aired first-run syndicated programming such as Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in prime time under the branding VTV Prime.

In 1996, Gaylord would sell WVTV to Glencairn Ltd., which continued the local marketing agreement with WCGV. (Two years earlier, Glencairn's first purchase attempt of WVTV had fallen through.) Sinclair had become WCGV's owner as a result of a merger with Abry. Glencairn in turn was owned by a former executive of Sinclair; thus Channel 18 was by default in the control of Channel 24 and Sinclair.

The WB (1997–2006)

WVTV continued to be an independent station until late in 1997, when The WB was pushing for more national distribution beyond the Tribune stations and Superstation WGN. After Sinclair made a large affiliation deal with The WB for stations throughout their chain, WVTV was finally able to carry the network near the start of 1998 and changed its identification to WB18.

WVTV finally became fully owned by Sinclair in 2000, after a long legal battle between Sinclair and Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH coalition about the racial issues of one concern holding two broadcast licenses in a market, the thinking being that the Glencairn ownership was making an end-around as an arm of Sinclair, and used the LMA to gain control of the station. By this point however, the FCC had overturned these rules that had disallowed a duopoly of stations in a market, and the sale to Sinclair did go through despite these objections.

The station resumed airing a newscast in August 2003 under the title of WB18 News at 9, a mix of local news from WVTV's facility, and Sinclair's News Central programming from its Baltimore, Maryland studios, with the local segments on weeknights anchored by Lisa Fielding, and Tami Hughes usually doing weekends. The program was reduced to a half-hour in September 2005 due to ratings concerns, and was eventually discontinued on March 31, 2006 due to cutbacks in Sinclair's news operations companywide. Fielding currently anchors and reports at various times on Chicago news radio station WBBM-AM (780), while Hughes is now on WITI as a general assignment reporter.

Though some rumors indicated Channel 18 would resume a newscast which would be produced by another station in the market, there has not been any interest by Milwaukee's Big Four network stations.

Sinclair announced on May 2, 2006 that WVTV would become The CW's Milwaukee affiliate upon the network's launch on September 18, 2006. Sister station WCGV affiliated with My Network TV two weeks before on September 5, creating one of five Sinclair-owned and/or controlled The CW/My Network TV duopolies in the country. WVTV continued to identify as WB 18 all through the summer, fully launching their new The CW branding officially as CW 18 on September 18, though the week before the station's logo bug was changed to the CW18 logo with "premieres Monday" to the left side.

The CW (2006–current)

WVTV's current schedule consists of all The CW programming airing in pattern, as the station currently carries no sports programming. During the morning the station runs some paid religious programming and The 700 Club, a double run of The Cosby Show, followed by second runs of The Steve Wilkos Show, Jerry Springer, and Maury, then The CW Daytime lineup, which features Dr. Drew's Lifechangers. The station's early-evening lineup consists of two episodes of Excused, then How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock, which both also air after CW primetime, then two episodes of Two and a Half Men.

After The CW's primetime lineup, and the afformentioned sitcoms above, The Office, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and The New Adventures of Old Christine are all double-ran into late night, with Entertainment Studios programming and Comics Unleashed airing later in the night to complete the station's broadcast day.

Varied sitcoms air through the weekends, along with several movies throughout Saturday and Sunday and Sinclair's Ring of Honor Wrestling promotion, along with a new locally produced horror film presentation with local continuity from "Makovan", Dead of Night Theater, on early Sunday mornings.^[2] The station carries the minimum amount of educational and informational children's programming, as the Toonzai lineup features one hour of E/I shows, and the station airs various syndicated E/I programming weekday mornings at 7am.

Despite its long broadcasting history, WVTV has been one of The CW's weaker affiliates in terms of viewership in recent years. Sinclair has put more promotional effort into WCGV than WVTV as the former's affiliation with MyNetworkTV allows more experimentation with their schedule. Both stations have seen their talk-heavy daytime lineups struggle against the classic television programming of Weigel's WBME-TV, which is one of the flagships of the Me-TV network.^[3] However, WVTV is guaranteed to stay with the CW until August 2016 because of Sinclair's affiliation agreement with the network.

2008 Packers preseason games

Because of non-pre-emptable coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics on WTMJ, WVTV aired two Green Bay Packers preseason games against the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos on August 16 & 22, respectively, a role previously taken by WPXE (Channel 55) in the 2004 pre-season.^[4]

July 2010 flooding incident

On July 22, 2010 the Milwaukee area experienced a major flash flooding event which caused major damage in several parts of Milwaukee County. The studios of WVTV/WCGV are located a half-mile south of Lincoln Creek and thus the building and equipment within the building suffered major damage, forcing the two stations off the air for the majority of the time after 6pm on July 22 until early morning July 24, when the two stations came back online, though not originating locally, but having programming brought into their master control via another unknown Sinclair master control. For both stations this resulted in most of the station's paid programming and other timeslots where the Sinclair facility did not have an episode of the series within the schedule replaced with reruns of Coach and advertising replaced with direct response national advertising. Both stations eventually resumed local operations later in the week of July 25, but were on basic 480i service featuring no digital on-screen bugs at all due to damage to the station's high definition broadcasting equipment for most of the following month. HD operations were restored on August 20, 2010.

Digital television

On February 17, 2009, WVTV ended programming on their analog signal, switching to nightlight mode, featuring a loop of a digital transition analog program and local DTV hotline numbers. This mode was discontinued on March 4, 2009 and there is now no analog broadcast. On June 12, 2009 at 9 a.m., WVTV remained on channel 18 when the analog to digital conversion was completed.^[5] As the station was the only operation in Milwaukee to not retain their pre-transition digital channel, the digital channel 18 transmitter and antenna have been continually going under tuning adjustments since June 12, 2009 to the present day to finesse the signal.

Cable carriage of digital signal

On June 28, 2007, Time Warner Cable began carrying WVTV's digital signal on their southeastern Wisconsin systems on Channel 1018, along with WCGV on Channel 1024 (formerly 518/524 before an October 2009 channel remapping), after Sinclair and Time Warner came to a compensation agreement for the stations [3]. Charter Communications, the other dominant cable provider in the area, came to a compensation agreement in April 2007, but the HD signal was not added until June 9, 2009, when the station began to air over Channel 618 on Charter's southeastern Wisconsin systems.

References

External links

• Official Station Website
• History of Milwaukee television
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WVTV