| Fond du Lac, Wisconsin | |
|---|---|
| Channels | Digital: 5 (VHF) (CP granted, facilities yet to be built) |
| Translators | 15 (UHF) Ripon, WI 30 (UHF) Columbus, WI (construction permits) |
| Affiliations | currently silent, formerly FamilyNet |
| Owner | Pappas Telecasting Companies (WWAZ License, LLC) |
| First air date | 2000 |
| Call letters' meaning | Wisconsin's AZteca America (after an unrealised affiliation) |
| Former callsigns | WMMF-TV (2000-2004) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 68 (2000-2008) |
| Transmitter power | 700 kW |
| Height | 195 m |
| Facility ID | 60571 |
WWAZ-TV is a television station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, broadcasting locally on channel 68 as an affiliate of FamilyNet. Founded October 2, 1989, the station is owned by Pappas Telecasting, and shares transmitter facilities with WWRS (Channel 52) which are located north of Iron Ridge in Dodge County. However as noted below, the station is currently silent and not transmitting due to financial problems within Pappas.
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Most of the station's audience before 2007 received the station over-the-air, as WWAZ and Pappas had previously not pursued any must-carry provisions with local cable systems and the national satellite services because of affiliation uncertainties; for instance, the station was not carried on Fond du Lac's local Charter Communications system. Currently from Iron Ridge, the station's coverage area has ranged from most of the northern part of the eleven-county Milwaukee market area, to the eastern portion of the Madison market area, along with the southern portions of the Green Bay market area. However as the station's transmitter was located west of the Kettle Moraine range that bisects the station's coverage area, communities in Sheboygan and Ozaukee counties were unable to receive the station without an outdoor antenna at the minimum.
However, this changed in mid-2007, when Pappas filed a must-carry provision with Time Warner Cable's Northeastern Wisconsin system, and the channel was subsequently added in Green Bay and the Fox Cities as of June 26, 2007,[1] replacing Milwaukee CW affiliate WVTV, which had aired on the system since the mid-1980s during that station's phase of becoming a superstation with intrastate coverage across Wisconsin.
The station ceased broadcasting in January 2008. A slide on the station's slot on Time Warner Cable contained the sentence WWAZ-TV informed Time Warner Cable that it has ceased broadcast operations until further notice.
Also in August 2007, FamilyNet was added to all Charter systems in eastern Wisconsin and the Madison area on a digital family tier.[2] The Charter signal is the FamilyNet national feed via satellite, but since WWAZ carried the network feed raw without local interruption (and sometimes even without the hourly station identification due to malfunctions), there was no difference in the national and local channels.
The station changed their call letters in late 2004 from WMMF in anticipation for a change in affiliation to the Spanish language Azteca America network, which never happened; Pappas ended up dropping almost all affiliations with the network at the start of July 2007 during a conflict with the network, replacing Azteca America with their own new Spanish-language service, TuVision.
It is unknown at present if Pappas still has plans to offer any Spanish-language programming on this channel, or the future of the station as Pappas Telecasting filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 10, 2008; however the WWAZ license, operations and facilities were not covered under the filing. However, due to the financial problems of Pappas, the station has been silent since January 2008,[3] and in an FCC filing, the station requested a move to Channel 5 after WFRV ended their analog service and vacated the channel in March 2009 (retaining their digital channel 39), but are unable to complete the new transmitter and tower until 2010 at the earliest.[4]
On January 15, 2008, WWAZ-TV filed a request with the FCC to cease broadcasting in analog before the end of the DTV transition and to become a digital-only station, broadcasting on channel 44. [1] The request was approved in late July 2008 [2]. The station broadcast for a short time before permanently ending their analog service within two weeks.
In August 2009, the FCC conditionally approved the move to channel 5 after Pappas builds the facilities, which are tentatively approved for the traditional tower site on the northeast side of Milwaukee. According to FCC mapping, the station would lease space on the MPTV Tower to broadcast the station, with the signal directed towards the west and north to avoid interference with the stations mentioned below. The channel 5 construction permit was accepted by the FCC on October 16, 2009.
The petition to move was contested by Weigel Broadcasting, WLFM-LP (Channel 6) of Chicago (a station using the analog channel 6 audio overlap quirk on 87.7 FM to broadcast a smooth jazz radio station with video imagery), and Grand Valley State University of Allendale, Michigan, near Grand Rapids, which has their Kalamazoo PBS member station WGVK already based on Channel 5. Weigel objected mainly on concerns of abandonment by WWAZ of serving Fond du Lac and the surrounding area to become a full-time Milwaukee station (creating a competitor to Weigel's two full-power and two low-power stations in the area), while the latter objecters were concerned with interference by the more southern signal within Chicago and across Lake Michigan.
The application was approved mainly due to ABC asking for the FCC to allow them to move the main signal of Chicago's WLS-TV from VHF digital channel 7, to digital channel 44, a move approved by the FCC in October 2009 and carried out at the beginning of 2010. Pappas also plans to address the abandonment concerns of the rural audience by filing construction permits for two low-power digital translator stations in areas formerly served by the WWAZ analog signal, the first on channel 15 from Ripon which has reception in the city of Fond du Lac, and the second on channel 30, broadcasting from Columbus within the northeast reaches of the Madison market.[5]
If the station does move to Milwaukee, the station would likely have to affiliate with a new minor network; WBWT-LP (Channel 38) is the Milwaukee area's Azteca America affiliate, while longtime religious broadcaster WVCY-TV (Channel 30) airs FamilyNet programming in the market already, and America One is associated with WMKE-CA (Channel 7). However, Univision, which has been a cable-only network in southeast Wisconsin since W46AR in Milwaukee stopped carrying it in 1999, remains a possibility, though no Pappas-owned stations carry the network.
WWAZ is the second television station to be licensed to Fond du Lac. KFIZ-TV, an independent station on Channel 34 and a sister station to KFIZ-AM and WFON FM, operated between 1968 and 1972.
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