WMYD

WMYD

Detroit, Michigan United States
Branding	My TV20 (general) My TV20 News at 10 (newscast)
Slogan	News Straight to the Point
Channels	Digital: 21 (UHF) Virtual: 20 (PSIP)
Subchannels	20.1 MyNetworkTV 20.2 Cozi TV
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	Granite Broadcasting Corporation (WXON License, Inc.)
First air date	September 15, 1968
Call letters' meaning	MYNetworkTV Detroit
Former callsigns	WXON-TV (1968–1997) WDWB-TV (1997–2006)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 62 (UHF, 1968–1972) 20 (UHF, 1972–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent/ONTV (1968–1993) PTEN (1993–1995) The WB (1995–2006) 4Kids TV (2003–2008) DT2: Universal Sports (2007–2008) TheCoolTV (2011–2012)
Transmitter power	500 kW
Height	324 m
Facility ID	74211
Transmitter coordinates	42°26′52.5″N 83°10′23″W / 42.447917°N 83.17306°W / 42.447917; -83.17306
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.tv20detroit.com

WMYD, virtual channel 20 (UHF digital channel 21), is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station located in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The station is owned by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation. WMYD maintains studio facilities located at the American Center Building in Southfield;^[1][2] master control and some traffic responsibilities for WMYD originate from centralcasting facilities at the studios of sister stations ABC affiliate WPTA and NBC affiliate WISE-TV on Butler Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana; WMYD maintains transmitter facilities located on Eight Mile Road in Oak Park, along the Oakland and Wayne County line. On cable, the station is available on Comcast channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 235.

History

As an independent station

The station first signed on the air on September 15, 1968 as WXON-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 62 and operating as an independent station. It moved to channel 20 in 1972 after two short-lived stations abandoned the frequency in the 1950s and 1960s. WPAG-TV in Ann Arbor was first assigned to channel 20 and started broadcasting in April 1953.^[3] Little is known about WPAG except that it was owned by the same people (Washtenaw Broadcasting) who operated WPAG radio (1050 AM, now WTKA) and that it suspended operations in December 1957 in a futile attempt to get an allocation move to VHF channel 12.^[4] That station may have also been a DuMont affiliate.^[5] In 1967, WJMY-TV in Allen Park was awarded a construction permit for channel 20 but never made it to the air except for a brief test signal one night in 1968. This consisted merely of a card displaying its calls and city of license. Finally in November 1972, WXON took over WJMY's construction permit and shifted to channel 20 for good. WGPR-TV (now CBS owned-and-operated station WWJ-TV) took over the channel 62 frequency in 1975.

WXON initially operated from studio facilities in the Oakland County town of Walled Lake, but later moved to its present location in Southfield. Through the 1970s, WXON aired cartoons, lower-rated sitcoms, off-network dramas, old movies, religious programs and the annual Variety Club of Detroit telethon hosted by Soupy Sales. It offered English-dubbed versions of live action Japanese sci-fi children's programs such as Ultraman, Johnny Sokko and Space Giants. WXON also brought the infamous late-night horror movie cult favorite The Ghoul Show back to Detroit television after WKBD had canceled it in 1975. In addition, the station broadcast the anime series, Robotech, initially as a 1985 summer replacement series with two consecutive episodes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each weekday. Continuing much as channel 62 had earlier, WXON also often aired a package of films primarily sourced from American International Pictures and heavily balanced toward 1950s and early 1960s horror and science-fiction features.^{[citation needed]}

ON-TV

In 1979, WXON began to carry subscription television programming provided by ONTV, which aired daily after 8 p.m. The ONTV broadcasts were encrypted, requiring a rented set-top box to decode WXON's signal during hours when the station ran ONTV programming; the service was not cheap at $22.50 a month (equivalent to $70.32 in 2011 adjusted for inflation^[6]). Many people, especially those living across the river in Windsor, Ontario, who figured out the technological simplicities in how WXON encrypted ONTV programming built their own decoder boxes and watched the service for free illegally. The network carried uncut movies, concerts and local sporting events. However, since many games began before 8 in the evening, fans missed the start of many contests. In one famous incident, the Detroit Red Wings racked up a 5–0 lead in a game against the Calgary Flames before ONTV began its coverage.^[7]

In 1982, WXON began airing ONTV on weekend afternoons and faced a challenge from In-Home Theatre, which aired 24 hours a day on WIHT (channel 31, now WPXD-TV) in Ann Arbor. Still lagging far behind WKBD-TV (channel 50) in the ratings, WXON dropped ONTV on March 31, 1983 and resumed a general entertainment format full-time. It added a number of movies to its lineup. The station also acquired several barter cartoons as the children's programming business peaked between 1984 and 1985. As the 1980s progressed, the station began acquiring stronger off-network sitcoms. It got a significant boost after WKBD became a Fox charter affiliate on October 6, 1986. Channel 20 was an established independent station by 1991 and was unaffected by the network affiliation swaps that occurred in December 1994. Until that year, the station signed off the air early each morning from 1 to 5 a.m.; the station has generally broadcast a 24-hour schedule ever since although it has signed-off and signed back on periodically during the late 1990s.

The WB

On January 11, 1995, WXON became a charter affiliate of the upstart WB Television Network. Granite Broadcasting Corporation bought WXON two years later in January 1997 and on October 14 of that year, the station's call letters were changed to WDWB-TV. In 2004, the station became the new over-the-air broadcast home of the NBA's Detroit Pistons, taking the rights from the team's longtime broadcaster, WKBD and was the broadcast home for 15 to 20 Detroit Tigers baseball games produced by Fox Sports Net Detroit. WDWB carried the full WB network schedule, but after joining the network it frequently preempted programming that it rescheduled or did not air in favor of programming such as movies, Big Ten Conference basketball, the Pistons, the Tigers, and from 1999 until 2012, the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Like the baseball and basketball games, the annual MDA telethon is broadcast live, but since the station has no studios to accommodate the local telethon segments, it was produced out of the studios of WTVS (channel 56) in the New Center section of downtown Detroit.

Planned sale

In September 2005, Granite announced its intention to sell WDWB and its San Francisco sister station KBWB (now KOFY-TV) to AM Media Holdings, Inc. (a unit of Acon Investments and several key Granite shareholders) for a price rated, on WDWB's end, to around $97 million. The low price (Granite had purchased the station for $175 million) was largely out of Granite wanting to cut down its debt load while keeping control of the stations. On February 15, 2006, Granite announced the restructuring of the sale considering the changing conditions of the station^[8] but the sale eventually fell apart. In May 2006, DS Audible announced its intent to purchase the stations for about $84 million on WDWB's end. On July 18, 2006, this sale also fell apart and Granite announced its intention to retain the station.^[9] In November, Granite Broadcasting announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but would continue to operate its stations including WMYD.

MyNetworkTV

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.^[10][11] One month later on February 22, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created to give UPN and WB stations that were not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates another option besides converting to independent stations.^[12][13]

Like many stations about to lose a WB or UPN affiliation due to The CW's launch, WDWB changed its on-air logo to remove the "WB" logo; its new logo was introduced during a Pistons-Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game on February 1. The station had also announced that it would no longer promote any WB programing. The station changed its call letters to the current WMYD on May 7 in recognition of its future affiliation. On July 29, 2006, the new WMYD logo was introduced during a Tigers-Minnesota Twins baseball game in preparation for its switch; the station was then re-branded as "My TV 20". During the time before the actual launch, WMYD covered up all WB branding during programming and did not carry network promos. It became a MyNetworkTV affiliate on September 5 and WKBD joined The CW on September 18.

Occasionally as time now permits, WMYD may carry network programming from Fox, NBC or ABC should either WJBK (channel 2), WDIV-TV (channel 4) or WXYZ-TV (channel 7) preempt any shows for special programs, or extended breaking news or severe weather coverage; as of now, it has not done so. In April 2008, WMYD began airing Wolfman Mac's Nightmare Sinema (now known as Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In), a 90-minute comedic "horror host" series hosted by "Wolfman" Mac Kelly featuring vintage sci-fi and horror films, skits and cartoons. It is the first original locally produced show of its kind to be seen in Detroit in over a decade. The program was dropped from WMYD's schedule on February 14, 2010, three months after Chiller Drive-In reached a deal with the Retro Television Network to show reruns as well as new episodes.^[14]

Digital television

Digital channels

Former logo of WMYD-DT 20.2 "TheCoolTV"

WMYD formerly carried Universal Sports on its second digital subchannel from October 15, 2007 until August 2008 (shortly after its rebranding from World Championship Sports Network to Universal Sports). A standard definition simulcast of the station's main channel was later carried on digital channel 20.2. The subchannel was eventually deleted altogether, though it was reactivated on September 12, 2011 as an affiliate of TheCoolTV.^[16] On September 19, 2012, TheCoolTV was dropped from WMYD-DT 20.2, due to a payment dispute. From that time, until March 8, 2013 when it was replaced with Cozi TV, 20.2 once again ran a simulcast of WMYD's main channel in widescreen standard definition.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WMYD shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 20, on February 17, 2009, the original target date for full-power television stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. As a result, WMYD was the only major television station in Detroit and one of two overall (alongside WPXD-TV, channel 31) to terminate its analog signal before June 12, the date which Congress chose to reschedule the completion of the digital transition. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 21.^[17] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 20.

As part of the SAFER Act,^[18][19] WMYD kept its analog signal on the air until March 4 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters. Prior to the digital switchover, WMYD transmitted its signal from a 1,000 foot tower at the intersection of Eleven Mile and Inkster Roads in Southfield along with WTVS (channel 56) and WKBD-TV (channel 50). Only WKBD and WPXD-TV (channel 31) currently transmit their signals from that tower.^{[citation needed]}

Programming

Syndicated programming on WMYD includes: Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns, Are We There Yet?, The Office, Friends, Community, Tyler Perry's House of Payne, The 700 Club and Private Practice. It also carries Fox's Saturday morning infomercial block, Weekend Marketplace, which is preempted by the network's owned-and-operated station WJBK.

Sports programming

During its days as a carrier of ON-TV, WXON carried games from Detroit's major professional sports teams. However because ON-TV signed on at 8 p.m., WXON did not broadcast the early portions of many games. In 2006, WMYD began carrying more sporting events on its schedule involving local teams including Detroit Tigers baseball (produced by Fox Sports Detroit) and Detroit Pistons basketball; the Tigers telecasts moved to WJBK in 2007, and both the Pistons and Tigers moved exclusively to Fox Sports Detroit beginning in 2008.

Newscasts

My TV 20 News at 10 title card.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the station aired live news updates in various forms. In the 1990s, it had a short-lived weekly show called NewsWrap, which aired late Sunday nights. It also carried programming from the All News Channel during the overnight hours.

On July 14, 2008, WMYD launched a weeknight prime time newscast produced by the Independent News Network (INN) in order to compete with WJBK's longer-established hour-long 10:00 p.m. newscast. Titled My 20 News at 10, the half-hour newscast was produced out of INN's facilities on Tremont Avenue in Davenport, Iowa. Although news anchors, meteorologists and sports anchors were provided by the centralized news operation, WMYD maintained two locally-based reporters that contributed to the broadcast. In late 2008, the Independent News Network filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and would end all news productions (including those for WMYD) by January 9, 2009.^[20] All broadcasts were then planned to be reinstated under the production of Fusion Communications, also based in Davenport.

In September 2009, Granite terminated the agreement with INN, and turned over production of WMYD's newscast (which was renamed My TV20 News at 10) to WISE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana (which is part of Granite's Indiana's NewsCenter operation). The switch came after the studio facility for Granite's Fort Wayne virtual duopoly became a master control hub for the company's Midwestern stations. As with the previous INN production, the newscast is produced in advance using anchors based in Fort Wayne, along with reporters based in Detroit.^[21]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• My 20 News at 10 (2008–2009)
• My TV20 News at 10 (September 2009–present)

News team

Current on-air staff^[22]

Anchors

• Melissa Long - weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
• Curtis Smith (AMS Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 10:00 p.m.

Reporters

• Jorge Avellan - multimedia journalist
• Dave Leval - multimedia journalist (also seen on WPTA/WISE-TV)
• Sharon McClendon - community affairs director
• Kristin Pierce - multimedia journalist
• Greg Russell - entertainment reporter and host of Movie Show Plus

See also

• Media in Detroit

References

External links

• TV20Detroit.com – Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WMYD