WGWW

WGWW

Anniston/Birmingham, Alabama
Branding	Heartland TV 40
Channels	Digital: 9 (VHF) Virtual: 40 (PSIP)
Subchannels	40.1 Heartland TV 40.2 ABC (WBMA-LD simulcast)
Affiliations	Heartland TV ABC, via WBMA-LD (DT2)
Owner	Howard Stirk Holdings (HSH Birmingham (WCFT) Licensee, LLC)
First air date	October 26, 1969
Sister station(s)	WSES
Former callsigns	WHMA-TV (1969–1984) WJSU-TV (1984–2015)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 40 (UHF; 1969-2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: CBS (1969–1996) ABC, via WBMA-LD (1996–2014) Secondary: NBC (1969–1970)
Transmitter power	15.6 kW
Height	359 m
Facility ID	56642
Transmitter coordinates	33°36′24.3″N 86°25′3.1″W / 33.606750°N 86.417528°W / 33.606750; -86.417528 (WGWW)
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	howardstirkholdings.com

WGWW is a television station licensed to Anniston, Alabama and an affiliate of Heartland TV. The station's second digital channel serves as a repeater of ABC affiliate WBMA-LD. The station is owned by Armstrong Williams and his company, Howard Stirk Holdings.^[1][2][3] The company also owns WSES (channel 33) in Tuscaloosa; the two stations bring Heartland programming to all of central Alabama.

History

Beginnings in Anniston

WGWW signed on the air on October 26, 1969 as WHMA-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 40; it originally operated as a primary CBS affiliate with a secondary affiliation with NBC. The station was operated by the Anniston Broadcasting Company, which was owned by members of the family of Harry M. Ayers (the station's namesake). The Ayers family also owned the Anniston Star newspaper and WHMA radio (1390 AM and 100.5 FM, now WNNX-FM in Atlanta). WHMA-TV's first general manager, Harry Mabry, came to Anniston from Birmingham, where he had served as news director at WBRC-TV (channel 6) for several years. Mabry already was familiar with Anniston, though, having been an announcer on WHMA over fifteen years earlier. Another former Birmingham personality who was among the station's original staff was "Cousin Cliff" Holman, who left WAPI-TV (channel 13, now WVTM-TV) in 1969 after that station moved his children's show from weekdays to weekends the previous year. Holman resumed his program on WHMA-TV in the afternoons, but changes in the television industry and the Federal Communications Commission's decision in the early 1970s to prohibit children's hosts from promoting products directly on-air forced channel 40 to cancel the program by 1972. Holman would, in later years, revive his program on a cable access channel in Birmingham (and for a short time, WBRC) and make public appearances at various children's gatherings.

WHMA-TV ultimately served approximately 100,000 households in east central Alabama, and management fought almost constantly to maintain Anniston as a separate Arbitron market between Birmingham and Atlanta; this was a maneuver critical to the station's survival. Despite being the only station located within the Anniston/East Alabama market (other than Alabama Public Television satellite station WCIQ), WHMA faced immense competition from the "spill-in" (grade B signal) coverage from stations in the larger nearby markets. Its ratings victories garnered it access to numerous national advertisers, a rarity for small-market stations of that time. In 1970, WHMA, along with WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) and WCFT-TV (channel 33), dropped NBC programming in favor of becoming full-time CBS affiliates after WAPI-TV became the sole NBC affiliate for all of central Alabama that year. As was the case with WCFT, CBS opted to retain its affiliation with WHMA because of WBMG's weak signal at the time. In fact, even with its 1969 power boost, channel 42 was still all but unwatchable in much of east central Alabama, which is in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains; over-the-air reception of UHF stations is often impaired in rugged terrain. Many cable providers in the eastern part of the Birmingham market opted to carry channel 40 as the local CBS affiliate, instead of WBMG.

In 1984, the FCC forced the Ayers family to break up its media empire. Later, in a mid-1980s deal that concerned tax avoidance more than profit, the Ayers sold the station to Jacksonville State University, who changed the television station's call letters to WJSU-TV. The station was ultimately sold in the early 1990s to Flagship Broadcasting.^[4][5]

WBMA-LD satellite

In 1995, Birmingham's longtime ABC affiliate, WBRC-TV, was sold to Fox Television Stations in preparation to change the station's network affiliation to Fox. However, WBRC's affiliation contract with ABC did not expire until September 1996, giving the network one year to find a new Birmingham affiliate. ABC reached a unique deal with Allbritton Communications in which WCFT and WJSU would become Central Alabama's new ABC affiliate, with WCFT as the main station. Both stations had at least grade B coverage of Birmingham. However, under Nielsen rules, neither station would likely appear in the Birmingham ratings books because Tuscaloosa and Anniston were separate markets. Allbritton's solution was to purchase W58CK (channel 58, now WBMA-LD), a low-power station in Birmingham that began operations on November 18, 1994. W58CK would serve as the primary station for ratings purposes, with the three stations collectively listed as "WBMA+."^[6] Most cable systems in the eastern half of the market picked up WJSU's signal. Originally, Allbritton operated WJSU-TV under a local marketing agreement with Flagship Broadcasting; in 2008, Allbritton acquired the station outright.

Acquisition by Sinclair

On July 29, 2013, Allbritton announced that it would sell its seven television stations, including WBMA+ (and in turn WJSU-TV), to Sinclair Broadcast Group, in an attempt to shift its focus toward its co-owned website, Politico.^[7] As part of the deal, Sinclair had intended to sell the license assets of its existing Birmingham stations, CW affiliate WTTO (channel 21) and MyNetworkTV affiliate WABM (channel 68) to Deerfield Media, but would still operate those stations through shared services and joint sales agreements.^[8] At the time, no affiliation changes were expected.

On December 6, 2013, the FCC informed Sinclair that applications related to the deal need to be "amended or withdrawn," as Sinclair would retain an existing time brokerage agreement between WTTO and its satellite station, WDBB (channel 17); this would, in effect, create a new LMA between WBMA+ and WDBB, even though the Commission had ruled in 1999 that such agreements made after November 5, 1996 covering more than 15% of the broadcast day would count toward the ownership limits for the brokering station's owner.^[9] On March 20, 2014, as part of a restructuring of the Sinclair-Allbritton deal in order to address these ownership conflicts, Sinclair announced that it would retain ownership of WTTO, forming a new duopoly with WBMA+ (while retaining the LMA between WDBB to continue operating it as a satellite station of WTTO); WABM was to be sold to a third-party buyer with which Sinclair would not enter into a sharing arrangement or maintain any contingent interest, other than a possible transitional shared facilities agreement until WTTO was able to move its operations from its longtime home on Beacon Parkway West to WBMA's facility in Hoover.^[10][11]

On May 29, 2014, however, Sinclair informed the FCC that it had not found a buyer for WABM and proposed surrendering WCFT and WJSU's licenses. Under the restructured plan, WABM would become the ABC affiliate for central Alabama, with WBMA-LD as its satellite. WABM's existing programming would move to its second digital channel (WBMA-LD itself, as a low-power station, would not be affected).^[12][13] Sinclair opted to retain WABM on the basis that its facilities are superior to those of WCFT and WJSU; indeed, moving ABC programming to WABM would give ABC a full-power affiliate in Birmingham itself for the first time since 1996.^[13] After nearly a year of delays, Sinclair's deal to acquire Allbritton was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014,^[14] and was completed on August 1, 2014.^[15]

WJSU-TV stopped carrying WBMA+'s programming on September 29, 2014 at 10:35 p.m. CT. WBMA+ is now carried on the second digital subchannels of WABM and WDBB.^[16]

Sale to Howard Stirk Holdings

On September 28, 2014, Sinclair reached a deal to sell the license assets of WJSU-TV to Howard Stirk Holdings for $50,000, foregoing any operational agreements with the station's new owner.^[17] Sinclair had earlier reached identical deals to sell the licenses of WCFT-TV and the original WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina (since renamed WMMP and now WGWG), two other former Allbritton stations whose licenses were previously slated to be surrendered, to the same company.^[18][19]

As the sale of WJSU-TV in effect superseded the proposed surrender of its license, Sinclair requested that the FCC hold off on canceling the license until at least ten business days after acting on the proposed transaction. In order to maintain the broadcast licenses for WJSU and WCFT, the two stations remained on the air with interim programming; as of October 20 2014, WJSU-TV was broadcasting Heartland TV network programming and a mix of local and network advertising, originating from WBMA+'s studios, with station identifications mentioning both WJSU and WCFT. As of December 3, 2014, WBMA-LD's primary ABC channel was restored to WJSU as its second subchannel, with WBMA's weather subchannel being broadcast on channel 40.3. Sinclair's continued operation of WJSU and WCFT was under the presumption that the stations could remain on the air under their existing licenses until the FCC rules on the petition and the sale to HSH.

The FCC approved the transfer of license to HSH Birmingham on December 4, 2014. On March 11, 2015, Howard Stirk Holdings changed WJSU-TV's call letters to WGWW;^[20] concurrently, WCFT-TV became WSES.^[21]

Digital television

WGWW (as WJSU-TV) shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 40 on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.^[22] WJSU-TV's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 9; through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers displayed the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 40.^[23]

After Howard Stirk holdings took control of the station, it leased channel 40's second digital channel to WBMA in order to provide ABC programming to the eastern half of the market.

References

External links

• Query the FCC's TV station database for WGWW
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WGWW-TV