WMYT-TV

WMYT-TV

Rock Hill, South Carolina/ Charlotte, North Carolina United States
City of license	Rock Hill, South Carolina
Branding	My 12 (refers to cable channel position)
Channels	Digital: 39 (UHF) Virtual: 55 (PSIP)
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV (O&O) SBN (DT3)
Owner	Fox Television Stations (Fox Television Stations, Inc.)
First air date	October 21, 1994 (1994-10-21)
Call letters' meaning	MYNetworkTV
Sister station(s)	WJZY, Fox Sports Carolinas
Former callsigns	WFVT-TV (1994–2001) WWWB-TV (2001–2006)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 55 (UHF, 1994–2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: independent (1994–1995) The WB (1995–2006) DT2: This TV (2013-14) DT3: WGTB-LP (2007-2011)
Transmitter power	225 kW
Height	571 m
Facility ID	20624
Transmitter coordinates	35°21′44.5″N 81°9′18.4″W / 35.362361°N 81.155111°W / 35.362361; -81.155111
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.wmyt12.com

WMYT-TV, virtual channel 55 (UHF digital channel 39), is a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated television station serving Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is licensed to Rock Hill, South Carolina; as such, it is the only major commercial station in Charlotte that is licensed on the South Carolina side of the market. The station is owned by Fox Television Stations subsidiary of 21st Century Fox, as part of a duopoly with Fox owned-and-operated station WJZY (channel 46). The two stations share studio facilities located on Performance Road (along I-85) in unincorporated northwestern Mecklenburg County; WMYT's transmitter is located in Dallas, North Carolina. The station is branded on-air as My 12, in reference to its channel location on most Charlotte area cable providers.

History

Early history

Prior to WMYT's sign-on, the UHF channel 55 allocation had previously belonged to a Rock Hill-based low-powered repeater of PBS member network South Carolina Educational Television from 1974 to 1978, when SCETV programming moved to a full-powered satellite station, WNSC-TV on channel 30.

The present station on channel 55 first signed on the air on October 21, 1994 as WFVT. Operating as an independent station, it was originally owned by an Indiana-based group called Family 55. The station was operated under a local marketing agreement that was signed shortly before its launch with WJZY through its then-owner Capitol Broadcasting Company. Under this agreement, WJZY bought WFVT's entire broadcast day, and filled the schedule mostly with syndicated programs that WJZY did not have time to air.

WFVT became a charter affiliate of The WB Television Network when it debuted on January 11, 1995, and changed its on-air branding from "TV55" to "WB55" shortly afterward. WJZY joined the United Paramount Network (UPN) when that network debuted five days later on January 16. In February of that year, the station was added to most Charlotte area cable systems. In Charlotte itself, it was placed on Time Warner Cable channel 17, a slot that had long been held by The Disney Channel (then carried by most area providers as a premium service). The station ran promos that featured Bugs Bunny (ironic considering he was not the mascot of The WB network itself) pulling off a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and suggesting that viewers should re-program their televisions and VCRs to re-add the channel slot if they did not subscribe to the Disney Channel, lest they think "some rodent still lives there."

On August 5, 1999, the Federal Communications Commission reversed its longstanding regulations against permitting common ownership of two full-power stations in the same television market;^[1] Capitol Broadcasting bought channel 55 outright the following year, creating a duopoly with WJZY (one of two duopolies formed in Charlotte during the 2000 calendar year, the other involving the purchase of WAXN-TV (channel 64) by WSOC-TV (channel 9)'s owner Cox Enterprises). The station subsequently changed its callsign to WWWB in 2001, to correspond with its network affiliation. For most of The WB's run, channel 55 was one of the network's strongest affiliates.

MyNetworkTV affiliation

Shortly after Fox Entertainment Group's February 22, 2006 announcement of the formation of MyNetworkTV,^[2] WWWB was announced as the network's Charlotte affiliate.^[3] Sister station WJZY had already decided to join The CW, a network created out of CBS Corporation and Time Warner's decision to shut down UPN and The WB, effective that September.^[4] This made Charlotte the first city in the nation with a duopoly involving affiliates of both The CW and MyNetworkTV. It would not have been an upset had WWWB joined The CW, however. That network's officials were on record as wanting the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates, and Charlotte had been one of the few markets where the WB and UPN affiliates were both relatively strong.

On April 28, 2006, WWWB changed its call letters to WMYT-TV, in anticipation of its new affiliation. WMYT officially affiliated with MyNetworkTV upon the network's debut on September 5, 2006, branding on-air as "MyTV12," in reference to the channel slot that the station moved to on Time Warner Cable a few years earlier and where it was also carried on area cable providers. For a time in 2006 and 2007, WMYT erected several advertising signs around the Charlotte area describing several Charlotte landmarks as "my ___."

WMYT served as the over-the-air home for the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats from 2006 until the team moved all of its local broadcasts to regional sports network Fox Sports Carolinas (now co-owned with WMYT and WJZY) after the 2007-08 season.

Sale to Fox Television Stations

On January 14, 2013, Fox Television Stations entered into an agreement to acquire WMYT and WJZY from Capitol Broadcasting Company for $18 million (the sale was formally announced on January 28).^[5][6][7] This marked a re-entry into North Carolina for Fox, which owned WGHP in High Point from 1996 to 2008.^[8] The deal included a time brokerage agreement clause that would have had Fox take over the operations of WJZY and WMYT, and acquire the duopoly's non-license assets for $8.24 million, if the deal was not closed by June 1.^[9] The FCC granted its approval on the sale on March 11, and the deal was consummated on April 17.^[10][11]

As MyNetworkTV is owned by Fox parent 21st Century Fox, the acquisition made WMYT the first owned-and-operated station of a commercial broadcast network in the Charlotte market. On May 9, WMYT introduced an updated logo that more closely resembles the logos used by its sister stations, and also changed its on-air brand to just "My 12"; WMYT is currently the only MyNetworkTV O&O that uses its cable channel position in its branding instead of its virtual channel number. Sister station WJZY acquired the Fox affiliation from WCCB (channel 18) on July 1, which made WJZY the first station in Charlotte to be an owned-and-operated station of one of the "Big Four" networks.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Prior to April 2011, the station's second digital subchannel was a standard-definition simulcast of its main channel, but later went dark. There were plans to add the Retro Television Network to the subchannel in 2008, which never occurred; RTV would end up on WHKY-TV digital subchannel 14.2 in early 2010.^[13][14] In May 2007, it leased its third subchannel to WGTB-LP, a low-powered religious station. On December 5, 2011, WMYT replaced the WGTB-LP simulcast with programming from Jimmy Swaggart's SonLife Broadcasting Network (one of the few instances in which a commercial network station has carried a non-commercial religious network through a subchannel).

On September 10, 2012, it changed the PSIP name of 55.2 from WMYT-SD to SOUL. The following day, a slate was added stating that the Soul of the South Network would be launching on the subchannel in the near future, and was later modified to show a launch date of May 1, 2013. However, on that date, the subchannel went dark and the PSIP name was changed to "55.2." On June 23, 2013, This TV was added to the second subchannel after being dropped from WJZY's third subchannel.^[15] In late 2014, This TV was removed and the channel was soon deleted.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WMYT-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 55, 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. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 39, as channel 55 has been re-allocated nationwide for Qualcomm's MediaFLO system.^[16] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 55, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition. In August 2011, the station downgraded its HD signal from 1080i to 720p, the preferred resolution format to which MyNetworkTV transmits its programming.

Out-of-market cable carriage

In recent years, WMYT has been carried on cable in several areas outside of the Charlotte television market, including cable systems within the Columbia and Myrtle Beach markets in South Carolina, the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point market in North Carolina, and the Tri-Cities market in Tennessee.

Newscasts

In 2000, NBC affiliate WCNC-TV (channel 36) entered into a news share agreement with WMYT-TV to produce a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast for the station; the program was cancelled in 2002, due to low ratings; it was the second primetime newscast produced by WCNC, which briefly produced a 10:00 p.m. newscast for WCCB in 1999.

On April 9, 2012, WMYT-TV began broadcasting a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast produced by CBS affiliate WBTV (channel 3). This program originally ran on sister station WJZY from September 2003 to April 8, 2012 (with a simulcast on both stations from April 9 to 15, 2012), although low ratings for the newscast on that station – which placed a distant third in that timeslot behind the WSOC-produced primetime newscast on WAXN-TV and WCCB's in-house 10 p.m. newscast – prompted its move to WMYT, citing a more suitable audience on channel 55. With the switch, the program was renamed accordingly from WBTV News at 10 on CW46 to WBTV News at 10 on MyTV12.^[17][18] The WBTV newscast moved back to WJZY when it became a Fox owned-and-operated station on July 1, 2013, before being discontinued altogether the day prior to the January 1, 2014 launch of WJZY's own news department.^[19][20]

See also

• Channel 12 branded TV stations in the United States
• Channel 39 digital TV stations in the United States
• Channel 55 virtual TV stations in the United States
• List of television stations in South Carolina

References

External links

• WMYT12.com - WMYT-TV official website
• Charlotte.ThisTV.com - This TV Charlotte official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WMYT-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WMYT-T