History
WBFF first came on the air on April 11, 1971,[4] founded by what was then called the Chesapeake Television Corporation, which was controlled by Julian Sinclair Smith. The original meaning of its call sign was "Baltimore's Finest Features" because it primarily aired old movies in its earliest years.[5] It was Baltimore's second commercial UHF station and second independent station, signing on four years after WMET-TV (channel 24, frequency now occupied by WUTB) began operations. In its early years, WBFF was a general entertainment station.[4] For example, The Baltimore Sun wrote in 1990 that WBFF had been "the home of scratchy prints of Kojak".[6]
In afternoons, WBFF had local a children's show "Captain Chesapeake" (played by George Lewis) along with his side-kick "Mondy" the sea monster played by James Uhrin (who continued to work at WBFF under the alias "Traffic Jam Jimmy").[4]
Despite its financial troubles, WBFF became profitable enough that Julian Smith decided to expand his broadcast interests. Through a Chesapeake Television subsidiary, Commercial Radio Institute, Smith launched a new independent station in Pittsburgh, WPTT (now WPNT), in 1978. In 1984, Commercial Radio Institute signed on Smith's third station, independent WTTE in Columbus, Ohio. That same year, WBFF received local competition again when WNUV-TV, then a two-year-old subscription television outlet, began to adopt a general entertainment schedule during the daytime and full-time by 1986.
In 1985, Julian Smith merged his three stations into the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and around this time one of his sons, David D. Smith, took a prominent role in the operations of the three stations. In 1986, Sinclair agreed to affiliate WBFF and WTTE with the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company, which debuted on October 9 of that year. The growth and rise of Fox coincided with that of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which expanded its reach beyond Baltimore, Columbus and Pittsburgh during the 1990s.
WBFF's news department opened in April 1991.[7] On June 3, 1991, the News at Ten debuted on WBFF, co-anchored by Lisa Willis (formerly of WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey) and Jeff Barnd.[8] Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik found the debut edition to be "visually interesting" but criticized the story selection: "What Channel 45 offered last night instead of hard news were features on money, health and entertainment."[9]
Then, in September, Sinclair took the bold step of challenging WMAR-TV's pending license renewal and filing its own competing application for a new station. As WMAR-TV had been sold the previous June to the E. W. Scripps Company, Sinclair argued that an out-of-town corporation could not effectively serve the city's public interest and the valuable channel allocation—a channel 2 analog signal traveled a very long distance under normal conditions—should be granted to an established local broadcaster instead. The gambit did not work, and WMAR-TV remained on channel 2.[10]
WBFF nearly lost its Fox affiliation in 1994 when Fox entered talks with WJZ-TV, but it opted to affiliate with CBS instead.[11] WBAL-TV was also considered after the station dropped CBS, but opted to affiliate with NBC instead.[12]
In 1996, Channel 45 began airing Baltimore Ravens games via the NFL on Fox; the station is given at least two games a season to air (usually when the team plays host to an NFC team at M&T Bank Stadium); starting in 2014, when the NFL instituted its new 'cross-flex' broadcast rules, games can be arbitrarily moved from WJZ-TV to WBFF. Additionally, the station aired all Thursday Night Football games involving the Ravens from 2018 to 2021 through Fox's exclusive contract.
Sinclair purchased Abry Communications, owner of WNUV, in 1994. As duopolies were not allowed at the time, channel 54 was spun off to Glencairn Ltd., a company owned by former Sinclair executive Edwin Edwards. However, Glencairn's stock was almost entirely owned by the Smith family. In effect, Sinclair now had a duopoly in Baltimore—and had emasculated its major rival in its hometown. Sinclair further circumvented the rules by taking over WNUV's operations under a local marketing agreement (LMA), with WBFF as senior partner.
Sinclair tried to buy Glencairn outright in 2001, but was unable to buy WNUV due to the FCC's rules on duopolies. Despite its relatively large size, the Baltimore market has only seven full-power stations (or six, if two stations licensed in the market that are operated by Maryland Public Television are treated as one)—two fewer than what FCC regulations allow to legally permit a duopoly (the FCC requires a market to have eight unique station owners once a duopoly is formed, effectively limiting duopolies to markets with at least nine full-power stations). Glencairn changed its name to Cunningham Broadcasting and retained ownership of WNUV. However, nearly all of Cunningham's stock is held in trusts owned by the Smiths. This de facto duopoly continues to this day, while the close relationship between Sinclair and Glencairn/Cunningham has led to claims that Cunningham is merely a corporate shell that Sinclair uses in order to evade FCC ownership restrictions.
While WBFF entered the new century thriving as both locally and as a Fox affiliate, its network partner threatened the station's immediate future. In 2001, Fox's parent company, the News Corporation, became the new owner of Baltimore's UPN affiliate WUTB (the former WMET-TV) through its purchase of most of Chris-Craft Industries' television holdings. Rumors abounded that Fox was considering moving its programming from WBFF to WUTB. In a move made clearly to protect its home interests, Sinclair persuaded Fox to sign a long-term contract to keep WBFF with the network. The same threat re-emerged in January 2006, when UPN owner CBS Corporation and Time Warner, owners of The WB Television Network, announced that those two networks would be shut down and replaced by the new CW Television Network. However, a month after The CW's formation, News Corporation announced that WUTB and its other UPN affiliates would become the nuclei of its new MyNetworkTV service.
On May 1, 2006, the station launched its .2 digital channel with retro programming, the first non-weather subchannel in the market.[13]
On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WBFF, that will run through 2017. This included an option (that was exercisable from July 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013) to allow Sinclair to purchase WUTB, resulting in the creation of a virtual triopoly with WBFF and WNUV; while giving Fox the option to buy any combination of six CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates (two of which were standalone stations affiliated with the latter service) owned by Sinclair in three of four markets: Raleigh (WLFL and WRDC), Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY), Cincinnati (WSTR-TV) and Norfolk (WTVZ). Under the agreement and the WUTB purchase option, Sinclair would pay $52.7 million to continue WBFF's affiliation with Fox; however, if Fox exercised the option to buy any of the Sinclair stations that were included in the option, the affiliation payments would decrease to $25 million.[14] On November 29, 2012, Sinclair exercised its option to purchase WUTB through Deerfield Media for $2.7 million. Following the completion of the sale, WUTB began to be operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement, as with Deerfield's other stations.[15] In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not exercise its option to buy any of the Sinclair stations included in the earlier purchase option.
On the afternoon of April 28, 2016, WBFF's studios were evacuated in response to a threat by a person wearing a hoax bomb; the suspect also allegedly set his vehicle on fire in the station's parking lot. The suspect was later shot and apprehended by police; besides a desire to share end times prophecy content with the station (a USB drive with videos was confiscated by a security guard), no specific motive for the incident was determined.[19]
