History
The channel launched on January 1, 1996, as "WiSC2", a primarily cable-only general entertainment sister channel of WISC-TV. It was not initially available on Marcus Cable (acquired by Charter Communications in January 1999) in the immediate Madison area, instead being carried on cable systems serving some of the city's outlying suburbs and via a low-power broadcast transmitter, a situation that severely limited its potential audience early on. The channel maintained a format modeled after general entertainment independent stations, running a mix of syndicated sitcoms, drama series, talk shows and game shows; children's programming (including some off-network cartoons); a limited schedule of local news and community affairs programs; regional sporting events (including Milwaukee Bucks basketball games carried by the team's then-originating broadcast affiliate, WVTV); and an early-morning simulcast of Bloomberg Information Television (renamed Bloomberg Television in 1997).
In 1998, the channel—which was concurrently renamed the Television Wisconsin Network (TVW), named after the Murphy-owned licensee of WISC-TV, Television Wisconsin, Inc.—became the Madison-area affiliate of The WB; this made it one of only three local cable-only WB affiliates, alongside WT05 in Toledo, Ohio (now operating as a CW affiliate on a subchannel of local ABC affiliate WTVG), and "WRWB" in Rochester, New York (now operating as a CW affiliate on a subchannel of local ABC affiliate WHAM-TV), that operated independently from and predated the existence of the small-market WB 100+ Station Group launched by the network that September. Dating to the network's January 1995 launch, The WB had only been available locally on Marcus Cable and other local cable systems through the superstation feed of Chicago affiliate WGN-TV (relaunched as NewsNation in February 2021, and which dropped WB programming nationally in October 1999) and via Milwaukee affiliate WVTV (then available throughout Wisconsin as a regional superstation), which began to gradually let existing carriage agreements with cable providers outside of the Milwaukee DMA lapse after it affiliated with the network in May 1997. The affiliation was critical in getting Marcus/Charter to finally add TVW to its Madison-area lineup. TVW carried the full WB schedule (although it aired the network's Sunday night lineup on a one-hour delay), along with a mix of syndicated programs, Wisconsin Badgers sports, and locally produced programs produced by Channel 3 and Charter.
In September 2000, WISC—upon launching its digital signal on UHF channel 50—began providing a simulcast of TVW on digital subchannel 3.2, making it among the first permanent digital subchannels in modern American digital broadcast television and allowing over-the-air reception of the channel to the then-few area residents that had a digital-capable HDTV set. To reflect its channel position on Charter's Madison-area systems, TVW—which was retained as its official identification—began branding as "WB14" in September 2001. On August 26, 2002, WISC-DT2—which, accordingly, adopted "UPN14" as its branding—became the market's UPN affiliate as part of an affiliation swap with WHPN—which concurrently changed its calls to WBUW—that was tied to the April 2 sale of the latter to ACME Communications (a station group founded by WB co-founder and former network president Jamie Kellner),[4] thus allowing area viewers who neither had a cable or satellite subscription nor an HDTV set (and therefore, lacked access to TVW's broadcast and cable feeds) to watch WB network programs for the first time.
On March 8, 2006, Morgan Murphy Media confirmed that WISC-DT2 would become the Madison-area charter affiliate of MyNetworkTV, developed as a joint venture between then-News Corporation subsidiaries Fox Television Stations and 20th Television (the former is now owned by Fox Corporation; the latter has since been integrated into Disney Media Distribution as a result of Disney's 2019 acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox's assets) and announced on February 22 to primarily serve as a network option for UPN and WB stations that were not chosen to affiliate with The CW (co-founded by their then-respective parents, CBS Corporation and Time Warner, to replace both networks).[5][6][7]
As a MyNetworkTV affiliate, along with syndicated programs, WISC-DT2 aired college sports from the Mid-American and Southeastern conferences (via ESPN Plus), occasional Badgers hockey broadcasts (via Wisconsin Public Television, which also aired statewide over Charter's "Xtra" service on channel 87 outside of the Madison market) and high school sports (under the "PrepMania" banner) as well as local programs including the music series Urban Theater and the sports panel discussion program Sidelines (which also aired in the Milwaukee and Green Bay markets on Time Warner Cable Sports 32/Spectrum Sports). On July 1, 2009, WISC-DT2 reverted to the former "TVW" brand, accompanied by new blue/white/black circular logo; the rebranding was meant to emphasize a connection to Madison and Wisconsin in the channel's programming.[8] In February 2019, TVW acquired the rights to selected syndicated programs and most of the locally produced programming—including the Saturday night horror movie showcase Bordello of Horror and Talk Wisconsin (previously titled Talk of the Town before the show relocated)—that had been displaced from WIFS after it converted into an Ion Plus affiliate with little advanced notice to its viewers on February 1.[9][10][11][12]
