WVTV — BrandWiki

WVTV

callsign	WVTV
branding	CW 18 My 24 WCGV (24.1)
digital	27 (UHF)
virtual	18, 24
affiliations	18.1: The CW 24.1: Independent with MyNetworkTV for others, see
owner	Rincon Broadcasting Group (sale to Community News Media pending‡R1R‡)
licensee	Rincon Broadcasting Milwaukee LLC
location	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
country	United States
airdate	October 3, 1953
callsign meaning	Call sign changed in 1966 to symbolize a "fresh start"‡R2R‡
former callsigns	WOKY-TV (1953–1955) WXIX (1955–1963) WUHF (1963–1966)
former channel numbers	Analog: 19 (UHF, 1953–1958), 18 (UHF, 1958–2009) Digital: 61 (UHF, 2003–2009), 18 (UHF, 2009–2019)
former affiliations	ABC (1953–1955) DuMont (secondary, 1953–1955) CBS (1955–April 1959) Dark (April−July 1959) Independent (July 1959–1997) ABC/CBS (secondary, 1960–1981) NBC (secondary, 1960–1994) The WB (1997–2006)
erp	1,000 kW
haat	318 m
facility id	74174
coordinates	43.09667°N, -87.905°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	http://cw18milwaukee.com/

WVTV (channels 18 and 24) is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with The CW and owned by Rincon Broadcasting Group. The station's studios are located on Calumet Road in the Park Place office park near the I-41/US 45 interchange on Milwaukee's northwest side; its transmitter is located on North Humboldt Boulevard in Milwaukee's Estabrook Park neighborhood as part of the Milwaukee PBS tower.

WVTV operates a second digital subchannel branded My 24 WCGV, which is programmed as an independent station with a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV. It uses virtual channel 24.1, formerly utilized by separately licensed WCGV-TV until January 2018, when then-owner Sinclair Broadcast Group turned in WCGV-TV's license and merged its subchannels onto WVTV's spectrum after selling WCGV-TV's spectrum in the 2016 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) incentive auction.

History

Early years

WVTV is the second-oldest continuously operating station in Milwaukee. The station first signed on the air on October 3, 1953, as WOKY-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 19.

As an independent station

The WKY Television System, based in Oklahoma City and the forerunner to Gaylord Broadcasting, bought the station in 1966 and changed its call letters to WVTV. The new owners also built new studio facilities at the corner of North 35th Street and Capitol Drive. This started the station on its path to becoming one of the most popular independent stations in the country, with strong local programming such as The Bowling Game (which would eventually be syndicated across the Midwest), along with a strong slate of syndicated programs such as cartoons, classic off-network sitcoms, more recent sitcoms, drama series, sports, and movies. Like its Gaylord stablemates, channel 18 focused on programming geared to Milwaukee's outer suburbs and rural areas, as opposed to the more urban fare presented by Milwaukee's other stations. Longtime staples on WVTV included Hee Haw (which was produced by sister division Gaylord Entertainment), The Lawrence Welk Show as well as syndicated reruns of Green Acres and The Andy Griffith Show. The station also aired All Star Wrestling during the 1970s and 1980s.

The station aired the CBS version of The Merv Griffin Show after WISN-TV (channel 12) rejected it. After Griffin was canceled by CBS, WVTV aired The Dick Cavett Show, which had been preempted by WITI; interestingly enough, a majority of ABC shows WITI had passed during its tenure with the network was picked up by WVTV until the secondary arrangement deal between the parties ended in 1972. The station also aired The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from 1984 to 1988, due to WTMJ-TV (channel 4) being denied permission by NBC to air the program in a later timeslot so that it could air syndicated programs after its late evening newscast.

As cable television became more popular, WVTV became a regional superstation in the mold of sister stations KTVT in Fort Worth, KHTV (now KIAH) in Houston and KSTW in Tacoma. At its height, it was available on nearly every cable system in Wisconsin, as well as a few providers in Michigan, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. This resulted in the station rebranding as "Super 18, Wisconsin's Superstation" in 1987. WVTV was also the longtime home of the Milwaukee Brewers (1981–1988; 1993–1997), Milwaukee Bucks (1976–1988; 1994–1999), Big Ten Conference men's basketball, and area college sports teams. The station was carried on Green Bay area cable providers until June 2007, when WWAZ-TV (channel 68, now WIWN) replaced it for a short time before terminating analog operations the next year and a four-year build-out of digital operations in Milwaukee.[4] Despite its status as one of the strongest independent stations in the country, channel 18 turned down an offer by the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company for an affiliation in 1986. Most of the smaller markets in WVTV's cable footprints had enough stations to provide a local Fox affiliate at the outset, which made the prospect of WVTV as a multi-market Fox affiliate unattractive to Gaylord. Sister station KSTW passed on the Fox affiliation for Seattle–Tacoma for this reason. The Fox affiliation went to six-year-old upstart

WVTV continued to be the leading independent station in the market until Fox came into its own, resulting in a boost in WCGV's ratings. The station's ownership went into a state of flux after Gaylord began easing out of the television business (except for its stake in The Nashville Network). In 1994, Gaylord entered into a local marketing agreement with WCGV, which was owned by Abry Communications. Although WCGV was the senior partner, the two stations' operations were merged at WVTV's original studio facilities.

WVTV was originally tapped to be a charter affiliate of The WB Television Network along with Gaylord's other independent stations. The new network was due to launch in 1994, but when it was delayed to 1995 instead, Gaylord sued to void the agreement. However, the New World/Fox affiliation deal in 1994 shifted network affiliations in many markets; Gaylord was able to reach an affiliation deal with CBS to switch KSTW and KTVT to the network. Locally, the deal included WITI, which would switch from CBS to Fox in December 1994. After being turned down by WISN-TV and WTMJ-TV, CBS approached WVTV. However, WVTV turned the offer down as well. CBS then aligned itself with then low-profile independent WDJT-TV (channel 58). When The WB launched in January 1995, Milwaukee became the second-largest market in the country without an affiliate. Milwaukee viewers were forced to watch The WB's programming on cable through Chicago-based WGN-TV, which was then carrying the network nationally (although the station could also be received via antenna in the southern edges of the Milwaukee market). By this time, channel 18 was airing more syndicated talk shows during the day, and aired first-run syndicated programming such as Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in primetime under the branding "VTV Prime".

On July 24, 1995, Gaylord sold WVTV to Glencairn Ltd. Glencairn had tried to buy WVTV a year earlier, but the sale had fallen through. A few months earlier, Sinclair Broadcast Group had become WCGV's owner as a result of the company's merger with Abry. Glencairn, in turn, was owned by a former Sinclair executive. For all intents and purposes, Sinclair owned both stations even though FCC rules forbade duopolies at the time. Sinclair further circumvented the rules by continuing the LMA.

July 2010 flooding incident and studio move

On July 22, 2010, the Milwaukee area experienced a major flash flooding event which caused major damage in several parts of Milwaukee County. The studios of WVTV/WCGV were then located a half-mile south of Lincoln Creek, on the corner of North 35th Street and Capitol Drive, and the building and technical equipment belonging to the stations suffered major damage, forcing channels 18 and 24 off the air for the majority of the time after 6 p.m. on July 22 until the early morning of July 24; the two stations, once they returned to the air, had their programming fed into their master control facilities via another unknown Sinclair master control. For both stations, this resulted in most of the station's paid programming and other timeslots where the Sinclair facility did not have an episode of a particular series within the schedule replaced with reruns of Coach and advertisements were replaced with direct response national advertising. Both stations eventually resumed local operations later during the week of July 25, but broadcast in 480i standard definition and did not display digital on-screen bugs at all due to damage to the station's high definition broadcasting equipment for most of the following month. HD programming was restored on August 20, 2010.

Because the flooding caused irreparable damage to the building, forcing most operations for the stations up to transition to smaller facilities on the second floor of the building, Sinclair immediately began a search for new facilities for WVTV and WCGV, which would allow locally produced and syndicated programs to be broadcast in high definition full-time without the complexities of rewiring an older and flood damaged studio and master control facility. On June 6, 2012, Sinclair received approval from the Milwaukee Common Council's Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee to move to an existing building near the 41/45 Interchange on Milwaukee's northeast side on Calumet Road in the Park Place office park and install receiving satellite dishes, generators and a studio/transmitter link tower, with full Common Council approval coming a week later on June 12. The stations moved to the new building in December 2013, with the new master control coming online in the last week of the month.[11][12][13]

From June 2012 until the end of December 2013, the engineering and master control of WVTV/WCGV transmitted 16:9 syndicated programming in full screen, but in standard definition as a stopgap solution until the move to the new studios. Upon the opening of the new master control, all syndicated programming available in the format now is aired in high definition.

Current station status

Despite its long broadcasting history, WVTV has been one of The CW's weaker affiliates in terms of viewership. In the past, Sinclair put more promotional effort into WCGV. While this trend dated back to the mid-1990s, it became more pronounced from 2006 onward, as WCGV's affiliation with MyNetworkTV allowed more experimentation with its schedule. Both stations have seen their talk-heavy daytime lineups struggle against the classic television programming of Weigel's WBME-CD (channel 41), which is one of the flagships of the MeTV network.[14] Despite this, WVTV and all of Sinclair's CW stations were renewed in a long-term agreement with the CW on July 9, 2015, which keeps the network on the station in the long term.[15] By the 2014–15 season, Sinclair had settled on having WVTV's daytime schedule dependent on talk show programming, while WCGV featured a mixed schedule of court shows, sitcoms and lifestyle programming, with WVTV's ratings eventually stabilizing as The CW has found better success in later seasons.

Beginning in the fall of 2015, former WKLH morning show host Carole Caine (who left that role in June 2015 after her contract was not renewed, to much local criticism against the station) began to perform various roles for Sinclair's Milwaukee operations, but mainly with WVTV, including acting as a station liaison for public events and taking over as the station's voiceover announcer, replacing various centralcasted voices which had come out of Sinclair's various national deals with announcers for their stations.[16]

On January 18, 2016, tying into the launch of the new CW/DC Comics series Legends of Tomorrow and Sinclair's growing emphasis of using local heritage brandings of their stations rather than generic "network/channel number" brandings, the station was rebranded as Super 18, The CW, reviving the branding it used from 1987 to 1995. (WVTV reinstated the "CW 18" branding in September 2017, mainly in order to streamline its promotions with those of Sinclair's other CW affiliates.)

On May 8, 2017, Sinclair entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media – owner of Fox affiliate WITI – for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune, pending regulatory approval by the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Sinclair had already announced that WCGV's license was sold in April in the FCC's 2016 spectrum auction and later announced that in technicality, WCGV would go off the air completely with its schedule moved to WVTV's second subchannel. The transaction would have alleviated any regulatory complications involving the sale within Milwaukee, outside any physical and employee assets which would have needed to be sorted out later on (including the then-likely move of the WVTV/My 24 intellectual unit to WITI's Brown Deer facility).[17]

On July 18, 2018, the FCC voted to have the Sinclair–Tribune acquisition reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties.[18][19][20][21][22][23] Three weeks later on August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities. Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.[24]

On March 11, 2025, it was reported that Sinclair (WVTV Licensee, Inc.) would sell five TV stations, including WVTV, to Rincon Broadcasting Group, led by Todd Parkin.[30] The sale was approved by the FCC on July 1,[31] and completed on July 9.[32]

Programming

Because of non-preemptable coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics on NBC affiliate WTMJ-TV, WVTV aired two Green Bay Packers preseason games against the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos respectively on August 16 and 22 of that year, a role previously taken by Ion Television station WPXE-TV (channel 55) during the 2004 preseason.[33]

Newscasts

From 1979 to 1986, WVTV aired local news and weather updates running in varying lengths of between two and five minutes between programs.[34] In 1989, the station formed a full-time news department and began producing an hour-long primetime newscast called The Nine O'Clock Nightly News, which was anchored by Liz Talbot and Duane Gay. The newscast was discontinued on March 12, 1993, shortly after entering into the LMA with WCGV. The reason for discontinuing the news was because Milwaukee Brewers games were moving from WCGV to WVTV to make room for Fox programs on WCGV.[35] Duane Gay would then move on to WISN-TV, where he continued on as a reporter, even after being diagnosed with a vicious form of soft tissue cancer in 1997; Gay would continue to work for channel 12 in any capacity he physically could, and spoke well of his time at WVTV until he died on April 26, 2005.[36]

Newscasts returned to the station in August 2003 with the launch of WB18 News at 9, an hour-long program which featured a mix of local news stories from staff at WVTV's facility (anchored by Lisa Fielding on weeknights, and Tami Hughes on weekends), and national and international reports, weather forecasts and sports segments from Sinclair's News Central local/national hybrid operation based at the company's headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It also aired The Point, a controversial one-minute conservative political commentary feature, that was a requirement of all Sinclair-owned stations that aired newscasts (regardless of whether it carried the News Central format or not). The program was reduced to a half-hour in September 2005 due to ratings issues, and was eventually discontinued[37] on March 31, 2006, due to cutbacks in Sinclair's news operations companywide, which included the disbandment of its News Central division.

As of 2013, Terry Gaughan, general manager of WVTV and WCGV, has said there are no plans to relaunch a news operation;[11] although the station has inquired the market's existing news-producing stations about entering into a news share agreement. WVTV began to carry Sinclair's national morning newscast The National Desk in January 2021, then the late primetime edition in September 2021.[38] Currently the station's local programming output is limited to the public affairs program Connect MKE which airs several times a week on both WVTV subchannels. The program was previously known as Our Issues Milwaukee from 2013 until the end of 2021.

Current station status

Despite its long broadcasting history, WVTV has been one of The CW's weaker affiliates in terms of viewership. In the past, Sinclair put more promotional effort into WCGV. While this trend dated back to the mid-1990s, it became more pronounced from 2006 onward, as WCGV's affiliation with MyNetworkTV allowed more experimentation with its schedule. Both stations have seen their talk-heavy daytime lineups struggle against the classic television programming of Weigel's WBME-CD (channel 41), which is one of the flagships of the MeTV network.[14] Despite this, WVTV and all of Sinclair's CW stations were renewed in a long-term agreement with the CW on July 9, 2015, which keeps the network on the station in the long term.[15] By the 2014–15 season, Sinclair had settled on having WVTV's daytime schedule dependent on talk show programming, while WCGV featured a mixed schedule of court shows, sitcoms and lifestyle programming, with WVTV's ratings eventually stabilizing as The CW has found better success in later seasons.

Beginning in the fall of 2015, former WKLH morning show host Carole Caine (who left that role in June 2015 after her contract was not renewed, to much local criticism against the station) began to perform various roles for Sinclair's Milwaukee operations, but mainly with WVTV, including acting as a station liaison for public events and taking over as the station's voiceover announcer, replacing various centralcasted voices which had come out of Sinclair's various national deals with announcers for their stations.[16]

On January 18, 2016, tying into the launch of the new CW/DC Comics series Legends of Tomorrow and Sinclair's growing emphasis of using local heritage brandings of their stations rather than generic "network/channel number" brandings, the station was rebranded as Super 18, The CW, reviving the branding it used from 1987 to 1995. (WVTV reinstated the "CW 18" branding in September 2017, mainly in order to streamline its promotions with those of Sinclair's other CW affiliates.)

On May 8, 2017, Sinclair entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media – owner of Fox affiliate WITI – for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune, pending regulatory approval by the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. Sinclair had already announced that WCGV's license was sold in April in the FCC's 2016 spectrum auction and later announced that in technicality, WCGV would go off the air completely with its schedule moved to WVTV's second subchannel. The transaction would have alleviated any regulatory complications involving the sale within Milwaukee, outside any physical and employee assets which would have needed to be sorted out later on (including the then-likely move of the WVTV/My 24 intellectual unit to WITI's Brown Deer facility).[17]

On July 18, 2018, the FCC voted to have the Sinclair–Tribune acquisition reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties.[18][19][20][21][22][23] Three weeks later on August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities. Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.[24]

On March 11, 2025, it was reported that Sinclair (WVTV Licensee, Inc.) would sell five TV stations, including WVTV, to Rincon Broadcasting Group, led by Todd Parkin.[30] The sale was approved by the FCC on July 1,[31] and completed on July 9.[32]