WUTB
Channels
Programming
AffiliationsTBD
Ownership
Owner
OperatorSinclair Broadcast Group (via SSA)
WBFF, WNUV
History
First air date
December 24, 1985 (1985-12-24)
Former call signs
  • WKJL-TV (1985–1987)
  • WHSW (1987–1992)[1]
  • WHSW-TV (1992–1998)[1]
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 24 (UHF, 1985–2009)
    Digital: 41 (UHF, 2000–2018),[2][3] 46 (UHF, 2018–2020)
Call sign meaning
United Television Baltimore
Technical information[4]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID60552
ERP420 kW
HAAT372.8 m (1,223 ft)
Transmitter coordinates39°20′10.4″N 76°38′57.9″W / 39.336222°N 76.649417°W / 39.336222; -76.649417
Links
Public license information

WUTB (channel 24) is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, airing programming from the digital multicast network TBD. It is owned by Deerfield Media, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of Fox/MyNetworkTV affiliate WBFF (channel 45), for the provision of certain services. Sinclair also operates CW affiliate WNUV (channel 54) under a separate local marketing agreement (LMA) with Cunningham Broadcasting. However, Sinclair effectively owns WNUV as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The stations share studios on 41st Street off the Jones Falls Expressway in the Woodberry neighborhood of north Baltimore. Through a channel sharing agreement, WUTB and WBFF transmit using the latter station's spectrum from an antenna adjacent to the studios.

History

Prior history of channel 24 in Baltimore

The channel 24 allocation in Baltimore was originally occupied by WMET-TV, which began broadcasting on March 1, 1967, as the first UHF station in Baltimore and the city's fourth. It was a low-budget and low-powered station that was sister to WOOK-TV/WFAN-TV in Washington, D.C. Both stations were owned by United Broadcasting Company (which is unrelated to the United Television that was owned by Chris-Craft Industries, which later owned channel 24). The original channel 24 was headquartered in the former Avalon Theatre on Park Heights Avenue. In 1972, both stations ceased broadcasting due to financial difficulties.

As WKJL/WHSW

In February 1977, Jesus Lives, Inc., whose president hosted a syndicated talk show of the same name, applied to build a new station on channel 24.[5] The firm promised to use the station "as a tool to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ".[6] A competing applicant, Buford Television of Maryland, eyed the station for possible use to transmit subscription television.[7] Jesus Lives ended the comparative hearing in December 1980 by buying out Buford Television's bid.[8][9]

The construction of WKJL-TV went very slowly. The founder, Rev. Philip Zampino, moved to Florida, and the license fight had saddled Jesus Lives with legal fees. By 1982, the station project a late 1984 launch.[10] $75,000 had been raised to purchase and prepare a site in the Randallstown area, of $100,000 needed.[11] However, fundraising continued to lag, and so too did construction activities. Jesus Lives, which renamed itself Look and Live Ministries, accepted a $100,000 loan from Liberty Baptist College, owned by Jerry Falwell, in late 1984 to accelerate the process.[12] Right before going on air, Look and Live agreed to sell the station to Family Media Inc., a subsidiary of Christian publishing company Thomas Nelson.[12]

Family Media completed construction, and on December 24, 1985, channel 24 returned to Baltimore nearly 14 years after it had left, as WKJL-TV.[13] Family Media harbored intentions of possibly expanding with more stations to feature family programming and conservative-oriented news.[14] It also briefly tried its hand at a local children's show, Pop's Place with Stu Kerr.[15]

However, the Baltimore entertainment market had changed rapidly around the time that WKJL-TV started. Where Baltimore had one independent station, it suddenly had three: WBFF, WKJL-TV, and WNUV-TV, which had devoted its evenings to Super TV subscription service until March 31, 1986. The boom in independents coincided with a flattening of national advertising revenues, squeezing stations economically. In this environment, Family Media bowed out after less than a year and filed to sell the station to Silver King Broadcasting, the stations division of the Home Shopping Network, which was purchasing outlets in major markets.[16] In October 1986, the station added 18 hours a day of HSN programming, conserving six hours daily of its existing programming and a six-hour religious block on Sunday mornings.[17] The FCC granted full approval in January 1987, at which time the station began 24-hour HSN broadcasting with the new call sign of WHSW.[18]

As WUTB

HSN owned WHSW for just a decade before an unexpected buyer appeared. In 1997, Sinclair Broadcast Group signed a group affiliation deal with The WB that saw several of its UPN affiliates, including WNUV, switch to that network. This would have left UPN without a Baltimore station. Further, Silver King, which was preparing to debut its "CityVision" concept for major-market independents, did not feel Baltimore was large enough to support one. UPN half-owner Chris-Craft Industries, through its United Television division, spent $80 million to buy WHSW.[19]

On January 18, 1998, the WNUV affiliation switch to The WB took effect, and channel 24 began airing UPN programming under new WUTB call letters.[1] Days prior, the FCC had approved the sale of the station. WUTB was thrown together in four weeks, allowing UPN to remain on the air in the market without a single day of lost network programming.[20] In its first year, the station immediately began outperforming the national ratings for UPN.[21] Chris-Craft ran the station out of then-sister station WWOR-TV's facilities in Secaucus, New Jersey, and fed the station's programming to its transmitter site in Baltimore; this included WWOR's local news coverage of the September 11 attacks. On July 25, 2001, Fox Television Stations purchased WUTB[1] and the other Chris-Craft stations; the purchase led to some speculation that WBFF would lose Fox programming.[22] WBFF, along with Sinclair's 19 other Fox affiliates, would renew their affiliations in November 2002, keeping UPN on WUTB.[23]

MyNetworkTV era, sale to Sinclair

WUTB's logo as My24 from September 2006 to June 2013; after Sinclair took control of the station, its on-air brand was changed to MyTV Baltimore.
WUTB's logo as MyTV Baltimore from June 2013 to July 2021.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and the Warner Bros. Entertainment unit of Time Warner announced that they would shut down The WB and UPN and merge some of their programming on a new network called The CW.[24][25] However, none of the Fox-owned UPN stations were chosen as charter affiliates for the new network, immediately dropping UPN branding; with many major-market stations needing programming, News Corporation created MyNetworkTV to service its stations, including WUTB, and others passed over by The CW.[26][27] WNUV then affiliated with The CW in May.[28]

On May 15, 2012, as part of a five-year affiliation agreement extension between Fox and Sinclair's 19 Fox affiliates (including WBFF) through 2017, Fox included an option for Sinclair to purchase WUTB, exercisable from July 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013. In exchange, Fox received an option to buy any combination of six Sinclair-owned CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates (two of which were standalone stations affiliated with the latter service) in three of four markets: Raleigh (WLFL and WRDC), Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY), Cincinnati (WSTR-TV) and Norfolk, Virginia (WTVZ).[29] On November 29, 2012, Sinclair exercised its option to purchase WUTB through Deerfield Media for $2.7 million.[30][31]

In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not buy any of the Sinclair stations included in the purchase option.[32] On May 6, 2013, the FCC granted its approval of WUTB to Deerfield Media,[1] which was formally consummated on June 1.[33] Sinclair began operating WUTB under a local marketing agreement, and operations moved to the WBFF-WNUV studio center in Woodberry.

TBD era begins

In July 2021, Deerfield Media began their affiliation swap process by using WBFF's digital subchannel of TBD. This replaced MyNetworkTV as its primary affiliation and now joins numerous others of Sinclair O&O's who had made the switch from either a "Big Four" station to a subchannel-only network affiliate.

Newscasts

On September 4, 2006, WUTB began simulcasting the weekday morning and 10 p.m. newscasts from former Washington sister station, Fox-owned WTTG. Branded by the station as My 24 News, an on-screen logo bug with the My 24 News brand was placed on the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Management at both stations cited the decision to simulcast the news programs as a by-product of cross-regional news interests and increasing overlap between the Baltimore and Washington media markets.

During the 2006 MLB postseason, WTTG's 10 p.m. newscast aired on Washington's MyNetworkTV station WDCA under the name Fox 5 News at 10 Special Edition, while continuing to be simulcast on WUTB. The same situation occurred in 2007, but the newscast was known as My 20 News at 10. When Fox Sports or other programming delayed the 10 p.m. newscast from airing on WTTG, it was still produced for WUTB. The station dropped the morning news simulcast after the November 30, 2007, edition and the 10 p.m. simulcast was discontinued by January 2008.

On January 8, 2016, Sinclair announced that American Sports Network would launch as a dedicated, digital multicast network under the American Sports Network name with 10 stations including WUTB on January 11, 2016.[34]

Technical information

Subchannel

Subchannel of WUTB[35]
Channel Res. Aspect Short name Programming
24.1 480i16:9WUTBTBD

Through an affiliation agreement between the MyNetworkTV and former owner Fox Television Stations, WUTB began carrying Bounce TV on 24.2 in March 2012. The network moved to WMAR-TV's third subchannel on September 15, 2014.[36]

Analog-to-digital conversion

WUTB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 24, on June 12, 2009, the official date on 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 41,[37] using virtual channel 24.

Spectrum sale and channel-sharing agreement

WUTB's spectrum was sold for $122 million in the 2016-2017 FCC incentive auction.[38] Sinclair then arranged a channel-share with WBFF.[39]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "WUTB". FCCData.org. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018.
  2. ↑ "WUTB: MOD". FCCData.org. December 8, 2017. Archived from the original on September 10, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018.
  3. ↑ "WUTB: BPCDT - 19991101AFG". FCCData.org. June 9, 2000. Archived from the original on September 10, 2018. Retrieved September 9, 2018.
  4. ↑ "Facility Technical Data for WUTB". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  5. ↑ "For the Record" (PDF). Broadcasting. March 7, 1977. p. 72. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  6. ↑ Hirten, Michael K. (November 3, 1978). "Bids Made On Two New Local Television Stations". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. D5. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ Somerville, Frank P.L. (July 28, 1979). "Jesus group seeks 'Christian channel'". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. A16. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "For the Record" (PDF). Broadcasting. December 22, 1980. p. 104. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  9. ↑ Somerville, Frank P.L. (December 21, 1980). "FCC approves Christian TV station bid". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. B1, B7. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ McCord, Joel (August 28, 1982). "Mrs. Pascal, Benton join TV directors: Religious station is expected to be on the air in 1984". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. B1, B2. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Ifill, Gwen (December 28, 1982). "$75,000 raised so far for religious TV station". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. D1, D3. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 Bomster, Mark; Hawks, Ellen (September 20, 1985). "Christian TV channel going on air here". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. A1, A6. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Carter, Bill (December 19, 1985). "New station will emphasize family shows". Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. pp. 1B, 8B. Archived from the original on December 18, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ McKerrow, Steve (March 8, 1986). "Channel 24: Goal of new Baltimore TV station is 'wholesome' programming". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 1D, 3D. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ McKerrow, Steve (June 24, 1986). "Stu Kerr is returning with a kids' show". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. C11. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Carter, Bill (August 21, 1986). "Changes at Channel 45". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 1B, 10B. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ McKerrow, Steve (October 16, 1986). "Tune in, buy by tube". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. B1, B11. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ Clinton, Sherrie (January 23, 1987). "New owner for Baltimore Federal: Tougher federal rules prompted sale". The Evening Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. C12, C9. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ Schneider, Greg (November 14, 1997). "HSN agrees to sell Ch. 24 to Calif firm". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 1C, 8C. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. ↑ Kaltenbach, Chris (January 25, 1999). "Getting a new channel up to speed". Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 10F. Retrieved April 12, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  21. ↑ Kaltenbach, Chris (January 20, 1999). "WUTB celebrates first successful year". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 5E. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ Folkenflik, David (September 13, 2000). "WBFF vows to keep news". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 3E. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ Trigoboff, Dan (November 4, 2002). "Station Break". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
  24. ↑ Seid, Jessica (January 24, 2006). "'Gilmore Girls' meet 'Smackdown'; CW Network to combine WB, UPN in CBS-Warner venture beginning in September". CNN Money. CNN. Archived from the original on March 16, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2020.
  25. ↑ Carter, Bill (January 24, 2006). "UPN and WB to Combine, Forming New TV Network". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2017.
  26. ↑ "News Corp. to launch new mini-network for UPN stations". USA Today. February 22, 2006. Archived from the original on September 23, 2013. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
  27. ↑ "News Corp. Unveils MyNetworkTV". Broadcasting & Cable. February 22, 2006. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2013.
  28. ↑ Zurawik, David (May 3, 2006). "Sinclair's WNUV to air new CW network in fall". The Baltimore Sun. Baltimore, Maryland. p. 1C, 3C. Archived from the original on June 19, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  29. ↑ "Sinclair Reups With Fox, Gets WUTB Option". TVNewsCheck. May 15, 2012. Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved May 15, 2012.
  30. ↑ "Sinclair Makes It A Triopoly in Baltimore". TVNewsCheck. Archived from the original on October 2, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  31. ↑ "Sinclair Broadcast to buy 7 TV outlets for $452.5M". MarketWatch. Archived from the original on June 29, 2013. Retrieved July 19, 2012.
  32. ↑ "Sinclair In An Acquisition State Of Mind". TVNewsCheck. February 6, 2013. Archived from the original on May 9, 2013. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  33. ↑ "CDBS Print". Archived from the original on October 31, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
  34. ↑ "ASN launches 24/7 broadcast network on Monday". americansportsnet.com. Archived from the original on January 30, 2016. Retrieved January 8, 2016.
  35. ↑ "RabbitEars TV Query for WUTB". Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved February 5, 2014.
  36. ↑ "WMAR Launches Bounce TV in Baltimore". Net News Check. September 15, 2014. Archived from the original on November 5, 2014. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
  37. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
  38. ↑ "Consumer FAQs: TV Spectrum Auction". April 12, 2017. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  39. ↑ "Channel Sharing Agreement - WBFF and WUTB". Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
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