WISH-TV
WISH-TV is a television station in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is locally owned by Circle City Broadcasting alongside Marion-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WNDY-TV and low-power, Class A Confess affiliate WIIH-CD. The stations share studios on North Meridian Street on the near north side of Indianapolis; WISH-TV and WNDY-TV also share transmitter facilities on Walnut Drive in the Augusta section of the city's northwest side.
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on July 1, 1954, at 6 p.m. Founded by C. Bruce McConnell—owner of WISH radio —it was the third television station to sign on in the Indianapolis market, after WFBM-TV, which signed on in May 1949 and Bloomington-licensed WTTV, which signed on six months later in November 1949. WISH-TV originally operated as a primary ABC affiliate with a secondary affiliation with DuMont Television Network and NBC. WISH-TV originally transmitted its signal from a tower it shared with WISH radio; the following year, the station constructed a transmitter tower, which allowed the station to improve its signal coverage in the market.CBS affiliate (1956–2014)
In 1956, McConnell sold the station to the Indiana Broadcasting Company, the broadcasting subsidiary of J. H. Whitney & Company and owners of WANE-TV in Fort Wayne. The new owners persuaded CBS to move its programming to channel 8, taking that affiliation from WFBM. Conversely that same year, WISH-TV lost the ABC affiliation to WTTV; this resulted in WLBC-TV, channel 49 in Muncie serving as the de facto ABC affiliate for the northern part of the market as WTTV's signal did not extend very far north outside of Indianapolis's northern suburbs as its transmitter was located farther south than the market's other stations. Also in 1956, WISH became one of the first television stations in the United States to install a videotape machine.Indiana Broadcasting became the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation in 1957, with WISH-TV serving as the company's flagship station. From 1958 to 1959, it was an affiliate of the NTA Film Network. Corinthian merged with Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. Dun & Bradstreet sold its entire broadcasting unit to the Belo Corporation in February 1984. However, the merger put Belo two stations over the television ownership limits that the Federal Communications Commission had in effect at the time. As a result, the company sold WISH-TV and WANE to LIN Broadcasting the following month in March 1984. LIN was headquartered in Indianapolis for many years, with WISH-TV serving as that company's flagship television property; the company eventually moved its headquarters to Providence, Rhode Island, in the late 1990s, resulting in WPRI-TV replacing WISH as LIN's flagship station. LIN later acquired low-power independent station W11BV in 1992. In 1995, WISH-TV relocated its transmitter to a new tower built in the Augusta section of Indianapolis.
WISH-TV signed on its digital signal on VHF channel 9 on December 17, 1998; two days later on December 19, the station broadcast its first program in high definition when it broadcast an NFL game telecast in the format. In 2002, WISH-TV began handling the master control operations of WANE-TV and fellow sister station WLFI-TV in Lafayette, Indiana. The hub expanded to include the Buffalo duopoly of WIVB-TV and WNLO in October, with other LIN-owned stations gradually being added to the WISH hub by the summer of 2003.
On February 10, 2005, the Paramount Stations Group subsidiary of Viacom sold UPN affiliate WNDY-TV as well as its Columbus, Ohio, sister station WWHO to LIN TV for $85 million, creating a duopoly with WISH-TV when the sale was finalized that spring. On May 18, 2007, the LIN TV Corporation announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company.
On September 15, 2008, LIN and Time Warner Cable entered into an impasse during negotiations to renew retransmission consent deals for some of the group's television stations. Bright House Networks, one of two major cable providers serving Indianapolis, negotiates retransmission consent contracts through Time Warner Cable. LIN TV requested compensation for carriage of its stations in a manner similar to the deals that cable networks have with pay television providers, as other broadcast station owners began to seek compensation from cable and satellite providers for their programming. The carriage agreement with Bright House expired on October 2. By 12:35 a.m. on October 3, LIN's television stations were replaced on Time Warner Cable systems in markets where the group owns stations and where either provider operates systems with programming from other cable channels. LIN's stations were restored 26 days later on October 29 through a new carriage agreement reached between Time Warner Cable and LIN TV.
The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition VHF channel 9, using virtual channel 8.
On August 7, 2009, WISH-TV began operating a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 8.1, which originally was only accessible via an app for BlackBerry devices.
On January 29, 2010, LIN TV filed an application to the FCC to operate a digital fill-in translator on UHF channel 17, an allotment that was previously occupied by the analog signal of Class A sister station WIIH-CA; the FCC granted a construction permit to build the translator's transmitter facilities on June 16. The translator, which shares the same transmitter facility as WISH's main signal in the Augusta section of Indianapolis and began operating on January 13, 2011, serves parts of Indianapolis that lost signal coverage after the 2009 digital transition. The translator is mapped as virtual channel 8, which results in virtual channel duplication while tuning sequentially on digital tuners in areas that are able to receive both signals, as the translator simulcasts WISH-TV's main channel and its two digital subchannels. As mentioned above, in late March 2015, a simulcast of WISH's main signal was added via WNDY-DT3.
On March 21, 2014, Media General announced that it would buy LIN Media in a $1.6 billion deal, described as a merger. The merger was completed on December 19.
CW station (2015–present)
On August 11, 2014, Tribune Broadcasting announced that CW affiliate WTTV would become the market's CBS affiliate on January 1, 2015, as part of an agreement that also renewed the CBS affiliations on Tribune-owned stations in five other markets. The deal, which resulted in the end of WISH-TV's 58-year relationship with CBS, was reportedly struck as a result of WISH station management balking at the network's demands for sharing of retransmission consent revenue from its affiliates. This marked the second time in Indianapolis television history that WTTV took an affiliation from WISH, the first being ABC in 1956.As the other major broadcast networks had existing affiliation deals with other area stations, WISH announced on December 11, 2014, that it would become an independent station upon losing the CBS affiliation, filling timeslots previously occupied by network shows with additional newscasts and an expanded inventory of syndicated talk shows, newsmagazines, and sitcoms, including some shows relocated from sister station WNDY-TV to make up for the loss of CBS daytime and late-night programs on channel 8's schedule and a national news program from TouchVision to serve as a replacement for the CBS Morning News.
However, on December 22, 2014, Tribune announced that it would sell the market's CW affiliation to Media General—the deal occurred three days after the completion of the company's merger with LIN. As a result, WISH instead became a CW affiliate, in effect switching affiliations with WTTV and preventing a situation in which The CW, which WTTV originally planned on carrying over its second digital subchannel, would be relegated to the lower digital subchannel tier on local cable systems and probable subjection to non-carriage by satellite providers for months until carriage agreements were struck. The loss of WISH's CBS affiliation also affected the Media General-LIN merger, with the purchase price being lowered by $110 million in stock, though no other factors were affected.
Media General signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment to affiliate several of its stations with Get. WISH added the network on its.2 subchannel on February 1, 2016.
Nexstar ownership
After a failed bid for Media General to merge with Meredith Corporation, Nexstar Broadcasting acquired Media General in January 2017. The WISH-WNDY duopoly gained new sister stations in nearby markets within Indiana: the Evansville virtual duopoly of ABC affiliate WEHT and fellow CW affiliate WTVW, and the Terre Haute virtual duopoly of NBC affiliate WTWO and ABC affiliate WAWV-TV. CBS affiliate WANE-TV in Fort Wayne was the only existing sister station of WISH and WNDY that became part of the combined group, as Media General and Nexstar each sold certain Indiana stations they already owned to alleviate conflicts with FCC ownership rules.In late March 2015, Media General added a 1080i HD simulcast feed of WISH's main signal on the 23.3 subchannel of WNDY-TV, mainly for the convenience of over-the-air viewers, especially those unable to receive WISH's VHF channel 9 signal due to signal limitations by way of their geographic location in proximity to the transmitter and/or a lack of an antenna able to properly receive VHF signals. In January 2016, the station converted the subchannel from a 24-hour feed of its Doppler radar into an affiliate of the Justice Network.