WKEF
WKEF is a television station in Dayton, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC, Fox, and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to WRGT-TV under a local marketing agreement with Cunningham Broadcasting. However, Sinclair effectively owns WRGT-TV as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The two stations share studios on Corporate Place in Miamisburg; WKEF's transmitter is located off South Gettysburg Avenue in southwest Dayton.
History
Early years
Channel 22 first signed on in Dayton in October 1953 as WIFE. The station was owned by Skyland Broadcasting Corporation, then-owner of WONE radio. Although the station first carried programming from ABC and DuMont, the networks stopped providing programming and the station went dark on March 13, 1954. On February 19, 1959, the FCC changed the call sign of the still-dark WIFE to the earlier-proposed WONE-TV.In March 1961, the owners of Skyland Broadcasting Corporation sold the construction permit for dark WONE-TV, as well as on-the-air then-sister stations WONE and WIFE , to Brush-Moore Newspapers.
From 1961 into 1963, WONE-TV requested that the FCC assign a new channel 11 to Dayton; in WONE-TV's case, the plan was to move its license from channel 22 to channel 11. Objecting to this request were other stations in the region already broadcasting on channel 11—WTOL in Toledo, WHAS-TV in Louisville and WIIC in Pittsburgh—as well as channel 12, WKRC-TV in Cincinnati; the stations claimed that interference from the proposed Dayton channel would disrupt reception for significant numbers of their stations' viewers. Although the FCC initially seemed in favor of adding VHF channels to existing television markets, it ultimately decided against most of them, including channel 11 for Dayton.
In December 1963, Brush-Moore Newspapers sold the construction permit for still-dark WONE-TV to Springfield Television Corporation. In January 1964 the station was renamed WKEF after the maiden name, Kathryn Elizabeth Flynn, of Springfield Television Corporation owner William Lowell Putnam III's future wife.
Sometime prior to February 18, 1963, Springfield Television asked that the FCC move channel 38 from Connersville, Indiana, to Dayton in lieu of the dark channel 22. Conventional wisdom suggested that WKEF would take the ABC affiliation since it was Dayton's third commercial station. The station signed on the air on September 27, 1964.
Before 1964, ABC programming came to Dayton by way of off-hours clearances on NBC affiliate WLWD. In addition, viewers could watch the full ABC schedule on WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WTVN-TV in Columbus, both of which decently covered Dayton. Under these circumstances, ABC initially balked at giving even a secondary affiliation to WKEF, forcing the station to make a go of it as an independent until late 1965. Another consideration may have been that many Dayton viewers did not have UHF-capable sets at the time. The FCC had just required television set manufacturers to include all-channel tuning months earlier.
In late 1965, ABC relented and gave WKEF the ABC affiliation, running ABC prime time shows and sports, plus any daytime shows that WKRC-TV or WTVN-TV preempted or WLWD did not carry.
For many years, WKEF produced the daily children's program Clubhouse 22 hosted by Malcolm MacLeod in the early 1970s with Joe Smith taking over in the mid-1970s. Their cohorts included Duffy the Dog, Stan The Man, and later Dr. Creep. For a time, the theme song of the program was to the tune of "High Hopes" and included the lyrics "Joe and Duff on Clubhouse 22!" Later, the theme was to the tune of "Mah Nà Mah Nà," with the lyrics "It's time for Malcolm / And Duffy, too." Dr. Creep was also the host of WKEF's weekly horror movie show, Shock Theater. Nationally syndicated conservative talk-show host Mike Gallagher began his broadcasting career at WKEF as a weatherman, sportscaster, and special events host.
By 1978, ABC had become the nation's most-watched network and was unhappy with the Cincinnati–Dayton arrangement. WKRC-TV and WTVN-TV were both preempting decent amounts of the network's daytime programming, late night shows, and some of the Saturday morning cartoons. ABC wanted a station in Dayton that could run its whole schedule and be able to reach Cincinnati and Columbus. It also wanted a station that had local news. Although the station did eventually launch a full-scale news department in 1979, it was not enough to save its affiliation with ABC.
Switch to NBC
In late 1979, ABC began talks with WDTN, which provided at least grade B coverage from northern Kentucky all the way to Columbus. The two sides quickly reached a deal, which called for ABC to move its Dayton affiliation to WDTN when WKEF's contract ran out at the end of the year. The change took effect on New Year's Day 1980. Almost by default, WKEF was then left to take the NBC affiliation. At the time, NBC was far less tolerant of preemptions than the other two commercial networks, and was also in last place among the three networks. As a condition of signing up with NBC, WKEF was required to clear NBC's entire schedule.Even with the affiliation swap, it remained in the ratings basement. NBC also lost market share in the Dayton–Springfield area to stronger affiliates in Cincinnati and Columbus. Since WKEF already had to compete in its own market with WDTN and CBS affiliate WHIO-TV—two of their networks' strongest performers—it found the going rather difficult.
In 1984, the Springfield Television group was sold to Adams Communications. That company broke up the group in the late 1980s selling WKEF to KT Communications in 1989. KT invested millions in new equipment, updated the on-air look, and hired almost a completely new staff. However, it was not enough to get WKEF out of last place. Even with NBC's powerhouse prime time lineup in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the third station in what was basically a two-station market.
KT sold WKEF to Max Television in 1995. Ratings improved, but WKEF remained a distant third. In 1998, Max sold WKEF to Sinclair in a group deal. Later that year, Sinclair bought out Sullivan Broadcasting, owners of WRGT-TV in Dayton, and the licensee assets were given to Glencairn, Ltd. In 2001, Sinclair bought most of Sullivan's stations, but could not buy WRGT-TV because the FCC does not allow common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a market. Also, the Dayton market has only six full-power commercial stations—too few to legally permit a duopoly in any event. Accordingly, WRGT-TV was sold to Glencairn, Ltd. However, this was a sale in name only, as Glencairn's stock was almost entirely owned by the Smith family, founders of Sinclair. This effectively gave Sinclair a duopoly in Dayton. Glencairn, now known as Cunningham Broadcasting, still owns WRGT-TV today as one of several arrangements that has led to allegations of Cunningham being merely a shell corporation for Sinclair. Sinclair has a similar arrangement in Columbus with ABC affiliate WSYX and Fox affiliate WTTE.
Return to ABC
In early 2004, WDTN became involved in an affiliation deal between NBC and LIN TV ; that station took the opportunity to sign up with the more popular network, dropping ABC to switch back to NBC. In response to that deal, Sinclair signed an affiliation agreement with ABC which renewed the network's affiliation agreement with its existing affiliates and caused WKEF and the intellectual unit of WICS and WICD in Springfield and Decatur, Illinois to become ABC affiliates. WKEF rejoined ABC on August 30, 2004, and since then has run the entire ABC schedule. Only a few months after returning to ABC, the station and all other Sinclair-owned ABC affiliates as well as two other ABC affiliates in Ohio preempted the movie Saving Private Ryan. That decision was made due to the network's plan to air the R-rated film unedited, potentially exposing its affiliated stations to FCC scrutiny if viewers complained about the film's graphic violence and coarse language even though some of Sinclair's stations had already shown the film unedited and uncensored a few months earlier. The incident landed Sinclair at the center of a mild controversy fueling the debate over whether the context of such material should be considered in determining broadcast indecency violations.Around November 11, 2010, Sinclair announced that when carriage agreements expired at the end of the year, it planned to pull all of its owned and/or operated TV stations in the United States, including WKEF and WRGT-TV, from Time Warner Cable, in a dispute over "retransmission fees". Negotiations began between the two parties. On December 31, Time Warner reached an agreement with an out-of-market station, presumably Cincinnati's WCPO-TV, to provide ABC network programming at least through the end of February. Later that same day, Sinclair and Time Warner extended talks for another two weeks, with continued cable carriage of Sinclair's stations, through January 14, 2011.
On January 15, 2011, after a 24-hour extension of the previous deadline, Time Warner and Sinclair reached a tentative settlement.
After further negotiations, a final agreement was reached on February 2, 2011, keeping WKEF and WRGT-TV on Time Warner.
On February 21, 2012, the Miamisburg City Council approved a $150,000 loan to Sinclair, which planned to move the WKEF/WRGT-TV studios from Soldiers Home-West Carrollton Road in Dayton, and to move their business and sales offices from Broadcast Plaza, consolidating all within the former studios of CW affiliate WBDT on Corporate Place, off Byers Road, in Miamisburg. Sinclair expected to spend $5 million on renovations to its new facility, making it fully digital and high definition. The stations had anticipated moving into their new studios in November 2012; the move was finalized on January 27, 2013, with high definition newscasts, updated graphics and new logos on both stations.
In June 2024, it was reported that Sinclair was doing major construction on the 3rd floor of the building that houses sister stations WKRC-TV and LMA sister WSTR-TV, leading to speculation that Sinclair was getting ready to move WKEF and WRGT-TV into its Cincinnati studios. With Cincinnati and Dayton less than a drive apart, it is not known if Sinclair is simply taking advantage of the FCC repealing the Main Studio Rule in 2019 or if there are plans to collapse the Cincinnati and Dayton markets into one large market; in the case of the latter, Sinclair would have a legal duopoly between WKEF and WKRC-TV while having operational control of WRGT-TV and WSTR-TV. The speculation came after WKEF's news director, Becky Gulden, took a job as the public information officer at West Clermont Local School District without a successor being named; however, a successor was named in September.