Toledo 5


Toledo 5, The CW was a local origination cable television channel based in Toledo, Ohio that was operated by the Buckeye CableSystem, itself owned by locally based Block Communications. Originally exclusive to Buckeye's subscribers in Northwest Ohio and carried on channel 5 throughout its service area, the channel later expanded distribution to other cable providers throughout the Toledo designated market area, which carried Toledo 5 on various channel positions determined by each provider.
The channel existed in several formats dating to the launch of Buckeye as "The CableSystem" in 1971, originating as a public access channel that also offered movies and sports events, before converting into a locally programmed independent format in August 1989, offering programs traditionally aired in syndication by broadcast stations. Channel 5 later became one of the first local cable channels to affiliate with a broadcast network: it carried The WB from February 1995 to September 2006, and successor The CW thereafter until Toledo 5's affiliation rights and programming inventory were acquired by ABC affiliate WTVG, and transferred to the station's second digital subchannel in September 2014.
Despite having been a cable-only affiliate of both The WB and The CW, Toledo 5 was never part of their national feeds originally intended for local cable providers, The WB 100+ Station Group and The CW Plus, and had been independently programmed by Block/Buckeye with syndicated programming and sports filling time periods not occupied by network programs.

History

Original format as a public access channel

The channel began operations in 1971, as the local entertainment and sports service of what was originally known as Buckeye Cablevision, founded in 1966 by Paul Block, Jr. and William Block, Sr. to provide cable television service to the Toledo area. Channel 5A—the lone channel among the 11 that the system offered at the time not reserved for broadcast stations from the Toledo and Detroit–Windsor markets—was designated as a public access channel.
It offered daily movie presentations, local public affairs and talk programs, and local and regional sports events ; after the CableSystem expanded its offerings to include cable-originated channels in the late 1970s, the channel also offered occasional free preview weekends of the premium services available to the provider's subscribers.
Nickelodeon occupied the channel space during the daytime hours from December 1979 to August 1989. Channel 5A became the local carrier of upstart regional sports network Sports Time on April 2, 1984; among other Midwestern professional and college teams, the premium service offered Major League Baseball games from the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds. After Sports Time ended operations on March 31, 1985, the channel reverted to its previous format of public access, sports and children's programming, which remained in place until its conversion into a general entertainment service.

Conversion into a cable-only independent station

On August 7, 1989, Channel 5A was relaunched as "ToledoVision 5", adopting a programming format modeled after general entertainment independent stations, a format traditionally associated with broadcast television. It was one of the first local origination cable channels—and the first of two debuting that year—to adopt an entertainment-focused programming concept styled after local broadcast stations; just six weeks later, on September 21, American Television and Communications launched "WGRC" on its Greater Rochester Cablevision system in Rochester, New York, with a similar format that incorporated more recent programs.
Originally broadcasting for seven hours per day from 5 p.m. to midnight, its initial programming under the new format consisted of classic sitcoms, drama series and Westerns from the 1950s and 1960s, a daily late-afternoon block of Looney Tunes/''Merrie Melodies animated shorts, prime time movies on Monday through Saturday nights, and the syndicated daily newscast USA Tonight. Channel 5A also entered into a news share agreement with NBC affiliate WTVG, offering rebroadcasts of the station's weeknight 6 p.m. newscast as well as occasional specials ; the WTVG agreement ended in September 1994.
In addition to continuing much of the channel's public access-era sports rights, the CableSystem entered into an agreement with the recently launched SportsChannel Ohio —which could not be carried full-time because of limited channel capacity—to air its broadcasts of Indians and Reds baseball, and Notre Dame basketball and football games as well as SportsChannel America's package of NHL games on Channel 5A. Occasional free previews of The Disney Channel, another holdover from the public access format, also continued to be offered on Channel 5A until 1994.
Notably, the channel's launch undercut an attempt by low-power broadcast station W48AP to become the Toledo market's second independent outlet, despite Channel 48 having a six-month headstart on CableSystem Channel 5A's switch to entertainment programming. With the backing of Blade Communications, most of the programming available on the syndication market that had not been acquired by Fox affiliate WUPW —which signed on in September 1985 as the city's first independent station—ended up with ToledoVision 5, along with a prime channel slot compared to W48AP's 29B slot and a refusal by Blade, which owned both The CableSystem and The Blade newspaper, to carry programming information for Channel 48 outside of paid advertisements in the Blade''s television listings. W48AP would end up carrying lower-tier broadcast networks through the first half of the 1990s, and would not come back to any prominence until 1995.
Channel 5A's programming expanded over the next few years, with the incorporation of more recent programming and the gradual replacement of Travel Channel programming by syndicated entertainment programs. By 1994, the channel's schedule consisted of first-run and off-network sitcoms and drama series, talk shows, live-action and animated children's programming, documentary-based reality series, fishing and hunting programs, religious programs, and more recent theatrical movies.

WB affiliation

On February 2, 1995, Channel 5A became Northwest Ohio's charter affiliate of The WB; W48AP had become the area's UPN affiliate on January 16. ToledoVision initially carried The WB's original Wednesday lineup on a one-day-delayed basis on Thursday nights. At the time of The WB's launch, ToledoVision 5 was the network's first locally based affiliate to be distributed exclusively over cable television, and one of only two cable-only affiliates overall: from the network's launch until October 1999, The WB was also available nationwide through the superstation feed of Chicago affiliate WGN-TV, which was added to the CableSystem's lineup in June 1994 as one of the initial offerings of its expanded basic tier.
ToledoVision would eventually be joined by two other cable-only affiliates: Greater Rochester Cablevision–owned "WRWB" in Rochester, New York, in January 1996, and by the Morgan Murphy Media–owned Television Wisconsin Network (TVW) in Madison, Wisconsin, in January 1998. In September 1998, borrowing from the concept of the Fox network's Foxnet cable service, The WB launched The WeB, a national cable feed consisting of an affiliate group initially made exclusively of individually branded cable channels in the nation's 110 smallest media markets.
Upon joining The WB, ToledoVision 5's programming remained basically unchanged, continuing to feature syndicated programs and feature films; movies filled the 8 to 10 p.m. time slot on nights when neither WB prime time programs nor sports events were scheduled to air, along with daily presentations in the late morning and early afternoon throughout the week. Sports also continued to be regularly featured on Channel 5 including Indians, Reds and Mud Hens baseball, Detroit Pistons NBA basketball, and various college sports such as Rockets and Big Ten basketball and football. Eventually, the Travel Channel was assigned its own full-time channel slot as part of Buckeye CableSystem's expanded basic tier, and the dual-coaxial system was converted to a modern single-coaxial digital system, leaving only TV5's entertainment programming on channel 5.
As The WB gradually transitioned to what would become a six-night-a-week prime time schedule, resulting in increased scheduling conflicts with its sports broadcasts, Channel 5 ran network shows bumped from their regular timeslot for sports either following the game or in a different timeslot later in the week to fulfill programming obligations; Buckeye also deferred some of the SportsChannel/Fox Sports Net Ohio-licensed Reds and Indians telecasts to an alternate local origination channel. Eventually on January 7, 2004, Buckeye CableSystem launched the Buckeye Cable Sports Network to take over Channel 5's professional, minor league and collegiate sports rights. In September 2002, the channel rebranded as "Toledo's WB 5", and began utilizing the fictitious alphanumeric call letters "WT05" for supplementary identification purposes.
As a cable-only channel transmitted using microwave and fiber optic relays, Channel 5 was subject to the "terrestrial exception", a legislative loophole implemented by the Federal Communications Commission in 1992 to encourage investments in local programming by cable providers that would eventually allow services not distributed via satellite to avoid compliance with regulations requiring television channels to be offered to direct broadcast satellite providers. As such, even after other Toledo-area stations became available on satellite services, Channel 5's distribution was limited to Buckeye subscribers; Block/Buckeye eventually made the channel available to other Northwest Ohio cable providers, including Time Warner Cable and Comcast, by the mid-2000s.

CW affiliation

On January 24, 2006, WB network co-owners Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced the formation of The CW, a network that would initially offer a mix of the most-watched programs originated on predecessors The WB and UPN—which their respective owners would shut down in concurrence with The CW's launch—with new series developed specifically for the CW schedule. Considered to be a strong WB affiliate, even with Toledo's unusual situation of being the largest market—and one of the few overall—where neither The WB or UPN had a conventional affiliate, WT05 was chosen as its Toledo-area affiliate over WNGT.
Channel 5 affiliated with The CW at launch on September 18, 2006, leaving WNGT as Northwest Ohio's MyNetworkTV affiliate. Over-the-air viewers with a strong enough antenna were able to access The CW through either WKBD-TV in Detroit or WBNX-TV from Akron–Cleveland, depending on their location within the Toledo DMA.

Transfer of schedule and affiliation to WTVG-DT2

On July 24, 2014, SJL Communications announced that it would sell WTVG to Gray Television. Gray indicated that it planned to add The CW to one of the station's digital subchannels, allowing Toledo-area viewers without a cable subscription to receive the network's programming for the first time. The move to WTVG would eventually allow SJL/Gray to add the subchannel as part of the station's carriage agreements, making a locally based CW affiliate available to subscribers of satellite and virtual MVPD providers throughout the market, thus giving it more extensive pay-TV coverage than which predecessor WT05 could provide.
On September 1, 2014, Toledo 5's CW affiliation and syndicated programming inventory was moved to WTVG-DT2, replacing the Live Well Network over-the-air, and inheriting WT05's former channel 5 slot on Buckeye's cable lineup. Similar to Channel 5's 1989–94 news share agreement with the station, WTVG-DT2 would also incorporate simulcasts of its parent station's noon and 4 p.m. newscasts; an hour-long nightly 10 p.m. newscast—which had been in the planning stages since it acquired the CW affiliation—was added in September 2024 to directly compete with WUPW's longer-established prime time newscast.