WYZZ-TV


WYZZ-TV is a television station licensed to Bloomington, Illinois, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Peoria area. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, which maintains a local marketing agreement with Nexstar Media Group, owner of CBS affiliate WMBD-TV, for the provision of certain services. The two stations share studios on North University Street in Peoria, with a secondary studio and news bureau on East Lincoln Street in Bloomington. WYZZ-TV's transmitter is located near Congerville, a village of Montgomery Township, Woodford County.
WWW centralillinoisproud.comFB WYZZ.TV

History

The station signed on the air on October 18, 1982, as WBLN and aired an analog signal on UHF channel 43. It was founded by Grace Communications, a consortium of members of Peoria's Grace Presbyterian Church. Except for the call sign, it was unrelated to the old WBLN that broadcast on UHF channel 15 in the 1950s. The station first broadcast from studios located on East Empire Street/IL 9 in Bloomington. The station was a general entertainment independent and first new commercial outlet to sign-on since future sister WMBD hit the airwaves 24 years earlier. Grace Communications sold the station to Midwest Television Associates in 1983. It initially signed on at 9 a.m. running religious shows until noon and low budget and barter shows from noon to midnight. This would be a mix of cartoons, public domain movies, some drama shows, westerns, news from CNN, and exercise shows.
In 1984, the station began signing on at 7 a.m. and began running a block of cartoons from 7 to 9 weekday mornings. Midwest then sold WBLN to local businessman G.J. Robinson in 1985, who changed its call letters to the current WYZZ-TV in September 1985. The station slightly cut back the religious shows but also began running stronger programming such as more of-network sitcoms, both older and recent. On October 9, 1986, the station joined Fox as a charter affiliate. WYZZ later relocated its operations to a new facility located on East Lincoln Street in Bloomington. The station would eventually be sold to Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1996.
On December 1, 2001, Sinclair and the Nexstar Broadcasting Group entered into a local marketing agreement in which WMBD would take over WYZZ's operations. As part of the deal, WYZZ abandoned its Bloomington studios and merged its operations into WMBD's facility in Peoria. In August 2005, a similar agreement would be established between Sinclair's WUHF and Nexstar's WROC-TV in Rochester, New York.
WYZZ broadcasts digitally on UHF channel 28 and has been digital-only since February 17, 2009. According to a post on The Peoria Chronicle website, WYZZ and WMBD were planning on terminating the LMA between the two effective April 1, 2010. This move was ultimately not followed through with. On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's nineteen Fox stations, including WYZZ, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming until 2017.
Sinclair announced the acquisition of Barrington Broadcasting's stations, including WHOI, on February 28, 2013. On that date, Sinclair made public that it would transfer the WYZZ license to Cunningham Broadcasting because the WHOI purchase would violate Federal Communications Commission regulations on duopoly ownership. However, nearly all of Cunningham Broadcasting's stock is controlled by trusts in the names of the principal owners of Sinclair. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Sinclair still owns WYZZ. Even with the nominal ownership change, WMBD will continue to operate WYZZ for the time being.
WEEK-TV's joint sales and shared services agreements with WHOI were originally set to expire in March 2017. However, Sinclair announced that it would terminate the JSA/SSA with WEEK-TV within nine months after the consummation of its sale from Granite Broadcasting to Quincy Newspapers.
On December 3, 2018, Nexstar announced it would acquire the assets of Chicago-based Tribune Media for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019—would result in the WYZZ/WMBD virtual duopoly gaining additional sister stations in nearby markets including Chicago and St. Louis.

Newscasts

In April 2002, WMBD established a news share agreement with WYZZ, resulting in a prime time newscast on the Fox affiliate that was produced by WMBD, called Fox 43 News at 9. The thirty-minute broadcast was originally broadcast every night before being dropped from weekends at some point in time. The newscast did not have any competition in the time slot until June 5, 2006, when WEEK-TV added its own half-hour newscast at 9 on then-UPN affiliate WAOE.
On May 7, 2015, WMBD became the first television station in the market to produce local news in full high definition. On the same day, WYZZ's weeknight 9 p.m. newscast was included in the upgrade and rebranded as WYZZ News at 9 and WMBD also began producing a two-hour weekday morning show for the Fox affiliate called Good Day Central Illinois, airing from 7 to 9 a.m. In addition to its primary studios, it operates a Twin Cities Bureau on East Lincoln Street in Bloomington.

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:
ChannelRes.AspectShort nameProgramming
43.1720p16:9WYZZ-DTFox
43.2480i4:3MeritMerit TV
43.3480i4:3GetTVGet