WOTV

WOTV (channel 41, cable channel 4) is a television station licensed to Battle Creek, Michigan, United States, affiliated with ABC and owned by Nexstar Media Group. Its second subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of The CW as Nexstar owns a majority stake in the network. WOTV is sister to Grand Rapids–licensed NBC affiliate WOOD-TV (channel 8) and Class A MyNetworkTV affiliate WXSP-CD (channel 15). The stations share studios on College Avenue Southeast in Grand Rapids; WOTV's transmitter is located on South Norris Road in Orangeville Township. WOTV brands itself as ABC 4 West Michigan, based on its channel 4 position on most area cable systems.

Channel 41's existence in Battle Creek is owed to the northerly location of the transmitter of Grand Rapids–based WZZM (channel 13), which signed on in 1962 as a late insertion into the market. Because WZZM's transmitter is north of Grand Rapids in Grant, its signal does not reach Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, or other areas in the southern portion of the market. A group of local businessmen known as Channel 41, Inc., won the construction permit for channel 41 in 1970 after a predecessor unsuccessfully tried to sell out to WZZM; WUHQ-TV signed on in 1971 from studios in the former headquarters building of Fort Custer and has been an ABC affiliate since it began, creating a rare split affiliation. The station's attempts at local news programming were low-rated and inconsistent, with many changes in timing and strategy.

After WZZM's owners could not close on an FCC-approved merger with Channel 41, Inc., in 1991, the company brokered the station's air time to channel 8, which began producing Battle Creek–Kalamazoo news inserts for air on the station. When channel 8 reclaimed the WOOD-TV call letters in 1992, WUHQ-TV became WOTV. The news inserts grew into a separate news operation that continued to exist until it was shut down in 2003, two years after WOOD-TV's then-owner, LIN Television, acquired the station outright. Since then, WOTV has offered ABC programming, a separate slate of syndicated programs, and WOOD-TV's local newscasts. Even though it attracts a fraction of the viewers of WZZM, it continues to provide better signal coverage in the market's southern tier.

In November 1962, West Michigan gained its third very high frequency (VHF) station when WZZM began broadcasting from Grand Rapids on channel 13 as an ABC affiliate. On paper, West Michigan now had full service from all three networks; the market was already served by Grand Rapids-based NBC affiliate WOOD-TV and Kalamazoo-based CBS affiliate WKZO-TV. However, the drop-in of channel 13 to Grand Rapids, proposed in 1959 and accepted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1961, came with a technical condition to maintain proper spacing from other stations on channel 13. WZZM had to build its transmitter north of the city, near Muskegon, to satisfy the requirement for the transmitter to be at least 170 miles (274 km) from neighboring stations on channel 13. While the channel 13 allocation was billed by the FCC as serving Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, once built, this proved not to be the case. The northerly location of WZZM's transmitter resulted in poor-to-nonexistent coverage in the market's southern tier. Bill Tompkins of The Battle Creek Enquirer and News wrote that Battle Creek viewers found WZZM "about as elusive as a flying saucer", and reception in Kalamazoo was similarly poor. Since WOOD-TV and WKZO-TV removed ABC programs from their schedule when WZZM came into service, viewers in this area had to depend on the part-time carriage of ABC programs by the stations in the Lansing–Jackson market.

In a bid to serve viewers in southern West Michigan, WZZM owner West Michigan Telecasters sought to remedy the shortfall by building translators in Kalamazoo and Battle Creek. The FCC approved the construction of a channel 12 translator in Kalamazoo in 1964, and the next year, the group applied to activate a similar facility on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 83 in Battle Creek. That same year, a partnership known as BCU-TV applied for a new full-service station in Battle Creek on channel 65; partners included Mary Jane Morris and James Searer, who had once applied to own and been interim part-owner of WZZM, as well as supermarket executive Frederik Meijer. Channel 41 was substituted for channel 65 months later as part of changes to the FCC's UHF table of allocations. BCU-TV sought an affiliation with ABC and suggested a studio site near Augusta. The FCC granted BCU-TV a construction permit on September 28, 1967.

An obstacle continued to loom between WZZM and BCU-TV, as the FCC also approved the construction of a Battle Creek translator for WZZM, now on channel 74. This created an issue because both stations proposed to bring ABC programming to the city. West Michigan Telecasters sued BCU-TV in Kent County circuit court, seeking $3 million in damages for infringing on what it alleged was its exclusive right to provide ABC programming to West Michigan. WZZM activated its Battle Creek translator in late January 1968, but after the FCC then rescinded its grant for the Battle Creek translator and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to stay the ruling, West Michigan Telecasters was forced to shut it down in March on grounds that the translator would be detrimental to the BCU-TV station's proposed operation.

On October 22, 1968, BCU-TV announced that it had agreed to sell the channel 41 permit, with the call sign WWWU-TV, to West Michigan Telecasters to be used as a satellite station of WZZM, as part of a transfer of stock arranged by Morris.

Three days later, a group of Kalamazoo and Battle Creek businessmen under the name Channel 41, Inc., announced that it would file for a construction permit of its own to build the station. While Morris began the process to dissolve the BCU-TV partnership, Searer had left to become executive vice president of the new Channel 41, Inc., having moved to sever ties as a result of the decision to sell to West Michigan Telecasters.