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WWMT
WWMT (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States, serving West Michigan as an affiliate of CBS. The station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and maintains studios on West Maple Street in Kalamazoo; its transmitter is located in northwest Yankee Springs Township on Chief Noonday Road/M-179 near Patterson Road.
The station signed on the air on June 1, 1950, and joined the CBS network on July 9, 1950, as WKZO-TV (the call letters standing for "Kalamazoo"). It was West Michigan's second television station to debut after WLAV-TV (channel 7, now WOOD-TV on channel 8) and was owned by broadcasting pioneer John Fetzer, along with WKZO radio, which Fetzer had owned since 1930. It carried programming from all four networks of the time: CBS, NBC, ABC, and DuMont. However, it has always been a primary CBS affiliate owing to its radio sister's affiliation with the CBS Radio Network. It originally operated from a transmitter in Oshtemo Township, west of Kalamazoo. After a month of signing on in the afternoons to air movies, regular broadcasting began on July 1, 1950. On that date, it became one of 20 stations in the country that had priority for CBS's strongest programming.
From the start, WKZO-TV had reception problems due to the presence of WTMJ-TV across Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, also on analog VHF channel 3 until a shake-up of channels in Chicago, Kalamazoo, and Milwaukee in 1953. WTMJ moved to channel 4; WBBM-TV in Chicago to move from channel 4 to channel 2 as a condition of its purchase by CBS.
Channel 3 was originally the CBS affiliate for the northern portion of the South Bend, Indiana market. When South Bend got its own station, WSBT-TV, in 1952, WKZO-TV shared the southwestern part of its viewing area with WSBT-TV to the detriment of the latter until all television manufacturers were required to include UHF tuning capability.
Channel 3 lost DuMont in 1956 after that network shut down. In 1958, the WKZO stations moved their operations to an old car dealership on West Maple Avenue in Kalamazoo, the "Fetzer Broadcast House." Channel 3 remains based to this day. In 1960, Fetzer built a new 1,100-foot (335 m) transmission tower near the northern edge of Gun Lake. The tower was located roughly halfway between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, allowing it to provide city-grade coverage of Grand Rapids while still being within 15 miles (24 km) of Kalamazoo as required by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. Soon after channel 3 activated its new tower, the FCC moved Kalamazoo and Battle Creek into the Grand Rapids market, collapsing West Michigan into one of the largest television markets east of the Mississippi. WKZO then shared ABC with WOOD-TV until WZZM (channel 13) signed on in 1962.
Fetzer also owned the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1956 to 1983. During this time, channel 3 frequently preempted prime time CBS programming for Tigers baseball games, including preseason exhibitions.[attribution needed] In 1985, Fetzer retired and began selling off his vast broadcasting empire, which by this time included, among other holdings, WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan, and KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. The FCC had grandfathered existing radio-television clusters when it barred common ownership of radio and television stations, but with Fetzer's announcement, WKZO-AM-TV lost its grandfathered protection. The Fetzer television stations were initially sold to Gillett Holdings. On December 5, 1985, per a since-repealed FCC rule restricting TV and radio stations in the same market but with different ownership from sharing the same callsigns, Gillett changed the station's call letters to the current WWMT (standing for "We're West Michigan Television"). Two years later, WWMT and KOLN were spun off to Busse Broadcasting. In 1995, Granite Broadcasting acquired the station. Freedom Communications purchased WWMT in 1998 from Granite, along with sister station WLAJ in Lansing.
WWMT is the second longest-tenured CBS affiliate in Michigan (behind only WLNS-TV in Lansing, which signed on one month earlier); its logos have used the CBS logo since the mid-1990s. In 2005, a company-wide consolidation of operations at Freedom's stations resulted in the move of WLAJ's master control and most internal operations to WWMT's facilities. This left behind a skeleton crew of six people out of what began with 80 staffers in Lansing.[attribution needed]
Freedom announced on November 2, 2011, that it would exit from television and sell its stations, including WWMT, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The group deal closed on April 2, 2012. As a result, WWMT and WLAJ joined Fox affiliate WSMH in Flint as two of the three Sinclair-owned television properties in the state of Michigan. On February 16, 2016, upon the completion of the merger between Schurz Communications and Gray Television, South Bend CBS affiliate WSBT-TV was spun off to Sinclair to meet regulatory guidelines, allowing WWMT and WSBT to become sister operations to one another for the first time, outside of existing news video sharing agreements.
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WWMT
WWMT (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States, serving West Michigan as an affiliate of CBS. The station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and maintains studios on West Maple Street in Kalamazoo; its transmitter is located in northwest Yankee Springs Township on Chief Noonday Road/M-179 near Patterson Road.
The station signed on the air on June 1, 1950, and joined the CBS network on July 9, 1950, as WKZO-TV (the call letters standing for "Kalamazoo"). It was West Michigan's second television station to debut after WLAV-TV (channel 7, now WOOD-TV on channel 8) and was owned by broadcasting pioneer John Fetzer, along with WKZO radio, which Fetzer had owned since 1930. It carried programming from all four networks of the time: CBS, NBC, ABC, and DuMont. However, it has always been a primary CBS affiliate owing to its radio sister's affiliation with the CBS Radio Network. It originally operated from a transmitter in Oshtemo Township, west of Kalamazoo. After a month of signing on in the afternoons to air movies, regular broadcasting began on July 1, 1950. On that date, it became one of 20 stations in the country that had priority for CBS's strongest programming.
From the start, WKZO-TV had reception problems due to the presence of WTMJ-TV across Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, also on analog VHF channel 3 until a shake-up of channels in Chicago, Kalamazoo, and Milwaukee in 1953. WTMJ moved to channel 4; WBBM-TV in Chicago to move from channel 4 to channel 2 as a condition of its purchase by CBS.
Channel 3 was originally the CBS affiliate for the northern portion of the South Bend, Indiana market. When South Bend got its own station, WSBT-TV, in 1952, WKZO-TV shared the southwestern part of its viewing area with WSBT-TV to the detriment of the latter until all television manufacturers were required to include UHF tuning capability.
Channel 3 lost DuMont in 1956 after that network shut down. In 1958, the WKZO stations moved their operations to an old car dealership on West Maple Avenue in Kalamazoo, the "Fetzer Broadcast House." Channel 3 remains based to this day. In 1960, Fetzer built a new 1,100-foot (335 m) transmission tower near the northern edge of Gun Lake. The tower was located roughly halfway between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, allowing it to provide city-grade coverage of Grand Rapids while still being within 15 miles (24 km) of Kalamazoo as required by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. Soon after channel 3 activated its new tower, the FCC moved Kalamazoo and Battle Creek into the Grand Rapids market, collapsing West Michigan into one of the largest television markets east of the Mississippi. WKZO then shared ABC with WOOD-TV until WZZM (channel 13) signed on in 1962.
Fetzer also owned the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1956 to 1983. During this time, channel 3 frequently preempted prime time CBS programming for Tigers baseball games, including preseason exhibitions.[attribution needed] In 1985, Fetzer retired and began selling off his vast broadcasting empire, which by this time included, among other holdings, WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan, and KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. The FCC had grandfathered existing radio-television clusters when it barred common ownership of radio and television stations, but with Fetzer's announcement, WKZO-AM-TV lost its grandfathered protection. The Fetzer television stations were initially sold to Gillett Holdings. On December 5, 1985, per a since-repealed FCC rule restricting TV and radio stations in the same market but with different ownership from sharing the same callsigns, Gillett changed the station's call letters to the current WWMT (standing for "We're West Michigan Television"). Two years later, WWMT and KOLN were spun off to Busse Broadcasting. In 1995, Granite Broadcasting acquired the station. Freedom Communications purchased WWMT in 1998 from Granite, along with sister station WLAJ in Lansing.
WWMT is the second longest-tenured CBS affiliate in Michigan (behind only WLNS-TV in Lansing, which signed on one month earlier); its logos have used the CBS logo since the mid-1990s. In 2005, a company-wide consolidation of operations at Freedom's stations resulted in the move of WLAJ's master control and most internal operations to WWMT's facilities. This left behind a skeleton crew of six people out of what began with 80 staffers in Lansing.[attribution needed]
Freedom announced on November 2, 2011, that it would exit from television and sell its stations, including WWMT, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The group deal closed on April 2, 2012. As a result, WWMT and WLAJ joined Fox affiliate WSMH in Flint as two of the three Sinclair-owned television properties in the state of Michigan. On February 16, 2016, upon the completion of the merger between Schurz Communications and Gray Television, South Bend CBS affiliate WSBT-TV was spun off to Sinclair to meet regulatory guidelines, allowing WWMT and WSBT to become sister operations to one another for the first time, outside of existing news video sharing agreements.
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