WFXR: Difference between revisions

WFXR

Roanoke/Lynchburg, Virginia United States
City	Roanoke, Virginia
Channels	Digital: 36 (UHF) Virtual: 27
Branding	WFXR CW Virginia (on DT2)
Programming
Affiliations	27.1: Fox (1990–present) 27.2: The CW 27.3: Bounce TV 27.4: Ion Mystery
Ownership
Owner	Nexstar Media Group (Nexstar Media Inc.)
Sister stations	WWCW
History
Founded	January 25, 1983
First air date	November 13, 1986 (37 years ago) (1986-11-13)
Former call signs	WVFT (1986–1993) WFXR-TV (1993–2009)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 27 (UHF, 1986–2009) Digital: 17 (UHF, 2005–2019)
Former affiliations	Primary: Independent (1986–1990) Secondary: UPN (1995–1997) The WB (1997–1998)
Call sign meaning	"Fox Roanoke"
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	24813
Class	DT
ERP	944 kW
HAAT	607.3 m (1,992 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	37°11′47.8″N 80°9′14.6″W / 37.196611°N 80.154056°W / 37.196611; -80.154056
Translator(s)	WWCW-DT 21.2 (20.4 UHF) Lynchburg
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	www.wfxrtv.com

WFXR (channel 27) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Roanoke–Lynchburg market. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Lynchburg-licensed CW owned-and-operated station WWCW (channel 21). Both stations share studios at the Valleypointe office park on Valleypoint Parkway in Hollins (with a Roanoke mailing address), while WFXR's transmitter is located on Poor Mountain in unincorporated southwestern Roanoke County.

Even though WFXR maintains a digital signal of its own, the signal's full-powered broadcasting radius does not cover much of the eastern portion of the market. Therefore, the station is simulcast in high definition over WWCW's second digital subchannel in order to reach the entire market. This signal can be seen on channel 21.2 from a transmitter on Thaxton Mountain in unincorporated Bedford County.

Early history of channel 27 in Roanoke

Ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 27 in Roanoke was originally occupied by WROV-TV, which operated for less than five months from March 2 to July 18, 1953.^[2][3] It was the first UHF television station in the United States to cease operation.^[4] Southwestern Virginia is very mountainous and the difficulties faced by UHF stations at the time due to the lack of television sets manufactured with built-in UHF tuners (which was not made a requirement until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1961) were magnified by the area's rugged terrain.^[5] After WROV's owners sought channel 7, as part of a settlement with the Times-World Corporation, that company acquired WROV-TV's physical assets in exchange for approval to build channel 7 as WDBJ-TV.^[6]

Later occupying the channel 27 frequency was WRFT-TV/WRLU, which operated as the market's secondary ABC affiliate from 1966 to 1974^[7][8] and again from 1974 to 1975.^[9] At the time, the area's primary ABC affiliate, WLVA-TV (channel 13, now WSET-TV) in Lynchburg, provided only marginal signal coverage in Roanoke.^[10]

History

Construction battle

Interest around the use of channel 27 at Roanoke emerged again in the late 1970s and coalesced around two groups. The first group to express its interest was Roanoke Christian Broadcasting (RCB), which proposed a Christian station.^[11] By June, three groups sought the channel: RCB, a second Christian group, and a consortium of businessmen^[12] known as Western Virginia Television Corporation (WVTC).^[13]

The entrance of WVTC into the latter caused two Christian groups—RCB and the Evangel Foursquare Church—to unite their efforts.^[14] RCB and WVTC, the only two channel 27 applicants, fought not only in comparative hearing at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) but in Virginia courts, where WVTC alleged that RCB had plagiarized engineering data from its application.^[15] Evangel Foursquare had separated from RCB by 1981, when the FCC approved the addition of channel 38 to Roanoke,^[16] which would eventually be used by its WEFC beginning in January 1986.^[17]

In June 1982, an FCC administrative law judge released an initial decision in favor of Roanoke Christian Broadcasting, with the primary deciding factor being the larger overlap of ownership and management in the RCB bid.^[18] WVTC protested to the FCC Review Board, which upheld the initial decision; meanwhile, the plagiarism lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled insufficient evidence was presented, even though RCB admitted to copying nine pages of what it described as public domain engineering information.^[19] The full FCC affirmed the permit grant to RCB in March 1984.^[20]

WVFT: The Family Group years

Two years passed without activity on the channel. In March 1986, in an effort to get the station on air and citing the appeals from the original decision that had kept away investors, Roanoke Christian Broadcasting sold the permit to a partnership in which it owned five percent and the remainder was held by Family Group Broadcasting, a chain of independent stations based in Tampa, Florida.^[21] Family Group began fitting out studios on Colonial Avenue Southwest in the Franklin-Colonial area of Roanoke, and the call letters WVFT (for "Western Virginia Family Television") were adopted.^[22]

After delays in constructing its transmitter facility, WVFT began broadcasting on November 13, 1986, as the second independent in the Roanoke–Lynchburg market.^[23] Its primary competitor was WJPR (channel 21) in Lynchburg, which had gone on the air that March.^[24] After signing on, the station was sued by WVTF, a Roanoke public radio station owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation, which feared some donors might send their contributions to WVFT instead of WVTF.^[25] A federal judge found in the television station's favor,^[26] and the suit was eventually dropped.^[27]

WVFT's financial condition began to show signs of stress in late 1988. In December, the city of Roanoke sued the station seeking nearly $47,000 in unpaid property taxes for a two-year period.^[28] The company attempted to sell WVFT along with two operating Wisconsin stations—WGBA-TV in Green Bay and WLAX in La Crosse—and a third unbuilt Wisconsin station to Krypton Broadcasting in March 1989 in a package worth $10.5 million.^[29] However, that deal never closed. The subsidiaries of Family Group that held WVFT and the Wisconsin stations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in April 1989.^[30] This made WVFT the second television station in the market to file for bankruptcy protection within six months, having been preceded in Chapter 11 by WJPR in November 1988.^[31]

Merger with WVFT

On September 13 and 15, 1989, bankruptcy courts in Lynchburg and Tampa, Florida, gave NewSouth Broadcasting, a company owned by Timothy Brumlik, permission to purchase WJPR and WVFT with the intention of consolidating their programming. The deal began to fall apart on the 15th, however, when Brumlik was arrested on charges of laundering up to $12 million in Colombian drug money.^[32] Officials alleged that Brumlik's ownership of TeleOnce in Puerto Rico was a front for two important Latin American media men: Remigio Ángel González, reported to be a business partner with Manuel Noriega in a Panamanian television station, and Julio Vera Gutiérrez, a Peruvian citizen.^[33]

The indictment scrambled the picture for the stations Brumlik sought to buy. At the time of his arrest, he had been approved by bankruptcy courts or the FCC to buy WJPR and WVFT; WKCH-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee; and the then-unbuilt WGNM in Macon, Georgia.^[32][33][34] With regard to WJPR and WVFT, his arrest and indictment caused him to be unable to fulfill commitments required by the bankruptcy courts. Instead, Henry A. Ash, a Tampa life insurance broker, bid on both stations with the same goal: to combine them.^[35] Ash's Roanoke–Lynchburg TV Acquisition Corporation—with Carney as a stockholder—received court approval to buy both stations, paying $2.95 million for WJPR and $1.25 million for WVFT, in February 1990. It then filed with the FCC for a waiver of its rule that prohibited ownership of stations with overlapping signal coverage areas, believing that the market could bear one independent station but not two.^[36]

On August 20, 1990, with the purchases pending at the FCC, WVFT began simulcasting WJPR, expanding Fox network coverage to the market's western portions for the first time.^[37] FCC approval followed the next month.^[38]

On September 15, 1993, WVFT and WJPR were purchased by the Grant Broadcasting System, owned by UHF television pioneer Milton Grant. The simulcast between the two stations continued, although WVFT began serving as the main station. In October 1993, WVFT had its call letters changed to WFXR-TV.^[39] It was also announced at that time that the simulcast between WFXR and WJPR would eventually end, with one station being converted into an independent station; however, this plan never materialized during the remainder of the history of the two stations' analog broadcasts.

In the spring of 1997, the market's UPN affiliation moved to Danville-based WDRG-TV (channel 24, now MyNetworkTV affiliate WZBJ), at which time WFXR/WJPR picked up a secondary affiliation with The WB. This paved the way for WFXR and WJPR to start the area's cable-only WB affiliate on September 21, 1998, as a member of The WeB (subsequently renamed The WB 100+ Station Group) known by the fictional calls "WBVA-TV" and branded on-air as "WB 5", in reference to its cable position on Cox Communications channel 5.

Plans were still underway by this time to separate WFXR and WJPR's programming schedules, with the intent to move the "WB 5" intellectual unit and WBVA-TV call letters to WJPR in October 2001, leaving WFXR as a sole Fox affiliate. The two stations would have still shared some syndicated programming. However, the separation plan was aborted due to concerns about reception issues in areas totaling about 40% of the market that were only received over-the-air reception of only one of the two stations. Many of these areas still did not have access to cable, and neither DirecTV nor Dish Network had much subscriber penetration in the market at the time.

When WJPR signed on its digital signal in April 2002, that station only carried programming from "WBVA" on its sole main channel. Fox programming was added to the digital signal in January 2003, with "WBVA" being relegated to a new secondary digital subchannel on virtual channel 21.3 (the WB affiliate was also available locally on DirecTV and Dish Network). When WFXR began transmitting its own digital signal began in December of that same year, it carried Fox network and syndicated programming seen on the station's analog signal as well as "WBVA"'s programming in the same arrangement as WJPR.

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. Entertainment unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.^[40][41] On March 28, 2006, it was announced that WBVA would become the market's CW affiliate. To reflect this, the fictional WBVA calls were changed to "WCW5-TV" in June 2006. The CW began broadcasting on September 18, 2006; the cable-only station concurrently changed its on-air branding to "CW 5".

On June 30, 2006, WJPR changed its call letters to WWCW, to reflect that station's pending affiliation with The CW, which was carried on the second digital subchannels of both stations. This immediately led to speculation that channel 21 would split off from WFXR and become the area's CW affiliate; however, Fox programming continued to air on the analog and digital signals of both WFXR and WWCW until the analog signals ceased operations upon the digital television transition in June 2009. At that point, the two stations were effectively (though not entirely) separated, with WWCW's primary digital channel now airing CW programming in high definition, with Fox programming airing in HD on WWCW's 21.2 subchannel. Conversely, WFXR carries Fox programming in HD on its primary signal, with CW programming airing in HD on WFXR's subchannel on 27.2. This is common practice for many duopolies in which the signal of one of the two stations is weaker in some portions of their home market. Even while transmitting in digital, WWCW's signal is still marginal in some portions of the western part of the market.

Acquisition by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group

On November 6, 2013, the Irving, Texas–based Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it would purchase the Grant stations, including WFXR and WWCW, for $87.5 million. The sale was approved by the FCC on November 3, 2014, and was finalized one month later on December 1.^{[42][43][44][45]}

In March 2015, Joseph McNamara—who was appointed as vice president for the stations three months earlier in December 2014—announced that Nexstar planned to move WFXR/WWCW's operations and staff into a new, larger 14,830-square-foot (1,000 m²) studio facility at the Valleypointe office park in northeastern Roanoke County, near Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport.^[46] WFXR and WWCW migrated their operations into the new facility—which cost $3 million to build—during the week of September 14, 2015.^[47][48]

On January 27, 2016, Nexstar announced it would acquire Media General for $4.6 billion. Since Media General already owns NBC affiliate WSLS-TV, and since the Roanoke-Lynchburg market is too small to allow duopolies in any case, in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibit future joint sales agreements, the company was required to sell either WSLS or WFXR/WWCW to another company.^[49][50] Despite WSLS' higher ratings, on May 27, 2016, Nexstar announced that it would keep WFXR and WWCW and sell WSLS to Graham Media Group for $120 million, along with WCWJ in Jacksonville, Florida. The sale was finalized January 17, 2017.^[51]

Programming

In addition to the Fox network schedule, syndicated programs broadcast on WFXR (as of September 2015^[update]) include TMZ on TV, Divorce Court, The Big Bang Theory, Maury, Modern Family, Family Feud, Mike and Molly and Judge Judy.^[52]

Since the fall of 2016, Xploration Station has aired on WFXR at the times specified by the Fox network, with two of its three hours taking over the timeslot previously held by Weekend Marketplace.

Newscasts

As of October 2015^[update], WFXR presently broadcasts 27 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with five hours each weekday and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).

In 1996, WFXR/WJPR entered into a news share agreement with NBC affiliate WSLS-TV (channel 10), allowing the station to produce a 10:00 p.m. newscast for the stations. The agreement formally began when The Fox 10 O'Clock News premiered on October 28, 1996; the newscast originally aired for a half-hour five nights a week. Weekend editions of the 10 p.m. newscast were added in January 2000. The weeknight editions expanded to one hour in 2003. The program originated from a secondary set at the WSLS studios on 3rd Street in Downtown Roanoke.

In August 2007, WSLS began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition, becoming the market's first Big Three network affiliate to upgrade its newscasts to the format; WFXR's nightly prime time show was included in the upgrade. On March 12, 2012, WFXR launched a two-hour weekday morning newscast from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.; the program was originally anchored by former WDBJ anchor Bob Grebe and Patrick McKee providing weather updates.^[53]

With the March 2015 announcement that WFXR and WWCW would migrate their operations into new studio facilities near Hollins, Nexstar also announced that WFXR would assume production responsibilities for its newscasts and establish an in-house news department for the station, resulting in the eventual termination of its news share agreement with WSLS after 19 years. On September 17, 2015, WFXR announced that the news department would launch on October 1, with the expansion of its weekday morning news program—which was retitled Good Day Virginia—from two hours to four (with the premiere of an additional two-hour broadcast from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., which replaced religious programming in that time period) and the weekend editions of its 10:00 p.m. newscast—retitled WFXR News First at 10—to one hour, which both continue to be produced in high definition with the start of in-house news operations. Subsequently, in November, the station will debut a half-hour local sports highlight program on Friday nights, that will follow the 10:00 p.m. newscast.^[47][48]

The formation of the news department and concurrent move to the Valleypoint Parkway facility resulted in the hiring of 33 news and production employees to WFXR's staff, in addition to certain on-air staff employed by WFXR/WWCW for the WSLS-produced newscasts that remained with the station after WFXR took over newscast production responsibilities (including 10:00 p.m. co-anchor Becky Freemal and morning anchor Tara Wheeler).^[47][48][54]

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WFXR discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 27, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 17,^[56] using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 27.

References

External links

• Official website