WUTV

For other stations that are also called Fox 29, see Fox 29 (disambiguation). For the Washington University student television station in St. Louis, Missouri, see WUTV 22.
WUTV
Buffalo, New York
United States
Branding Fox 29 (general)
2 News On Your Side at 10 (newscasts)
Slogan On Your Side (newscasts)
Channels Digital: 14 (UHF)
Virtual: 29 (PSIP)
Subchannels 29.1 Fox
29.2 The Country Network
29.3 Grit
Affiliations Fox (1986–1989, 1990–present)
Owner Sinclair Broadcast Group
(WUTV Licensee, LLC)
First air date December 21, 1970 (1970-12-21)
Call letters' meaning UlTraVision (former owner)
or
UHF TeleVision (reference to its broadcast frequency)
Sister station(s) WNYO-TV, WUHF, WHAM-TV,
WSTM-TV, WSTQ-LP,
WRGB, WCWN
Former channel number(s) 29 (UHF analog, 1970–2009)
Former affiliations Independent (1970–1986, 1989–1990)
UPN (secondary, 1995–1997)
Transmitter power 1,000 kW
Height 299.5 m
Facility ID 415
Transmitter coordinates 43°1′34.9″N 78°55′39.6″W / 43.026361°N 78.927667°W / 43.026361; -78.927667
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website wutv29.com

WUTV, virtual channel 29 (UHF digital channel 14), is a Fox-affiliated television station located in Buffalo, New York, United States. The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WNYO-TV (channel 49). The two stations share studios located at 699 Hertel Avenue near Military Road in Buffalo. WUTV's transmitter is located at 951 Whitehaven Road (I-190) in Grand Island, New York.

Since February 2008, WUTV serves as the Fox network feed received in the Cayman Islands. It joined the Primetime 24 lineup in 2009, serving most of the Caribbean islands.[1]

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[2]
29.1 720p 16:9 WUTV-HD Main WUTV programming / Fox
29.2 480i 4:3 TCN The Country Network[3]
29.3 GritTV Grit[4]

Analog-to-digital conversion

WUTV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 29, at 11:59 p.m. on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later moved to June 12); this made WUTV the first television station in Buffalo to switch to digital.[5] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 14.[6] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 29.

As part of the SAFER Act,[7] WUTV kept its analog signal on the air until March 3 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters. WUTV, along with PBS member station WNED-TV (channel 17) were the only Buffalo television stations that did not terminate their analog signals on the new June 12 date.

History

WUTV signed on the air on December 21, 1970 as a general entertainment independent station; its schedule included cartoons (such as Astro Boy and Yogi Bear), sitcoms (such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Patty Duke Show, and The Munsters), sci-fi shows (such as Lost in Space, Ultraman, The Invaders and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), along with classic movies and drama series. WUTV's original studios were located at the transmitter site in Grand Island, New York. The station was owned by Ultravision Broadcasting Company, from which the "UTV" in the WUTV callsign originates (the WUTV call sign was originally to be used for a station on VHF channel 3 in Indianapolis, Indiana under the ownership of department store William H. Block Co., which never went on the air; the call sign was later issued to another station in Youngstown, Ohio with a construction permit on channel 21 that also never launched, with NBC affiliate WFMJ-TV purchasing that permit and moving from channel 73 to the channel 21 allocation that the Youngstown WUTV permit was originally intended to broadcast on). Ultravision was owned by Stan Jasinski, who also owned Buffalo's WMMJ (1300 AM) at the time; shortly thereafter, Jasinski spun off WMMJ to country musician Ramblin' Lou Schriver, who turned it into present-day WXRL. Jasinski had first filed an application for the station's license in 1963.

WUTV was the only independent station in Buffalo for many years and was the first commercially successful UHF station in Western New York; previous efforts on the UHF dial, including WBES-TV (channel 59), WBUF-TV (channel 17) and WNYP-TV (channel 26) all had failed within a few years of their debuts. Ultravision Broadcasting sold the station to Whitehaven Entertainment Corporation in 1977. The station was acquired by Citadel Communications, a Bronxville-based company not related to the larger radio station owner Citadel Broadcasting, in 1984.

On October 9, 1986, WUTV became one of the original charter affiliates of the newly launched Fox network. At the time, Fox only aired late night programming five days a week, so WUTV was still essentially programmed as an independent station. However, by 1989, WUTV was one of several Fox affiliates nationwide that were disappointed with the network's weak primetime programming offerings, particularly on Saturday nights, which were bogging down WUTV's otherwise successful lineup. Fox then signed an agreement with WNYB-TV (channel 49, now WNYO-TV) to become its new Buffalo affiliate, and WUTV reverted to being an independent station full-time. Later that year, WNYB-TV's owner, Act III Broadcasting, offered to buy WUTV, and Citadel accepted. The sale was finalized in June 1990, and Act III moved WNYB-TV's stronger programming to WUTV, and brought the Fox affiliation back to the station in turn. It then sold WNYB-TV to Tri-State Christian Television (Act III was known for such acquisition practices).

Abry purchased WUTV in 1994 following its acquisition of the Act III group. On January 16, 1995, WUTV became a secondary affiliate of the upstart United Paramount Network (the UPN affiliation subsequently moved to WNGS (channel 67, now WBBZ-TV) and WONS (channel 21, WVTT-CD) in 1997, and then to WNLO (channel 23) in 2003). Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired WUTV as part of its purchase of Abry in 1997; Sinclair then bought WNYO-TV in 2001, creating a duopoly with WUTV.

After Sinclair came to a retransmission consent agreement in February 2007 nationally with Time Warner Cable, WUTV and WNYO-TV's high definition feeds began to be carried locally by the provider. WUTV's HD feed was not available on the region's other cable provider, Atlantic Broadband, until 2012. The Time Warner Cable agreement was to expire at the end of 2010, and the two companies were late in reaching an agreement. In the event Sinclair had pulled WUTV from TWC, a separate agreement allows Fox programming to be piped in from out of market (likely involving Nexstar Broadcasting Group, whose stations have been used as out-of-market superstations in the past to temporarily replace in-market network affiliates displaced due to carriage disputes). This made WUTV particularly vulnerable to a prolonged blackout. It does not produce any local content, serving mostly as a "pass-through" for automated programming. Much of its syndicated programming can be seen on other cable channels (such as TBS, WGN and TVGN), and much of its daytime programming consisted of infomercials. The dispute was resolved without a blackout.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WUTV, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming until 2017.[8]

Canadian coverage

Up until 2003, Rogers Cable carried WUTV in Ottawa and London, Ontario; that year, Rogers replaced WUTV with Detroit owned-and-operated station WJBK as the Fox station available in these markets. The reason for the switch in Ottawa was twofold. The main reason was that MCI, the company which microwaved U.S. network television signals to Ottawa from Rochester, New York, had decided to discontinue this service (until 2003, the ABC, NBC, and CBS stations available in Ottawa had originated from Rochester). Secondly, Rogers chose Detroit as the new source for U.S. television network signals because Canadian broadcasters were concerned about the increased Canadian advertising revenues that Buffalo stations would attract, were they to receive an expanded viewing audience across Ontario. Since Detroit (which like Buffalo, is located adjacent to a Canadian media market) is a much larger market than either Buffalo or Rochester, advertising prices would be much higher and it would therefore not be economical for Canadian businesses to purchase advertising time on such stations.

Although WUTV was the Fox affiliate available in Ottawa, Rogers decided to switch to WJBK in order to ensure uniformity in the source cities for all U.S. network television signals. Rogers switched to WJBK in the London market because the signal for the CBS affiliate available in London, WSEE-TV (out of Erie, Pennsylvania) was of lower quality than that of Detroit's CBS station, WWJ-TV. Hence, Rogers' London system switched from WSEE-TV to WWJ-TV and, as in Ottawa, decided to switch its Fox affiliate from WUTV to WJBK for source city uniformity for the U.S. network signals.[9] Rogers continues to carry WUTV in both standard and high definition for customers in the Golden Horseshoe, including Toronto.

Cogeco Cable carries WUTV in standard definition for its customers in the Golden Horseshoe, but carries WJBK in high definition. For many years, WUTV was carried on cable in Quebec as far east as Gaspe. WUTV was once carried on cable in Montreal until 1997, when Vidéotron replaced WUTV with WFFF-TV in Burlington, Vermont (the Fox station that signed on the air at the time). Originally, its sister station in Rochester, WUHF, was carried on cable in the Western Montreal suburbs during 1995. Those stations were the first Fox stations to be carried on cable in Montreal. It also returned temporarily when WFFF-TV was off the air for a brief time in the mid-2000s. WUTV was also carried via microwave on cable systems in Central New York, including the towns of Sullivan and Chittenango in the mid 1970s.

Because of its Canadian coverage, the station plays the respective American and Canadian national anthems The Star-Spangled Banner and O Canada and a display of both countries' national flags during its sign-off for maintenance on early Monday mornings between 3 and 5 a.m.

Programming

Outside of the Fox network schedule, syndicated programming on WUTV includes The People's Court, Judge Judy, The Jerry Springer Show, Seinfeld, and Two and a Half Men, among others.

Additionally, the station carries Bills games that air via the NFL on Fox; they are at the least, given two games to air a season (when the Bills play host to an NFC opponent at New Era Field), but starting in 2014, can air more than two games via the NFL's cross-flex scheduling policy.

Newscasts

Until 2013, WUTV did not air news programming, making Buffalo the largest television market in the United States whose Fox affiliate did not offer any newscasts at all (Sinclair is believed to have paid a large fee to Fox to avoid the network's mandate that its affiliates carry local news). The station long opted to air syndicated programming instead of carrying news programming, as it is within range of the Toronto market and features advertising targeted at Southern Ontario viewers, along with the large number of stations within the Buffalo market and those receivable in the market from Hamilton and Toronto that already produce local newscasts.

This lack of local news programming ended on April 8, 2013, as the 10 p.m. newscast produced by NBC affiliate WGRZ channel 2 moved from WNYO-TV to WUTV. Along with the move, it was expanded to seven nights per-week, and the station also announced plans to air an encore of the final hour of WGRZ's morning show on a one-hour delay. These moves were part of an effort to better compete against the WIVB-produced newscasts in the same timeslots on CW affiliate WNLO—both of which have been historically more successful even though WGRZ has surpassed WIVB in most of its main newscasts.[10]

Notable current on-air staff

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ RabbitEars TV Query for WUTV
  3. ↑ FREE DIGITAL TV in Ontario
  4. ↑ Grit TV aims to capture men when it comes here shortly via sub-channel
  5. ↑ All Full-Power Television Stations by DMA, Indicating Those Terminating Analog Service Before or on February 17, 2009, Federal Communications Commission, February 16, 2009
  6. ↑ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.
  7. ↑ "UPDATED List of Participants in the Analog Nightlight Program" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. June 12, 2009. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
  8. ↑ Sinclair Reups With Fox, Gets WUTB Option, TVNewsCheck, May 15, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2003-579". Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. 2003-11-18. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  10. ↑ Pergament, Alan (March 27, 2013). Ch. 2's 10 p.m. newscast headed to WUTV. The Buffalo News. Retrieved March 27, 2013.

External links

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