TVW (WISC-TV) - History

History

TVW dates back to January 1, 1996, when it launched as WSC2; the channel started out as a second programming provider from WISC-TV for the Madison media market. At its launch, programming was made up of syndicated shows, limited local news & productions, regional sporting events (including Milwaukee Bucks basketball), and a national affiliation with Bloomberg Television. However, WSC2 was only available to one localized outlying cable area and a low-power line-of-sight programming service provider and not the main cable service in Madison, a setup that severely limited its potential audience.

In 1998, a deal was struck which brought The WB Television Network to the station; at the time, the WB was only seen on area cable systems through Superstation WGN, which dropped WB programming in 1999. The WB affiliation was critical in having Charter Communications finally add TVW to their Madison-area systems. To coincide with the addition of The WB, the station was re-branded TVW (which stands for Television Wisconsin, Inc., the license holder for WISC-TV). TVW carried the full WB schedule, along with a mix of syndicated programming, Wisconsin Badgers sports, and local shows produced by Channel 3 and Charter.

TVW aired as a Charter-exclusive channel on Channel 14 until fall 2000, when WISC launched their digital television signal on channel 50 and added TVW to subchannel 3.2, making it among the first permanent digital subchannels in the United States and allowing over-the-air reception of the channel. TVW would become WB14 in September 2001, though the "TVW" name was retained as an official identification.

August 2002 would see a network change for WB14: After ACME Communications purchased Madison's then-UPN affiliate, WHPN, the two stations would swap network affiliations, with WHPN becoming a WB affiliate (under the new WBUW call sign), while WB14 would change to "UPN 14" and become Madison's UPN affiliate. UPN had already had some history with WISC-TV, as the station carried UPN on a secondary overnight basis from 1995 until WHPN's launch in 1999.

On March 8, 2006, Morgan Murphy Media and Fox Entertainment Group announced that UPN 14 would be the Madison affiliate for the new MyNetworkTV service. The station's on-air name changed over to My Madison TV on August 7, 2006. The station continued to air UPN programming after midnight from MyNetworkTV's September 4 debut until UPN's closure on September 15.

During the week of July 1, 2009, My Madison TV reverted on-air identification back to TVW. Unveiling a logo absent of any network or channel identification, the rebranding was meant to emphasize a connection to Madison and Wisconsin in TVW's programming.