WAWV-TV - History - Return To ABC (2011-present)

Return To ABC (2011-present)

On June 28, 2011, Nexstar announced that, in a reversal of its 1995 affiliation change, WFXW would disaffiliate from Fox and rejoin ABC (as part of a deal which called for long-term affiliation renewals between Nexstar and ABC in nine other markets) effective September 1. Nexstar also announced that channel 38 would change its calls to WAWV-TV (which stands for ABC for the Wabash Valley) at that time. The move came after sister stations WTVW in Evansville, WFFT-TV in Fort Wayne and KSFX-TV in Springfield, Missouri lost their Fox affiliations following a dispute with the network over retransmission consent fees. It was announced on August 25, 2011 that the Fox affiliation would move to WTHI's second digital subchannel, which would also add the MyNetworkTV programming service as a secondary affiliation. This would make Terre Haute one of the only markets in the United States with all three historical commercial broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) as primary affiliations with the Fox and MyNetworkTV affiliations on a digital subchannel, but lacking an over-the-air affiliate of The CW (which is currently shown only on cable in the Terre Haute market). The last Fox program to air on WFXW was an episode of Buried Treasure on August 31, 2011, which ended at 10 p.m. ET. All Fox programming moved to WTHI-DT2 starting at 5 a.m. the following day. WAWV's current logo is the station's first that does not include the 38 station number in it.