WITI (TV) - History - Second Time Around With CBS

Second Time Around With CBS

In 1977 ABC had emerged as the top-rated American broadcast network. However, Storer Broadcasting had developed a bitter relationship with ABC. Four years earlier in 1973, KCST-TV in San Diego won a long battle to strip that market's ABC affiliation from Tijuana, Mexico-based XETV. Storer purchased the station a year later, but ABC was not happy with having been forced to surrender an affiliation with a VHF station (XETV) in favor of a UHF outlet (KCST) in San Diego. Perhaps in protest of ABC moving its San Diego affiliation from KCST to (then) McGraw-Hill-owned KGTV (a VHF station), Storer announced weeks into the 1976-77 season that it would change WITI-TV's network alignment back to CBS. Without hesitation, WISN-TV aligned with ABC, officially reversing the 1961 affiliation swap between the two stations. The switch occurred on March 27, 1977. In 1978, the station would move to new studios at the northwest corner of North Green Bay and Brown Deer roads in Brown Deer, just outside Milwaukee.

After Storer Broadcasting was bought out by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1985, the station underwent a series of ownership changes. KKR sold the stations to Gillett Communications in 1987; shortly thereafter, SCI Television was spun off from Gillett to take over the stations after Gillett's bankruptcy. New World Communications purchased WITI-TV and the other SCI Television stations in 1993.