WUPW - History

History

The station went on-air September 22, 1985 as an Independent with an analog signal on UHF channel 36. The station originally had the call sign WDMA-TV but was changed to its present-day calls before its first sign-on. Originally, WUPW was owned by a consortium of local investors and private companies. It became a charter Fox affiliate on October 6, 1986. It was sold to Atlanta-based Ellis Communications in 1993. Three years later, that company was sold to a group led by the Retirement Systems of Alabama who merged with Aflac's broadcasting group to form Raycom Media.

After Raycom acquired the Malrite Communications Group in 1999 (which owned NBC affiliate WNWO-TV), WUPW was spun-off to Sunrise Television due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules at the time prohibiting common ownership of two stations in the same market. WNWO was longer-established and Raycom opted to keep that station over WUPW. Sunrise Television was absorbed into LIN TV in May 2002. (Raycom sold WNWO to Barrington Broadcasting in 2006 after its merger with The Liberty Corporation gave it ownership of CBS affiliate WTOL.)

Until 2001, WUPW was the only over-the-air television station in the area to air cartoons weekday afternoons as the local WB affiliate, WT05, is cable exclusive. In early-June 2007, WUPW, along with three other LIN TV-owned Fox affiliates switched their websites over to Fox Interactive Media's "MyFox" platform, becoming the first Fox stations not owned-and-operated by the network to adopt the site.

On October 2, 2008, Time Warner Cable’s contract to carry WUPW on its cable system expired and lost the right to carry this channel's programming as a result. On October 29, the station and Time Warner reached a contract for carrying both analog and high definition signals. However, customers in Erie County (except the immediate Sandusky area) and Huron County no longer receive WUPW on local cable. This area is included in Time Warner's Northeastern Ohio region and is served accordingly by Cleveland's WJW. WUPW later dropped MyFox in favor of a new site platform co-developed by LIN and Fox, spun off as the independent company EndPlay.

The station's broadcast tower is 1,253 foot high that has a seven foot face on each of its three sides. The tower was built by Stainless Steel Tower of Pennsylvania. The top section has a 53 foot aerial mast with a side mount dipole antenna for the transmission of analog television programs. The digital antenna is a side mount made by Dielectric and is mounted at 1,200 feet. It was completed in 1985 and is the property of LIN TV. WUPW airs regional and national sports programming from Fox Sports. Local teams that appear on on WUPW include Detroit Lions regular season games (from NFL on Fox). Since its normal coverage area reaches within 75 miles of the Lions' home Ford Field, it is part of the Lions' blackout area.

On January 11, 2012, it was reported that LIN Media would sell WUPW to American Spirit Media, a company owned by Thomas B. Henson, for $22 million. As part of the acquisition, WUPW entered into a shared services agreement (SSA) with Raycom Media's WTOL; three other American Spirit Media stations are located in markets with a Raycom-owned "Big Three" network affiliated station, and the American Spirit Media stations in all three of those markets are also operated by Raycom through SSAs. The acquisition and shared service agreement was finalized by the two stations on April 20, 2012. All remaining WUPW staff now operates from WTOL's facility, but WUPW's management and sales departments remain separate from their WTOL counterparts.