WEAR-TV - History

History

The station started operations January 13, 1954 as WEAR almost a year after WALA-TV began. Airing an analog signal VHF channel 3, it was founded by Charles Smith and Mel Wheeler. Initially, the station was a primary CBS affiliate while sharing ABC with WALA. When WKRG-TV signed-on in 1955, WEAR became strictly an ABC affiliate. In 1959, it was sold to Rollins Telecasting which in turn merged with Heritage Broadcasting to form Heritage Media in 1987. The station added the -TV suffix to its call sign on October 16, 1978.

In October 1997, WEAR and the other Heritage stations were sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group just as the remainder of Heritage Media was merging with News Corporation (the parent company of Fox). This sale also protected former longtime NBC affiliate WALA as the market's Fox outlet otherwise WEAR would have been forced to switch its network affiliation to Fox. Sinclair prohibited its ABC affiliates, including WEAR, from airing a Nightline broadcast in 2004 because the company felt it was anti-war rhetoric against the invasion of Iraq.

On June 12, 2009, WEAR left channel 3 and moved its signal to channel 17 when the analog to digital conversion was completed. On its second digital subchannel, the station used to carry The Tube until early-2007 when it was replaced with a standard definition simulcast of their main channel which lasted until around 2010. Since 2011, The Country Network has occupied this subchannel moving from sister station WFGX. In late-2006, Sinclair entered into negotiations with Mediacom (the main cable provider for parts of the Florida side of the Mobile-Pensacola market (including Santa Rosa County, Florida and Pensacola Beach). The two companies could not reach agreement over retransmission fees. As a result, Mediacom pulled all of Sinclair's stations (including WEAR) from its systems on January 6, 2007.

The dispute ended on February 2 when the two sides reached an agreement that restored WEAR to Mediacom systems. Upon the expiration of the 2007 agreement on January 1, 2010, Mediacom was prepared to drop this station once again from its systems. Sinclair agreed to a temporary extension until January 8 so the Bowl Championship Series college football games could be viewed on Sinclair's ABC and Fox affiliates over Mediacom. Eventually, a one-year agreement was reached which would keep Sinclair stations on the cable television provider until 2011.