WFRV-TV - History

History

The station began life on May 21, 1955 as ABC affiliate WNAM-TV, originally broadcasting on UHF channel 42 from Neenah and serving as sister to the radio station with the same call sign. By the late 1950s, the station had moved its license to Green Bay, operating from studios to Little Chute. The station would also change frequency (to VHF channel 5), call sign (to WFRV), and, in 1959, network affiliation (to NBC). (In 1958, the station was also part of the short-lived Badger Television Network alongside Milwaukee's WISN-TV and Madison's WKOW-TV.) WFRV's early claims to fame included being the first TV station in Northeastern Wisconsin to broadcast in color (doing so after joining NBC), the first station to cover a live lunar eclipse in 1959 (a studio camera was wheeled to the station parking lot and aimed at the moon), and Green Bay's first color local news broadcasts (beginning in 1965).

In the mid-1960s, WFRV was acquired by the Norton Group, a company owned by the Norton family of Kentucky, who also owned Louisville's WAVE. (The Norton Group would change its name to Orion Broadcasting by 1969.) One of the Norton Group's early decisions was to move WFRV's transmitter, which was still located further south of Green Bay and closer to the Fox Valley (a legacy from its original days in Neenah) and as such put WFRV at a disadvantage to other Green Bay stations. The Nortons would gain permission from the Federal Communications Commission to move Channel 5's transmitter to Scray's Hill in the Ledgeview section of the town of Glenmore (located just south of Green Bay), one of the highest geographical points in the area and the long time home to other Green Bay broadcast transmitters.

On October 7, 1969, WFRV expanded into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan by signing on semi-satellite WJMN-TV in Escanaba. WJMN's creation was the result of The Norton Group's earlier agreement with the FCC to move WFRV's tower, as the station had to address short-spacing issues with another Channel 5 station, Chicago's WMAQ-TV (every analog channel allocation in the Green Bay and Wausau media markets was shared by a Chicago television station). As part of the agreement to transmit from Glenmore, Orion Broadcasting launched WJMN so that WFRV's service to the U.P. and far Northeastern Wisconsin could continue, and so that a 2nd station in central Upper Michigan could be added (before WJMN, WLUC-TV was the only commercial station serving the U.P.).

Orion Broadcasting would merge with Cosmos Broadcasting (a subsidiary of The Liberty Corporation) in 1981. Two years later, in April 1983, WFRV would affiliate with ABC for the second time (NBC would move to WLUK-TV). Later in the 1980s, WFRV was sold to Midwest Radio and Television, owned by the Murphy and McNally families, who also owned the WCCO stations in Minneapolis-St Paul. The Murphys and McNallys would announce a sale of Midwest to CBS in summer 1991; the sale was completed in early 1992. CBS had been affiliated with WBAY-TV for almost 40 years, and was unwilling to sever ties with one of its strongest and longest-standing affiliates. It put WFRV and WJMN on the market, but couldn't find a buyer. However, in 1992, the FCC relaxed its ownership restrictions, leading CBS to keep WFRV and move its programming there. On March 15 of that year, WFRV became become a CBS owned-and-operated station, with ABC moving to WBAY. This swap would make WFRV one of the few stations in the United States to be affiliated with all of the Big Three television networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) during its lifetime.

By 2001, WFRV would change its longtime Orion Broadcasting-era logo, used since the mid 1970s, for an earlier version of their current logo. One year later, in 2002, WFRV would become the first station in the Green Bay market to begin digital broadcasts. By 2003, WFRV would adopt the mandate CBS dictated for its stations, identifying themselves as "CBS 5" and adopting a green-and-gold logo to reflect their connection to the Green Bay Packers (WFRV would begin airing Packer pre-season broadcasts in 2003). The station's current blue-and-yellow logo and graphic scheme was unveiled on July 10, 2006, along with a new news set to coincide with the return to the station of former reporter/anchor Tammy Elliott.

The week of April 16-18, 2007, Liberty Media (a media company unrelated to The Liberty Corporation) completed an exchange transaction with CBS Corporation pursuant to which Liberty Media exchanged 7.6 million shares of CBS Class B common stock valued at $239 million dollars for a subsidiary of CBS that held WFRV and approximately $170 million in cash. WFRV and WJMN would then become owned-and-operated stations of Liberty Media, the only over-the-air TV properties they have owned. In May 2007, operations of the stations' websites would move from CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group to a redesigned site powered by Inergize Digital Media (then a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications now a division of Newport Television). By Summer 2007, WFRV would drop the CBS Mandate, slowly transitioning from "CBS 5" to simply "Channel 5," their identifier before 2003.

On April 7, 2011, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced it would acquire WFRV and WJMN-TV from Liberty Media. The $20 million deal was approved by the FCC on June 28, 2011 and closed 3 days later on July 1, when Nexstar tapped Joseph Denk to become vice president and general manager of both stations; Denk replaced Perry Kidder, who announced his retirement shortly after the sale was announced (Kidder had spent 37 years with WFRV and WJMN). The web site URL and operations of WFRV and WJMN also changed to Nexstar's in-house format (they had been maintained by Broadcast Interactive Media since April 2010); in the case of WFRV, the web address changed from "wfrv.com" to "wearegreenbay.com".

As of January 23, 2012, both stations have been rebranded to Local 5 and Local 3, a branding style which originated with Post-Newsweek Stations and which has since been adapted by several of Nexstar's operations.