WRLM (TV) - History

History

WRLM began its broadcasting operation on UHF channel 67 as WOAC on April 23, 1982. Initially, the station operated as an independent station, serving mainly the Canton area. It featured syndicated reruns, movies, and local news updates. The station was later sold to Whitehead Media, who signed a local marketing agreement with Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks). Paxson dropped WOAC's entertainment programming in late 1995, and the station adopted an infomercial format provided by Paxson's inTV network (a predecessor to today's Ion Television). Shortly afterwards, Paxson purchased WAKC-TV (now WVPX-TV) from ValueVision, and as a result, both stations broadcast inTV from December 31, 1996, when WAKC's affiliation contract with ABC expired, until early 1997, when WOAC was sold to the Shop at Home Network, who replaced inTV with its own home shopping programming.

It is thought that Paxson sold WOAC because WAKC-TV had a stronger signal that better covered all of Northeast Ohio; WOAC's signal at the time was essentially limited to Canton and Stark County. However, WOAC's antenna was subsequently moved to the Brimfield site, and the power was boosted to five million watts — the maximum allowed for analog UHF broadcasting. This allowed the station to have a much stronger signal that rivaled that of other local stations. In early 2006, WOAC-DT began operating on channel 47, with a power of one million watts; this is the highest power that a digital television station can operate, and provides an equivalent coverage area to the analog signal.

On May 16, 2006, The E.W. Scripps Company announced that Shop at Home would be suspending operations, effective June 22, 2006. However, Jewelry Television took over the Shop at Home network operations around the time of the planned closure, and WOAC and other Shop at Home affiliates then ran a combination of programming from the two networks.

On September 26, 2006, Scripps announced that it was selling its Shop at Home stations, including WOAC, to Multicultural Television of New York City for $170 million. The sale of WOAC and sister stations in San Francisco and Raleigh closed on December 20, 2006. Shortly after Multicultural closed on the deal, all home shopping programming ceased in favor of infomercials, along with locally generated programming (such as Dining With Steve, which profiled restaurants in the station's area of service, and The Art of Living, which interviewed influential people in the same area), 24 hours a day.

WOAC ceased its analog broadcast on February 17, 2009, the original date for the United States digital transition, unlike most other Cleveland-area stations. Digital broadcasts remained on the pre-transition channel.

After Multicultural ran into financial problems and defaulted on its loans, the station was placed into a trust; the station would soon be sold to Tri-State Christian Television, a chain of Christian television stations. On June 25, the station's call letters were changed to WRLM, and the station began broadcasting TCT's religious programming. In addition, the PSIP virtual channel of 67 was discontinued in favor of identifying with its actual channel, 47.1. The station's call letters are named after Radiant Life Ministries (the licensee name under which TCT owns WRLM); however, they are not related to KRLB-LD in Richland, Washington, whose group of stations are operated by a similarly named "Radiant Light Broadcasting".