History
The station launched on October 23, 1954 as WSAU-TV, a sister station to WSAU radio (AM 550) and the original WSAU-FM at 95.5, now WIFC. It was originally owned by a consortium of north-central Wisconsin newspapers that included the Wausau Daily Tribune-Herald, owner of WSAU-AM-FM.
Channel 7 originally operated from the Plumer Mansion, a Richardsonian Romanesque-style building that was located on N. 5th St in Wausau and torn down in 1972, one year after the station moved to its current home. The Plumer Mansion's castle-like exterior and a suit of armor displayed in the mansion inspired the station's graphic designer, Sid Kyler, to design a medieval-style "7" logo along with an accompanying cartoon mascot, the fully armored knight "Sir Seven." The logo and mascot served as representations of the station for several decades.
Sometime in the 1960s, the station's original owners sold it to Forward Communications. Forward sold off channel 7 in 1981, and it adopted its current calls, WSAW-TV. By the late 1980s, WSAW's logo would change to a square-style "7", which would be replaced by a stylized version of the circle 7 logo in 2006.
WSAW-TV has been affiliated with CBS since its beginning, although the station did have secondary affiliations with DuMont (until that network expired in 1956), ABC (until WAOW-TV signed on in 1965), and NBC (until WAEO launched in 1966). In Fall 2006, WSAW-TV added MyNetworkTV to digital subchannel 7.2 (subchannel 7.3 broadcasts "24/7 Weather").
On April 2, 2011, WSAW NewsChannel 7 became the first station in northcentral Wisconsin to broadcast local news in high definition from the studio and in the field. The market's first HD signal live from the field, was fed via satellite from Stratford, Wisconsin during Meteorologist Chad Franzen's Noon Show weather report. With the switch to HD came and revamp of their news set and new graphics. Along with the switch, "Sir Seven" returned, still true to the original in the 1950s, now in 3D/HD.
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