WTTO - History

History

In Central Alabama, channel 21 was originally allocated to Gadsden as WTVS. It was one of the earliest UHF television stations, but could not gain any foothold and soon went dark because UHF tuning was optional at the time. The WTVS callsign was ultimately used by the PBS station in Detroit, Michigan.

WTTO began originally on April 21, 1982 as Alabama's second independent station (and the Birmingham market's first), signing on a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile. It was a typical UHF independent that aired numerous cartoons, movies, and sitcoms. The first program it broadcast was a rerun of the 1970s action series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It quickly became the strongest independent station in Alabama, and one of the strongest in the nation. The station's original owner, Chapman Broadcasting, sold it to Arlington Broadcasting in 1983. It was sold to HR Broadcasting in 1987. Despite being one of the strongest independent stations in the country, WTTO turned down the Fox affiliation when that network started up. Even without Fox, the station continued to prosper. HR Broadcasting sold WTTO to Abry in 1989.

Meanwhile, WDBB had its start in October 1984 as an independent station licensed to Tuscaloosa, also serving Birmingham. The station was owned by Dubose Broadcasting (hence its call letters) and operated from studios on Jug Factory road on the southern edge of Tuscaloosa. In the fall of 1985, WDBB gained the broadcasting rights to the Alabama Crimson Tide's football and basketball coaches shows. The shows had aired on WBRC and then WAPI, later WVTM, and this was a major coup for the upstart station.

In 1986, the station moved its city of license to Bessemer and built a new tower there in an attempt to improve its coverage in the Birmingham area. It signed on WNAL-TV (channel 44) in Gadsden as a satellite to serve the northern part of the market. The Fox network launched soon afterward, and WDBB/WNAL became the Birmingham area's Fox affiliate. However, neither station decently covered Birmingham and couldn't get on several large Birmingham-area cable systems. In January 1991, Fox moved its affiliation to WTTO after all efforts to get better cable coverage for WDBB/WNAL failed. Soon after, WDBB and WNAL began simulcasting WTTO for all but two hours of the broadcast day. By 1993, WNAL and WDBB simulcasted WTTO which nonetheless only called itself "Fox21". WDBB then moved back to its original transmitter near Tuscaloosa, but remained licensed in Bessemer. Within a few years, WTTO was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country.

Abry merged with Sinclair in 1994. A few months later, Sinclair began a Local marketing agreement with WABM, which joined UPN in 1995. Meanwhile, that same year, New World bought WBRC from Citicasters. At the same time, it bought WVTM from Argyle. This posed a serious problem for New World. It not only owned two stations in the same market, but now owned more stations than the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed. A few months later, however, New World and Fox reached a deal in which New World would switch most of its stations to Fox affiliates. This gave New World a chance to solve its Birmingham ownership problem by selling WBRC directly to Fox.

WBRC had been an ABC affiliate for decades, and ABC didn't want to lose too much share in what had been one of its strongest markets. It originally wanted to affiliate with WTTO, which by this time had become the third-highest rated station in Birmingham. However, at the time Sinclair didn't budget for local newscasts on its stations (it would not own any Big Three stations for another year). Also, Sinclair was only interested in ABC's prime time shows, sports, and ABC News, not a full affiliation. ABC turned down this offer out of hand in late 1995.

WTTO and WDBB continued as Fox stations until WBRC's affiliation deal with ABC ran out in September 1996. The two stations then became independents, though WTTO held onto Fox Kids after WBRC didn ot pick it up. In the meantime, WNAL was sold to Fant Broadcasting and became the CBS affiliate for Gadsden and northeast Alabama. That station is now WPXH-TV, the Ion Television station for central Alabama. In February 1997, WTTO and WDBB affiliated with The WB network. Before then, Birmingham had been one of the largest markets without a WB affiliate.

In the late 1990s, WTTO gradually moved away from movies, classic sitcoms, and cartoons to more talk/reality shows, court shows, as well as recent sitcoms (which they ran all along). WTTO dropped Fox Kids programming in the Fall of 2000 and WBRC did not pick it up. That year Fox stopped requiring its own stations from carrying it whether or not another station could be found. The main reason for this change was because the stations were having a tougher time making a profit running such programming. This was due to new FCC regulations in terms of the amount of ads allowed during children's programming as well as the content of such advertising. This made advertisers for children rely more on cable and caused syndicators to move their programming to cable.

Still WTTO continued cartoons in the afternoons as they ran Kids' WB programming until that ended nationwide in January 2006. The CW4Kids still runs on Saturday mornings. In September 2003, WTTO finally began to produce its own local newscast, titled "WB21 News at 9:00". However, in October 2005, the market's CBS-affiliate, WIAT, began producing the newscasts for WTTO. The newscast was cancelled October 13, 2006.

The WB merged with UPN in September 2006 to form The CW, a network featuring programming from both networks. Sinclair announced on May 2, 2006 that WTTO would become the CW affiliate. As a CW affiliate, the station was branded as "CW21".