WUTV - History

History

WUTV began operation on December 21, 1970 as a general entertainment independent station, airing cartoons like Astro Boy and Yogi Bear, sitcoms such as Ozzie and Harriet and The Munsters, Sci-Fi shows such as Lost in Space, Ultraman, Invaders and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, along with old movies and drama shows. The station was owned by Ultravision Broadcasting Company, from which the "UTV" in the WUTV callsign originates. Ultravision was a company owned by Stan Jasinski, who also owned Buffalo's WMMJ (AM 1300) at the time; shortly thereafter, Jasinski spun off WMMJ to country musician Ramblin' Lou Schriver, who turned it into present-day WXRL. (The WUTV call sign was originally to be used for a station in Youngstown, Ohio with a construction permit on channel 21 that never aired; NBC affiliate WFMJ-TV purchased the permit and moved their station from channel 73 to their present-day channel 21 that the Youngstown WUTV permit originally was for).

Ultravision head and WUTV founder Stan Jasinski had first filed an application for the station's license in 1963. WUTV was the only independent station in Buffalo for many years and was the first commercially successful UHF station in Western New York; previous efforts on the UHF dial, including WBES-TV (channel 59), WBUF-TV (channel 17) and WNYP (channel 26) all had failed within a few years of sign-on. The station was acquired by Citadel Communications, a Bronxville-based company not related to the larger radio station owner Citadel Broadcasting, in 1984. In 1986, WUTV became a charter affiliate of Fox. However, in 1989, Fox moved its affiliation to WNYB (now WNYO) due to concerns about its ratings in Buffalo. Later that year, WNYB's owner, Act III Broadcasting, offered to buy WUTV, and Citadel accepted. The sale was finalized in June 1990, and Act III moved the Fox affiliation and WNYB's stronger programming to WUTV. It then sold WNYB to Tri-State Christian Television (Act III was known for such acquisition practices).

Abry became the owner of WUTV in 1994 following its purchase of the Act III group, and WUTV began to carry a secondary UPN affiliation in 1995 (the UPN affiliation subsequently moved to WNGS and WONS in 1997, then WNLO in 2003). Sinclair became the owner of WUTV in 1997 following its purchase of Abry, and bought WNYO in 2001, making WUTV and WNYO sister stations under more relaxed station ownership rules.

After Sinclair came to a retransmission consent agreement in February 2007 nationally with Time Warner Cable, WUTV and WNYO's HDTV signals are now carried by that cable provider locally. WUTV's high-definition signal was not available on the other cable provider in the region, Atlantic Broadband, until 2012. The Time Warner agreement was to expire at the end of 2010, and the two companies were late in reaching agreement. In the event Sinclair had pulled WUTV from the air, a separate agreement allows Fox programming to be piped in from out of market (likely involving Nexstar Broadcasting Group, whose stations have been used as out-of-market superstations in the past). This made WUTV particularly vulnerable to a prolonged blackout. It does not produce any local content, serving mostly as a "pass-through" for automated programming. Much of its syndicated programming can be seen on other cable channels (such as TBS, WGN and TV Guide Network), and much of its daytime programming consists of infomercials. The dispute was resolved without a blackout.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WUTV, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming until 2017.