History
The station signed-on June 1, 1950 as WKZO-TV (calls standing for KalamaZoO). It was West Michigan's second television station to launch after WLAV-TV (now WOOD-TV) and owned by broadcasting pioneer John Fetzer along with WKZO radio, which Fetzer had owned since 1930. It carried programming from all four networks of the day--CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont. However, it has always been a primary CBS affiliate owing to its radio sister's long affiliation with CBS Radio.
From the start, WKZO-TV had reception problems due to the presence of WTMJ-TV across Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, also on analog VHF channel 3. In 1953, WTMJ moved to channel 4. This, in turn, forced WBBM-TV in Chicago to move from channel 4 to channel 2 as a condition of its purchase by CBS. Until WSBT-TV signed on in 1952, WKZO-TV served as the default CBS affiliate for South Bend, Indiana as well.
Channel 3 lost DuMont in 1956 after that network halted operations. Soon afterward, the WKZO stations moved to an old car dealership on West Maple Avenue in Kalamazoo. Channel 3 is still based there today. In 1960, Fetzer built a new 1,100 foot (335 m) transmitter near the northern edge of Gun Lake. The new tower was close enough to Grand Rapids to provide it with city-grade coverage, while still being within 15 miles of Kalamazoo as required by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations. Soon after channel 3 activated its new tower, the FCC collapsed West Michigan into one giant television market. WKZO then shared ABC with WOOD-TV until WZZM signed-on in 1962.
Fetzer also owned the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1956 to 1983. During this time, channel 3 frequently pre-empted prime time CBS broadcasting for Tigers baseball games, including preseason exhibitions. In 1985, Fetzer retired and began selling off his vast broadcasting empire, which by this time included, among other holdings, WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan and KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. The FCC had grandfathered existing radio-television clusters when it barred common ownership of radio and television stations, but with Fetzer's announcement WKZO-AM-TV lost its grandfathered protection. The Fetzer television stations were initially sold to Gillett Holdings. However, due to FCC ownership limits in effect at the time, WKZO-TV and KOLN-TV were spun-off to Busse Broadcasting. On December 5, 1985; Busse changed the call letters to the current WWMT (standing for We're West Michigan Television). In 1995, the Granite Broadcasting Corporation acquired the station. Freedom Communications purchased WWMT in 1998 from Granite along with sister station WLAJ in Lansing.
WWMT is the second longest-tenured CBS affiliate in Michigan (behind only WLNS-TV in Lansing, which signed on a few months earlier); its logos have used the CBS logo since the mid-1990s. In 2005, a company-wide consolidation of operations at Freedom's stations resulted in the move of WLAJ's master control and most internal operations to WWMT's facilities. Left behind was a skeleton crew of six people out of what began with eighty staffers in Lansing.
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced they would merge their networks tohether to become The CW network. On April 4, 2006 WWMT announced it would be a CW affiliate on a its new second digital subchannel.
It was reported Class A UPN affiliate WXSP-CA was in talks to join The CW, but due to that station's heavy reliance upon prime-time professional sports (this gets the highest ratings on WXSP) and The CW's concerns over preemptive programming, the two sides could not come to an agreement. As a result, West Michigan is one of the largest television markets where The CW was not available by off-air analog broadcasts and is one of the few stations the new network was awarded previously not affiliated with either The WB or UPN. WXSP joined MyNetworkTV on September 5 when the network launched and WWMT did the same with The CW when it began on September 18. From that date through early-December, WWMT-DT2 was known as "West Michigan's CW". It has since been known as "The CW 7". On June 12, 2009, WWMT moved to VHF channel 8 when the analog to digital conversion was completed. This had previously served as WOOD-TV's analog signal.
Freedom announced on November 2, 2011 that it would bow out of television and sell its stations, including WWMT, to Sinclair Broadcast Group. The group deal closed on April 2, 2012. As a result, WWMT and WLAJ joined Fox affiliate WSMH in Flint as two of the three Sinclair-owned television properties in the state of Michigan.
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