History
Prior history of channel 24 in Baltimore
The channel 24 allocation in Baltimore was originally occupied by WMET-TV, which began broadcasting on March 1, 1967, as the first UHF station in Baltimore and the city's fourth. It was a low-budget and low-powered station that was sister to WOOK-TV/WFAN-TV in Washington, D.C. Both stations were owned by United Broadcasting Company (which is unrelated to the United Television that was owned by Chris-Craft Industries, which later owned channel 24). The original channel 24 was headquartered in the former Avalon Theatre on Park Heights Avenue. In 1972, both stations ceased broadcasting due to financial difficulties.
As WKJL/WHSW
In February 1977, Jesus Lives, Inc., whose president hosted a syndicated talk show of the same name, applied to build a new station on channel 24. [5] The firm promised to use the station "as a tool to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ". [6] A competing applicant, Buford Television of Maryland, eyed the station for possible use to transmit subscription television. [7] Jesus Lives ended the comparative hearing in December 1980 by buying out Buford Television's bid. [8] [9]
The construction of WKJL-TV went very slowly. The founder, Rev. Philip Zampino, moved to Florida, and the license fight had saddled Jesus Lives with legal fees. By 1982, the station project a late 1984 launch. [10] $75,000 had been raised to purchase and prepare a site in the Randallstown area, of $100,000 needed. [11] However, fundraising continued to lag, and so too did construction activities. Jesus Lives, which renamed itself Look and Live Ministries, accepted a $100,000 loan from Liberty Baptist College, owned by Jerry Falwell, in late 1984 to accelerate the process. [12] Right before going on air, Look and Live agreed to sell the station to Family Media Inc., a subsidiary of Christian publishing company Thomas Nelson. [12]
Family Media completed construction, and on December 24, 1985, channel 24 returned to Baltimore nearly 14 years after it had left, as WKJL-TV. [13] Family Media harbored intentions of possibly expanding with more stations to feature family programming and conservative-oriented news. [14] It also briefly tried its hand at a local children's show, Pop's Place with Stu Kerr. [15]
However, the Baltimore entertainment market had changed rapidly around the time that WKJL-TV started. Where Baltimore had one independent station, it suddenly had three: WBFF, WKJL-TV, and WNUV-TV, which had devoted its evenings to Super TV subscription service until March 31, 1986. The boom in independents coincided with a flattening of national advertising revenues, squeezing stations economically. In this environment, Family Media bowed out after less than a year and filed to sell the station to Silver King Broadcasting, the stations division of the Home Shopping Network, which was purchasing outlets in major markets. [16] In October 1986, the station added 18 hours a day of HSN programming, conserving six hours daily of its existing programming and a six-hour religious block on Sunday mornings. [17] The FCC granted full approval in January 1987, at which time the station began 24-hour HSN broadcasting with the new call sign of WHSW. [18]
As WUTB
HSN owned WHSW for just a decade before an unexpected buyer appeared. In 1997, Sinclair Broadcast Group signed a group affiliation deal with The WB that saw several of its UPN affiliates, including WNUV, switch to that network. This would have left UPN without a Baltimore station. Further, Silver King, which was preparing to debut its "CityVision" concept for major-market independents, did not feel Baltimore was large enough to support one. UPN half-owner Chris-Craft Industries, through its United Television division, spent $80 million to buy WHSW. [19]
On January 18, 1998, the WNUV affiliation switch to The WB took effect, and channel 24 began airing UPN programming under new WUTB call letters. [1] Days prior, the FCC had approved the sale of the station. WUTB was thrown together in four weeks, allowing UPN to remain on the air in the market without a single day of lost network programming. [20] In its first year, the station immediately began outperforming the national ratings for UPN. [21] Chris-Craft ran the station out of then-sister station WWOR-TV's facilities in Secaucus, New Jersey, and fed the station's programming to its transmitter site in Baltimore; this included WWOR's local news coverage of the September 11 attacks. On July 25, 2001, Fox Television Stations purchased WUTB [1] and the other Chris-Craft stations; the purchase led to some speculation that WBFF would lose Fox programming. [22] WBFF, along with Sinclair's 19 other Fox affiliates, would renew their affiliations in November 2002, keeping UPN on WUTB. [23]
MyNetworkTV era, sale to Sinclair
On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and the Warner Bros. Entertainment unit of Time Warner announced that they would shut down The WB and UPN and merge some of their programming on a new network called The CW. [24] [25] However, none of the Fox-owned UPN stations were chosen as charter affiliates for the new network, immediately dropping UPN branding; with many major-market stations needing programming, News Corporation created MyNetworkTV to service its stations, including WUTB, and others passed over by The CW. [26] [27] WNUV then affiliated with The CW in May. [28]
On May 15, 2012, as part of a five-year affiliation agreement extension between Fox and Sinclair's 19 Fox affiliates (including WBFF) through 2017, Fox included an option for Sinclair to purchase WUTB, exercisable from July 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013. In exchange, Fox received an option to buy any combination of six Sinclair-owned CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates (two of which were standalone stations affiliated with the latter service) in three of four markets: Raleigh (WLFL and WRDC), Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY), Cincinnati (WSTR-TV) and Norfolk, Virginia (WTVZ). [29] On November 29, 2012, Sinclair exercised its option to purchase WUTB through Deerfield Media for $2.7 million. [30] [31]
In January 2013, Fox announced that it would not buy any of the Sinclair stations included in the purchase option. [32] On May 6, 2013, the FCC granted its approval of WUTB to Deerfield Media, [1] which was formally consummated on June 1. [33] Sinclair began operating WUTB under a local marketing agreement, and operations moved to the WBFF-WNUV studio center in Woodberry.
TBD era begins
In July 2021, Deerfield Media began their affiliation swap process by using WBFF's digital subchannel of TBD. This replaced MyNetworkTV as its primary affiliation and now joins numerous others of Sinclair O&O's who had made the switch from either a "Big Four" station to a subchannel-only network affiliate.
