WSES

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WSES
200px
Tuscaloosa–Birmingham, Alabama
United States
City of license Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Branding WSES Channel 33
Channels Digital: 33 (UHF)
Virtual: 33 (PSIP)
Subchannels 33.1 Heroes & Icons
Affiliations Heroes & Icons
Owner Howard Stirk Holdings
(HSH Birmingham (WCFT) Licensee, LLC)
First air date October 27, 1965 (1965-10-27)
Sister station(s) WGWW
Former callsigns WCFT-TV (1965–2015)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
33 (UHF; 1965–2009)
Digital:
5 (VHF; 200?–2009)
Former affiliations Primary:
Independent (1965–1970)
CBS (1970–1996)
ABC, via WBMA-LD (1996–2014)
Heartland (2014–2015)
DT2:
WBMA local weather (2008–2014)
DT3:
Heartland (2012–2014)
Transmitter power 300 kW
Height 657 m
Facility ID 21258
Transmitter coordinates Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Profile
CDBS
Website hsh.media

WSES, virtual and UHF digital channel 33, is a Heroes & Icons-affiliated television station serving Birmingham, Alabama, United States that is licensed to Tuscaloosa. The station is owned by Howard Stirk Holdings,[1][2][3] and operates as a sister station to Anniston-based Heroes & Icons affiliate WGWW (channel 40). WSES maintains transmitter facilities located near County Road 38/Blue Creek Road, east of State Route 69 near Windham Springs.

History

As an independent station

The station first signed on the air on October 27, 1965 as WCFT-TV. Originally operating as an independent station, it was the first television station to sign on in western Alabama. It was originally owned by Chapman Family Television, a consortium of eight Tuscaloosa businessmen who saw the benefits of operating a television station to serve west-central Alabama, in terms of both business and community service purposes.

However, the station did not return a profit suitable enough for its owners throughout its first two years of operation, an issue that led Chapman Family Television to sell the station to Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based South Mississippi Broadcasting, Inc. (later Service Broadcasters) in 1967, becoming the company's second television station, after flagship WDAM-TV in that market. The new owners rejuvenated WCFT by heavily investing in the station, purchasing new broadcasting and transmission equipment, and improving the station's image. In addition to carrying syndicated programming, WCFT-TV also aired network programs from CBS and NBC that were not cleared for broadcast in the Bimingham market by WAPI-TV (channel 13, now WVTM-TV), which WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) did during that same timeframe.

As an exclusive CBS affiliate

On May 31, 1970, when WAPI-TV removed CBS programming and became the exclusive NBC affiliate for the Birmingham market, WCFT-TV became an exclusive CBS affiliate; WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) in Birmingham (which had been affiliated with the network since it signed on October 1965, in a similar split arrangement with NBC) and WHMA-TV (channel 40) in Anniston (which had been an exclusive CBS affiliate since it debuted in October 1969) also became exclusive CBS affiliates, each serving different portions of central Alabama.

Even though Tuscaloosa is 58 miles (93 km) southwest of Birmingham, CBS opted to retain its affiliation with WCFT because, at the time, WBMG suffered from a severely weak broadcast signal that did not provide adequate coverage throughout most of the eastern fringes of central Alabama. Despite Birmingham's relatively close proximity to the city, the WBMG signal barely covered Tuscaloosa, even after increased its transmitter power to 1.2 million watts in 1969, providing a marginal to non-existent signal in much of west-central Alabama. As such, many cable providers in the western part of the market opted to carry WCFT as the provider of CBS programming for that area of the state instead. WCFT regularly trounced WBMG in that portion of the market (even in western areas of the Birmingham metropolitan area that could receive WCFT's signal), and unlike WBMG, was often competitive with WBRC-TV (channel 6) and WAPI/WVTM, especially with its local newscasts that focused almost exclusively on western Alabama.

Although the area was only served at the time by WCFT and Alabama Public Television satellite station WIIQ (channel 41) in Demopolis, Arbitron decided to annex Tuscaloosa into its own separate television market from Birmingham in 1977, placing it at a ranking below #170. On January 1, 1978, Service Broadcasters sold WDAM and WCFT to Beam Communications (which changed its name to Beacon Communications in June 1989). On August 20, 1990, Beacon sold WCFT and WDAM to Federal Broadcasting.

As a satellite of WBMA-LP/-LD

On May 5, 1994, Great American Communications (which would later be renamed Citicasters following the completion of its restructuring) agreed to sell WBRC and three other television stations – NBC affiliate WDAF-TV in Kansas City, CBS affiliate KSAZ-TV in Phoenix and ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina – to New World Communications, which would reach an agreement with Fox to affiliate twelve of its television stations with the network on May 23 of that year, for $350 million in cash and $10 million in share warrants.[4][5][6] Three weeks later, New World agreed to buy NBC affiliate WVTM-TV (channel 13) and three other stations – ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis, and CBS affiliates KDFW in Dallas and KTBC in Austin, Texas – from Argyle Television Holdings, in a purchase option-structured deal worth $717 million.[7]

New World subsequently decided to transfer WBRC and WGHP to a trust company it established, with the intent to sell them to Fox Television Stations due to conflicts with the FCC's ownership rules at the time (in the case of Birmingham, New World could not keep WBRC and WVTM since the FCC then forbade a single company from owning two television stations in the same market; the concurrent Argyle and Citicasters acquisitions also put New World three stations over the agency's twelve-station ownership limit).

Although it was now owned by the owned-and-operated station group of one network, Fox Television Stations had to operate WBRC as an ABC affiliate after the sale closed on July 24, 1995 as the station's affiliation contract with the network was not set to expire until September 1996, giving the network a year to find a new partner to serve as its Birmingham affiliate. ABC declined an offer by the Sinclair Broadcast Group to affiliate with WTTO (channel 21, now a CW affiliate), which was set to lose its Fox affiliation to WBRC, after it informed the network that it wanted to only carry the network's prime time and news programming, and had no intention of starting a news department for the station (when ABC entered negotiations to affiliate with WTTO, its Tuscaloosa-based satellite station, WDBB (channel 17), operated a news department, however it was shut down in December 1995).

In November 1995, Allbritton Communications purchased WCFT-TV from Federal Broadcasting for $20 million; it concurrently signed a deal with Fant Broadcasting to operate WNAL-TV (channel 44, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WPXH-TV) in Gadsden – which was also set to lose its Fox affiliation to WBRC – under a local marketing agreement. Then in January 1996, after terminating the proposed LMA with WNAL-TV, Allbritton acquired the non-license assets of WJSU-TV under an LMA (which included an option to eventually purchase the station outright) from Osborne Communications Corporation for $12 million.[8][9][10]

File:WBMA 2013 Logo.png
Logo used (with minor modifications) as a WBMA satellite under the "ABC 33/40" brand from September 1, 1996 to September 29, 2014.

Shortly after the WJSU deal was signed, ABC reached a unique agreement with Allbritton – which the network had a strong relationship with, particularly as the group's flagship station, WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., had long been one of ABC's strongest affiliates – in which WCFT and WJSU would become the new ABC affiliates for Central Alabama, with WCFT acting as the main station. This was the precursor to an April 1996 deal involving Allbritton, in which it signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with ABC that renewed contracts with the group's three existing ABC affiliates (WJLA-TV, KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma and WHTM in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) and resulted in two of its other stations switching to the network (NBC affiliate WCIV (now Heroes & Icons affiliate WGWG) in Charleston, South Carolina and WB affiliate WBSG-TV (now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WPXC-TV) in Brunswick, Georgia, the latter of which would become a satellite of WJXX in nearby Jacksonville, Florida when Allbritton signed that station on in February 1997).[11]

However under Nielsen rules, WCFT and WJSU would not have likely been counted in the Birmingham ratings books as, at the time, it designated Tuscaloosa and Anniston as separate markets. Allbritton's solution to this issue was to purchase W58CK (channel 58, now WBMA-LD), a low-power independent station in Birmingham that began operations on November 18, 1994, which would serve as the primary station for the purpose of being counted in local ratings diaries (the three stations would later be collectively rated as "WBMA+").[12] While the purchase of channel 58 was not a condition of the deal between ABC and Allbritton, it did pave the way for Anniston and Tuscaloosa to be merged back into the Birmingham television market in September 1998.[13][14] That move benefited all of the major Birmingham stations, as it not only increased their viewership in Tuscaloosa and Anniston, but also resulted in Birmingham's placement in Nielsen's national market rankings jumping by twelve spots from 51st to 39th place.[15]

On September 1, 1996, when W58CK became an ABC affiliate, WCFT and WJSU (the operations of the latter which Allbritton assumed control of under the originally proposed LMA, which was transferred to Flagship Broadcasting upon that company's purchase of that station) concurrently ended separate operations and became full-powered satellite stations of W58CK. WCFT's master control operations were migrated from its studio facilities near Skyland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa into W58CK's new studios on Concourse Parkway in Hoover.[16] WCFT and WJSU also ceded the CBS programming rights in central Alabama to WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT), which had recently upgraded its transmitter to provide a much stronger full-power signal throughout much of the central third of the state, and WNAL-TV, which took over as CBS's northeastern Alabama affiliate on September 1.

Even though WBMA was the official ABC affiliate for the Birmingham market, Allbritton chose to name the combined operation "ABC 33/40", using the over-the-air channel numbers of WCFT and WJSU to brand the trio of stations instead, making it appear as if WCFT was the primary station. In point of fact, WCFT's signal footprint covered the western portions of the Birmingham metropolitan area, providing at least Grade B coverage of Birmingham's inner ring, stretching westward to Columbus, Mississippi. Cable (and eventually, satellite) providers within the west-central part of Alabama received WBMA's programming through WCFT.

Acquisition by Sinclair

On July 29, 2013, Allbritton announced that it would sell its seven television stations, including WBMA+ (and in turn WCFT-TV), to the Sinclair Broadcast Group (which would purchase the stations for $985 million), in an attempt to shift its focus toward its co-owned political news website, Politico.[17] As part of the deal, Sinclair had intended to sell the license assets of its existing Birmingham stations, CW affiliate WTTO and MyNetworkTV affiliate WABM (channel 68) to Deerfield Media, and retain operational responsibilities for those stations through shared services and joint sales agreements.[18] At the time, no affiliation changes were expected.

On December 6, 2013, the FCC informed Sinclair that applications related to the deal need to be "amended or withdrawn," as Sinclair would retain an existing time brokerage agreement between WTTO and its satellite station, WDBB; this would, in effect, create a new LMA between WBMA+ and WDBB, even though the Commission had ruled in 1999 that such agreements made after November 5, 1996 covering the programming of more than 15% of a station's broadcast day would count toward the ownership limits for the brokering station's owner.[19] On March 20, 2014, as part of a restructuring of the Sinclair-Allbritton deal in order to address these ownership conflicts as well as to expedite the Allbritton acquisition because of them due to the FCC's increased scrutiny of outsourcing agreements used to circumvent in-market ownership caps, Sinclair announced that it would retain ownership of WTTO (choosing to retain the LMA between that station and WDBB, and continue operating it as a satellite station of WTTO), and form a new duopoly between it and WBMA+; WABM was to be sold to a third-party buyer with which Sinclair would not enter into an operational outsourcing arrangement or maintain any contingent interest, other than a possible transitional shared facilities agreement until WTTO was able to move its operations from its longtime studios on Beacon Parkway West to WBMA's facility in Hoover.[20][21]

On May 29, 2014, however, Sinclair informed the FCC that it had not found a buyer for WABM (even among the market's three existing major station owners, WBRC owner Raycom Media, then-WVTM owner Media General and then-WIAT owner LIN Media, neither of which operated an existing duopoly station in the Birmingham market, although the latter two groups were in the process of merging at the time) and proposed surrendering the licenses of WCFT and WJSU to the agency. Under the restructured plan, WBMA's programming would be added to WABM's main channel, which would result in the latter's syndicated and MyNetworkTV programming moving to its second digital channel on 68.2 (WBMA-LD itself, as a low-power station, would not be affected as FCC rules allow the ownership of low-power and full-power stations regardless of market ownership caps for duopolies).[22][23] Sinclair opted to retain WABM on the basis that its transmission facilities were superior to those of WCFT and WJSU; indeed, moving ABC programming to WABM would give ABC a full-power affiliate in Birmingham itself for the first time since 1996.[23] After nearly a year of delays, Sinclair's deal to acquire Allbritton was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014,[24] and was completed on August 1, 2014.[25]

Sale to Howard Stirk Holdings

On September 18, 2014, in preparation for the planned shutdown of WCFT and WJSU eleven days later on September 29, WDBB and WABM both added simulcast feeds of WBMA-LD on their respective second digital subchannels (17.2 and 68.2).[26]

Six days later on September 24, Sinclair filed an application with the FCC to sell the license assets of WCFT to Howard Stirk Holdings (a group owned by conservative political commentator Armstrong Williams) for $50,000. As part of the deal, Sinclair agreed to forego any agreements with HSH to operate the station.[27] Sinclair had reached a similar deal to sell (the original) WCIV in Charleston – another station that was set to be shut down as a result of a similar arrangement involving its MyNetworkTV affiliate in that market, WMMP, due to a grandfathered LMA that station maintained (and subsequently decided to terminate) with Fox affiliate WTAT – to Howard Stirk Holdings.[28]

As a result of the deal, WCFT remained on the air past its scheduled September 29 sign-off date. In addition, as the near-concurrent sale of WJSU-TV to HSH in effect superseded the proposed surrender of its license, Sinclair requested that the FCC hold off on canceling the licenses until at least ten business days after acting on the proposed transaction. In order for Sinclair to continue operating WJSU and WCFT and maintain their existing licenses until the FCC ruled on the petition and the sale to HSH, the two stations began providing interim programming as affiliates of Heartland (which both stations had been carrying on their third digital subchannels as WBMA satellites since the network launched as The Nashville Network on November 1, 2012) on October 20, 2014; at that time, WJSU was essentially converted into a satellite of WCFT. The FCC approved the transfer of license of WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV to Howard Stirk Holdings on December 4, 2014.[29][30][31]

On March 11, 2015, Howard Stirk Holdings was granted its application to change the call letters of WCFT to WSES;[32] concurrently, WJSU became WGWW.[33] On October 1, 2015, the station switched its primary affiliation from Heartland to Heroes & Icons.[34]

Digital television

Digital channel

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[35]
40.1 480i 16:9 Main WSES programming / Heroes & Icons

Analog-to-digital conversion

WCFT-TV shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 33 on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.[36] WCFT-TV's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 5 to UHF channel 33 for post-transition operations.[37]

Upon the transition, WCFT relocated its transmitter facilities to a tower near Windham Springs (located 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Alabama State Highway 69, near County Road 38/Blue Creek Road); the station's original transmitter tower (located off of Interstates 20 and 59, near the Skyland Boulevard exit) continued in use as the homebase of WBMA+'s Tuscaloosa "TowerLink" camera until the tower was dismantled in early 2013.

Newscasts

When the station became an exclusive CBS affiliate in 1970, WSES – as WCFT-TV – established a small news department, with the debut of TV-33 News, featuring story content focusing on Tuscaloosa and west-central Alabama that initially consisted of half-hour newscasts at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. each weeknight. Its newscasts were retitled Eyewitness News in 1977, remaining in use for the remainder of its tenure as a independently operated station. By the mid-1980s, newscasts were added on weekend evenings; morning and 5:00 p.m. newscasts debuted on the station during the early 1990s. In sharp contrast to WBMG, WCFT-TV's newscasts were able to gain traction against two of the three established television news competitors from the nearby Birmingham market that existed prior to 1996 whose signals transmitted into the Tuscaloosa market; its newscasts were typically strong performers in the ratings in west-central Alabama for most of the 26-year run of its in-house news department, ranking ahead of WVTM and perennial first place finisher WBRC.

As a result of Allbritton Communications' purchase of the station and subsequent announcement that it would convert it into a full-power satellite of W58CK upon its assumption of the ABC affiliation, Allbritton announced in the spring of 1996 that it would shut down WCFT's Tuscaloosa-based news department, and convert its Skyland Boulevard studios into a news bureau for W58CK's news department, retaining a limited staff of reporters and photographers to produce story content focused on west-central Alabama that would be included within the latter's newscasts. Channel 33's news department ceased operations and aired its final in-house newscasts on August 31, 1996. W58CK launched its in-house news department the following day on September 1, when WCFT and WJSU were merged into the "ABC 33/40" trimulcast; at that time, WCFT's locally based newscasts were replaced by simulcasts of W58CK/WBMA's morning, midday and evening newscasts. Allbritton transferred certain members of WJSU's news staff to the W58CK/WBMA news department; most notably, main anchor Dave Baird – who remains with the successor news department as of 2015 – was among the WCFT staffers that joined the new joint operation.

As a result of the station's sale to Howard Stirk Holdings and Sinclair's decision to move WBMA-LD's programming to a subchannel of WDBB, WCFT-TV discontinued all simulcasts of WBMA's newscasts on September 29, 2014.

On-air staff

Notable former on-air staff

References

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  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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