WANE-TV


WANE-TV, virtual channel 15, is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group. WANE's studios and transmitter are located on West State Boulevard in the Tower Heights section of the city.

History

The station signed on the air on September 26, 1954, as WINT, originally broadcasting its signal from a transmitter in Auburn. While it was the Fort Wayne area's second television station, it was originally licensed to, and had studios in, Waterloo, north of the city. The station's original owner, Tri-State Television, took advantage of peculiarities in Federal Communications Commission rules to direct the signal to Fort Wayne, identifying as "Waterloo/Fort Wayne." Although the city was big enough to support three full network affiliates, the FCC had originally allocated only a single station, WKJG-TV on UHF channel 33, to the city. This circumstance attracted the attention of Congress and led to changes in how broadcast licenses were assigned.
The Indiana Broadcasting Company, owner of WISH-TV in Indianapolis and WANE radio 1450 AM, purchased WINT in 1956. The new owners changed the station's call letters to WANE-TV, reflecting its co-owned radio station, and moved all of channel 15's operations, as well as the license, to Fort Wayne. The analog transmitter remained at its rural Auburn location until 1957. Indiana Broadcasting became known as the Corinthian Broadcasting Company in 1957. Since then, WANE-TV and WISH-TV have become close sister stations and for a time used the same news theme as WISH-TV from 1997 until 2012. The stations share resources, which allows WANE to use WISH-TV's resources for breaking news, live events and sports coverage.
The station has always been a CBS affiliate, but also maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC until WPTA signed on in September 1957. During the late-1950s, WANE-TV was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. The station produced local programming shows such as The Ann Colone Show, a mid-afternoon talk and variety program. WANE radio was sold off in 1966.
Corinthian was purchased by Dun & Bradstreet in 1970 which in turn sold the station to the Belo Corporation in 1983. However, WANE left Belo with two stations over the FCC's television station ownership limit at the time, so the company sold WANE and WISH to LIN Broadcasting. In September 1999, WANE-TV acquired the local rights to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune from NBC affiliate WKJG-TV, which had run both programs starting in September 1990.
After the launch of UPN on January 16, 1995, Fox affiliate WFFT began a secondary affiliation with the fledgling network. The network's programming eventually moved to WANE-TV full-time in 2003 after it launched a new digital subchannel. WANE-DT2 also featured repeats of newscasts seen on the main channel as well as Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne basketball games. In September 2006, UPN programming was dropped after the network merged with The WB to form The CW.
On September 15, 2008, WANE announced LIN TV, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks had not been able to reach an agreement to renew carriage of WANE and other LIN-owned stations on the two cable providers due to a dispute over compensation for the stations' carriage. The company reached agreements with all television service providers in the Fort Wayne area, except for TWC and Bright House. The contract with those providers expired on October 2, 2008. At 12:35 a.m. on October 3, the LIN-owned stations were removed from TWC and Bright House systems nationwide. It would not be until October 29 when WANE-TV was restored to Time Warner Cable in Northwest Ohio. However, it did not reappear on Bright House Networks systems in Grant County, Indiana. Bright House viewers in Grant County now only have WTTV from Indianapolis as their CBS affiliate.
On March 21, 2014, Media General announced that it would purchase LIN Media and its stations, including WANE-TV, in a $1.6 billion merger. The merger was completed on December 19.
Shortly thereafter, after an aborted merger plan with Meredith Corporation, Media General announced on January 27, 2016, that it was being acquired by Nexstar Broadcasting Group with the new company named "Nexstar Media Group". As Nexstar already owns WFFT and since the Fort Wayne market is too small to allow duopolies in any case, in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibit future joint sales agreements, the company will be required to sell either WFFT or WANE to another company. Nexstar announced on June 13, 2016, that it would keep WANE and sell WFFT-TV as well as four other stations to Heartland Media, through its USA Television MidAmerica Holdings joint venture with MSouth Equity Partners, for $115 million.
On or around October 4, 2018, WANE-TV incorporated the CBS eye with the "15" and updated the logo. In addition, the station also retired the "NewsChannel 15" moniker after 26 years and rebranded to "WANE 15".

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP short nameProgramming
15.11080iWANE-HDMain WANE-TV programming / CBS
15.2480iIONIon Television
15.3480iLAFFLaff
15.4480iEscapeCourt TV Mystery

On August 7, 2009, WANE began offering Mobile TV using BlackBerry.
On December 2, 2011, WANE-TV announced that it had signed an affiliation agreement with Antenna TV, when it began airing on its previously-vacant 15.2 digital subchannel on December 26. The Antenna TV affiliation has since moved to WFFT-DT3 as of March 2018.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WANE-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, 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. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 15.

Programming

programming on WANE includes Rachael Ray, Jeopardy!, and Wheel of Fortune, among others. All of these programs are distributed by CBS Television Distribution.

News operation

WANE-TV presently broadcasts 24 hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; in addition, the station produces the sports highlight program The Highlight Zone, which airs Friday nights at 11:10 p.m. The station's weekend morning news runs for an hour beginning at 8 a.m. on Sundays with an earlier start at 7 a.m. on Saturdays. The reason for an inconsistent start time is due to CBS and children's programming obligations.
Unlike most CBS affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone, the station does not air local newscasts in the weeknight 5:30 p.m. timeslot due to the syndicated program Inside Edition. Additionally, WANE's weekend morning newscasts used to be the market's only one until WPTA debuted a competing weekend morning news in early November 2016.
After having its operations taken over by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation, WISE-TV's news department was combined with ABC affiliate WPTA. There was a decrease in ratings for the new Indiana's NewsCenter newscasts, which resulted in WANE-TV becoming the market's dominant news station since it was the only other news-producing station in the area prior to WFFT-TV beginning a nightly newscast in 2009. This was most easily attributed to continued viewer resentment towards WPTA and Granite for the elimination of WISE-TV's news department and arguably its identity and history. WPTA management said the changes were part of a longer-term plan that would need up to five years to take hold with viewers.
On May 18, 2009, WPTA and WISE-TV became the first two television stations in the Fort Wayne market to upgrade their newscasts to 16:9 widescreen enhanced definition. Although not truly high definition, the aspect ratio matched those of HD television screens. Broadcasts on WANE-TV were previously in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition, though by July 2012, the station began the process of transitioning its newscasts to high definition. The upgrade to HD occurred, along with the debut of a new set and graphics on September 10, 2012, making it the second station in the Fort Wayne market to have made the upgrade.

Notable former on-air staff