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| City | London, Ohio[a] |
| Channels | |
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| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner | |
| History | |
First air date | March 9, 1980; 45 years ago (1980-03-09) |
Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | "We Stand for Jesus" (referencing former religious format) |
| Technical information[3] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 11118 |
| ERP | 15kW |
| HAAT | 157 m (515 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 39°58′16″N83°1′40″W / 39.97111°N 83.02778°W /39.97111; -83.02778 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | iontelevision |
WSFJ-TV (channel 51) is atelevision station licensed toLondon, Ohio, United States, broadcasting theIon Television network to theColumbus area.Owned and operated by theIon Media subsidiary of theE. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios on North Central Drive inLewis Center, Ohio.
Even though WSFJ-TV is licensed as a full-power station, itsbroadcasting radius only covers the immediate Columbus area, as itshares spectrum withlow-power,Class ADaystar stationWCLL-CD, which transmits from a tower on Twin Rivers Drive near downtown Columbus.[4] Therefore, WSFJ-TV relies oncable andsatellite carriage to reach the entiremarket.
WSFJ-TV began operations on March 9, 1980. Originally licensed toNewark, 30 miles (48 km) east of Columbus, it was the firstindependent television station in Columbus, and the first new commercial station in the area since 1949. On paper, Columbus had grown large enough to support an independent station as far back as the late 1960s. However, the Columbus area is a very large market geographically, stretching across a large swath of central Ohio. The only available full-power allocations in the market were on UHF, and UHF stations do not carry well across large blocks of territory. By the late 1970s,cable television had gained enough penetration to make an independent station viable. Prior to the arrival of WSFJ, Columbus-area cable systems imported the signals of independents from nearby areas, such asWXIX-TV inCincinnati,WUAB inCleveland andWTTV inIndianapolis.
The new station ran onlyChristian programs, includingThe PTL Club,Jimmy Swaggart,The 700 Club,Another Life, and children's programming. In the fall of 1980, WSFJ began running secular programming such asIndependent Network News andNew Zoo Revue during the weekdays, along withWild Kingdom and other hunting and wildlife shows on Saturdays. However, the schedule remained predominantly Christian, and its policy regarding secular programming was very conservative so as not to offend the sensibilities of its mostlyfundamentalist andPentecostal viewership. It was the only over-the-air source of non-network programming in central Ohio untilWTTE (channel 28) signed on in 1984.
In February 1999, the station affiliated with Pax TV (later i: Independent Television, nowIon Television), running the network's programming from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and again from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. WSFJ also began to be seen on atranslator in Columbus, WCPX-LP (channel 48), which was owned by Pax's parent company, Paxson Communications (now Ion Media). Before this, Pax programming was seen overnights onWWHO, aWB affiliate then owned by theParamount Stations Group. WSFJ was the largest Ion affiliate owned by a company other than Ion Media Networks.
WSFJ was sold to Guardian Enterprise Group in 2004. In 2005, WSFJ began to acquire some family-friendly programming separate from its affiliation with Pax/i and rebranded the station asGTN51—short for "Guardian Television Network". Guardian Enterprise Group was located in the same office as WSFJ. Other companies under the Guardian Enterprise Group include Guardian Studios and Guardian Human Resources.
In March 2007, WSFJ moved its master control and studio into a facility atEaston Town Center, which generated the content that was sent to their new digital transmission facility inPataskala, off ofSR 161. That year, WSFJ launched its digital signal on channel 24.
Ion sold WCPX-LP in 2007, and in January 2008 it was relaunched as anAzteca América affiliate. At the same time, Ion programming disappeared from WSFJ, leaving it exclusively with family entertainment, religious shows, and paid programming. Ion's main program feed would later resurface in the market on the third subchannel of WCMH-TV.
In July 2008, it was announced that Guardian would sell WSFJ to theTrinity Broadcasting Network for $16 million.[5] Guardian retained its other properties, including the then-upcoming.2 Network, and acquired W23BZ, which had been a low-power repeater of TBN; it picked up WSFJ's programming when channel 51 began carrying TBN programming on October 1, 2008. However, by selling off its full-power station and moving to a low-power signal, GTN would find themselves at a disadvantage—being on a low-power signal, it lost itsmust-carry status; as a result, Guardian urged viewers to contact their cable systems to pick up GTN after the move to channel 23.[6]
As a TBN-owned station, WSFJ served as a pass-through for the TBN national feed with virtually no local programming. TBN has long been known for buying existing stations in order to get must-carry status on local cable systems. In 2011, the station began work on a new television studio inLewis Center, Ohio, inDelaware County.[7]
TBN entered into an option agreement with Ion Media Networks on November 14, 2017, which gave Ion the option to acquire the licenses of WSFJ-TV and three other TBN stations serving Ohio andIndiana–WDLI-TV inCanton,WKOI-TV in theDayton area, andWCLJ-TV in Indianapolis–all of whom had sold their spectrum in theFederal Communications Commission (FCC)'sincentive auction; Ion exercised the option on May 24, 2018.[8] The sale was completed on September 25, 2018[9] and the next day, all TBN programming was dropped for Ion Life (laterIon Plus), which had not been carried in the Columbus market previously. Ion Media has pursued a new strategy since 2018 of giving Ion Life a primary channel placement (mainly involving purchases and shuffles related to the incentive auction) in order to require local cable and satellite providers to offer the channel under must-carry provisions.
AfterE. W. Scripps Company ceased operations of Ion Plus, WSFJ changed its primary affiliation toBounce TV and addedGrit (later Newsy andScripps News) on channel 51.2. On May 5, 2024, Scripps News and Bounce switched their channel positions.
| License | Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WCLL-CD | 19.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WCLL-CD | Daystar |
| 19.2 | 720p | WCLL-ES | Daystar Español | ||
| WSFJ-TV | 51.1 | 480i | Ion | Ion Television | |
| 51.2 | WSFJ | Bounce TV |
For some time after TBN took over the station, WSFJ did not multiplex its signal, unlike the other TBN-owned stations. However, in July 2012, WSFJ upgraded its studios and equipment, and carried the TBN affiliated subchannels seen on all other full power TBN stations until September 2018.[11]
WSFJ-TV shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 51, on April 16, 2009, the date TBN-owned full-power stations permanently ceased analog transmissions.[12] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 24, usingvirtual channel 51.