| ATSC 3.0 station | |
|---|---|
 | |
| |
| City | Chillicothe, Ohio |
| Channels | |
| Branding | The CW Columbus |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner | Manhan Media, Inc. |
| Operator | Sinclair Broadcast Group viaLMA) |
| WSYX,WTTE | |
| History | |
| Founded | October 29, 1984 |
First air date | August 31, 1987 (37 years ago) (1987-08-31) |
Former call signs | WWAT (1987–1994) |
Former channel number(s) |
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| |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 21158 |
| ERP | 885kW |
| HAAT | 286 m (938 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 39°56′14″N83°1′16″W / 39.93722°N 83.02111°W /39.93722; -83.02111 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | cwcolumbus |
WWHO (channel 53) is atelevision station licensed toChillicothe, Ohio, United States, serving theColumbus area as an affiliate ofThe CW. It is owned by Manhan Media, Inc., which maintains alocal marketing agreement (LMA) withSinclair Broadcast Group, owner ofABC/MyNetworkTV/Fox affiliateWSYX (channel 6), for the provision of certain services.[2][3] Sinclair also operatesTBD stationWTTE (channel 28) under a separate LMA withCunningham Broadcasting; however, Sinclair effectively owns WTTE as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The three stations share studios onDublin Road inGrandview Heights (with a Columbusmailing address); WWHO's transmitter is located in theFranklinton section of Columbus.
WWHO also served briefly as the default CW affiliate (oncable) for theZanesville media market from March 2008 through early July 2008, afterWHIZ-TV discontinued WBZV, its cable-onlyCW Plus affiliate. The CW Plus has since been reinstated to the Zanesville cable line-up via aSpectrum-provided cable-only CW Plus feed branded as "Zanesville CW 13" in the market, which has no connections to WHIZ-TV. WWHO served as thede facto over-the-airWB affiliate for theDayton, Ohio, media market until 1999, whenWBDT (then a primaryPax affiliate) joined The WB; which relegated Pax to a secondary affiliation. WWHO also providedUPN service to much of the Dayton market over the air until 2006, when The CW was launched.
The station began operating on August 31, 1987, as anindependent station using the call letters WWAT, named after its owner, Wendell A. Triplett. It filled in a void created when future sister station WTTE joined Fox in 1986. The station originally operated from studios located on River Road (US 23) in Chillicothe. It operated a Columbus translator on W17AI channel 17 (nowWDEM, which is still owned by Triplett) until 1992, when WWAT was added to manycable providers in the Columbus market due to cablemust-carry legislation. It quickly established itself as a solid competitor to WTTE, despite its signal limitations.
Triplett sold the station to Fant Broadcasting for $2 million in 1994 and changed its calls to WWHO on April 15, when the on-air name "Who-53" was adopted. At the same time, the station entered alocal marketing agreement withNBC affiliateWCMH-TV (channel 4, then owned byThe Outlet Company). Until 1998, WWHO also served as an alternate NBC affiliate, airing the network's programming when WCMH was unable, due to its annual broadcast of Columbus'July 4fireworks displayRed, White & BOOM! or long-form breaking news coverage; an arrangement which began in 1996 concurrent with NBC's purchase of WCMH.[4]
WWHO remained an independent station until January 11, 1995, when it became a charter affiliate of The WB Television Network. WWHO (then branded on-air as "WB 53") retained this affiliation until theParamount Stations Group (a subsidiary ofParamount Pictures, whose parent company wasViacom) agreed to acquire the station in 1997, along with sister stationWLWC inProvidence, Rhode Island, and sellWVIT inNew Britain, Connecticut, to NBC in return; WCMH-TV ended the LMA at this time and WWHO was operated independently afterwards. At that time the station became a secondaryUPN affiliate, as UPN programming was moved from WTTE, primarily a Fox affiliate, to WWHO; while channel 53 retained a primary WB affiliation through the duration of its contract, the station nonetheless soon began calling itself "UPN 53".[5] In the fall of 1998, WWHO began to carry programming in the overnight hours from the upstart Pax TV network (nowIon Television), as Pax struggled to find a full-power affiliate in the Columbus market. This arrangement ended in February 1999, when Pax affiliated withWSFJ-TV (channel 51) inNewark, Ohio. In 2000, WWHO switched its primary affiliation to UPN, but signed a deal with The WB to retain its prime time programming on a secondary basis through what a Paramount Stations Group executive described as a "program license agreement".[6] The station dropped the channel number from its branding in 2002, becoming "UPN Columbus". On February 10, 2005, it was announced that theViacom Television Stations Group (the successor to the Paramount Stations Group as a result of Viacom merging withCBS in 1999) was selling WWHO andWNDY-TV (in theIndianapolis market) toLIN Television for $85 million, concurrent with a rebranding of the station as "UPN 53 WWHO".
The rebrand proved to be short-lived, as UPN and The WB merged to form The CW in 2006. WWHO was the obvious choice as Columbus' CW affiliate since it already carried both UPN and WB programming. However, when the first list of affiliates outside the core group of CBS-owned UPN affiliates andTribune-owned WB affiliates was announced, WWHO was not on the list. After some delay, LIN eventually agreed to affiliate four of its WB and UPN affiliates, including WWHO, with The CW,[7] making WWHO the largest The CW affiliate owned by LIN. (WSYX, the area's ABC affiliate (and sister station to WTTE), launched a new digital subchannel featuring programming fromMyNetworkTV in September of that year.)
On July 31, approximately one month before The CW officially debuted, WWHO rebranded with a new logo and slogan, "The CW on WWHO-TV". Once more, the station's channel number was de-emphasized. The station today currently goes by "The CW Columbus".Kids' WB andThe CW Daytime returned to WWHO after being absent from Columbus for five years.
In November 2011, it was reported that theSinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of WSYX and who also effectively owns WTTE, was in talks to purchase WWHO from LIN for an estimated $7 million.[8] This deal, if it were approved, would have given Sinclair control of four of the six largest network affiliations in the Ohio capital. This deal never materialized, however, and LIN filed instead to sell the station to Manhan Media. The sale was granted on December 20, 2011. In February 2012, after consummating the sale, Manhan Media entered into ashared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair, making WWHO a sister station to WSYX and WTTE.[9] (Manhan Media's owner, Stephen P. Mumblow, subsequently startedDeerfield Media to acquire theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) assets, including the licenses, of several stations that are being divested by Sinclair in the wake of its purchase of stations fromNewport Television. However, Sinclair would retain control of those stations through a local marketing agreement.) In a way, the LMA also reunited WWHO with WLWC, which Sinclair owned outright until April 2013 when that station was sold to OTA Broadcasting, LLC. Although Sinclair now controls WWHO, it initially continued to operate from separate studios several blocks east of the WSYX/WTTE studios; by October 2013, WWHO had moved in with WSYX/WTTE.[10]
Due to a conflict onBally Sports Ohio, WWHO aired a Reds game on April 4, 2023.[11]
WWHO has never produced its own newscasts, but has aired newscasts from all of Columbus's "Big Three" stations.
When WCMH-TV entered into the LMA to run WWHO, the deal included producing a nightly 10 p.m. newscast using WCMH-TV's facilities and resources. This made WWHO the first station in the market to air a 10 p.m. newscast; WTTE (then owned by Sinclair outright) did not air any newscasts until Sinclair's acquisition of WSYX in 1996, though sister stationWPGH-TV inPittsburgh launched a 10 p.m. newscast around the same time, meaning Sinclair may have started a news department at WTTE if not for acquiring WSYX. The 10 p.m. newscast lasted until 1998 when NBC ended its LMA with WWHO and Viacom took over the non-licensed assets of the station.
On February 10, 2005, LIN Television announced its intention to bring 10 p.m. news back to the station. This half-hour newscast was produced byWBNS-TV, and debuted on September 1, 2005. Unlike WCMH in previous years, WBNS chose to use its own station branding on the newscast rather than WWHO's, including WBNS' normal "10TV News HD" graphics beginning in 2007 (despite the fact WWHO's newscast was not broadcast in HD until mid-2008). On December 31, 2008, WBNS ceased production of WWHO's 10 p.m. newscast.
Currently, WWHO repeats the WSYXABC 6 News at 11 weeknights at midnight. It also airs the 10 p.m. "Fox 28" newscast on an overflow basis whenFox Sports programming would preempt it on WSYX-DT3; no alternate branding noting WWHO's affiliation is used on those nights.
On January 18, 2021, WWHO began airingThe National Desk, a Sinclair-produced national morning newscast sourced from Sinclair stations nationwide.The National Desk is similar in format toNewsNation produced by WCMH-TV parentNexstar Media Group, and competes locally with all of the network's morning news shows (includingGood Morning America on WSYX's main channel) as well as the local morning news on WSYX 6.3 that is an extension of the main channel's morning news. In September 2021, it also began to carry the evening edition ofThe National Desk for an hour after CW programming.
The station's ATSC 1.0 channels are carried on themultiplexed signals of other Columbus television stations:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming | ATSC 1.0 host |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53.1 | 720p | 16:9 | WWHO-DT | The CW | WTTE |
| 53.2 | 480i | Charge! | Charge! | ||
| 53.3 | Comet | Comet | WCMH-TV |
WWHO was one of only two full-power television stations in the Columbus market (the other being WTTE) that honored the originalDTV transition date of February 17, 2009. The station shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 53, at 11:59 p.m. on that date, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[14] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 46, usingvirtual channel 53.
For around two weeks after the official shutoff, the station was innightlight mode, carrying theNational Association of Broadcasters DTV transition video and local resources about the switchover and how to resolve reception issues for Sinclair's local stations.
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | 1080p | 16:9 | WCMH | NBC (WCMH-TV) |
| 6.1 | 720p | ABC | ABC (WSYX) | |
| 6.3 | FOX28 | Fox (WSYX) | ||
| 6.10 | 1080p | T2 | T2 | |
| 6.11 | PBTV | Pickleballtv | ||
| 6.20 | GMLOOP | GameLoop | ||
| 28.1 | 720p | WTTE | TBD (WTTE) | |
| 53.1 | WWHO | The CW |
On January 7, 2021, WWHO was launched asATSC 3.0 multiplex lighthouse for the Columbus area. Its ATSC 1.0 signals began being housed between WTTE and WCMH-TV. The same day saw the Fox programming formerly on WTTE's main channel moved to WSYX-DT3, meaning that WWHO's channel spectrum currently hosts programming from four of the six major networks.[17] The ATSC 3.0 signal includes three unique channels: T2, aFAST spinoff of Sinclair-ownedTennis Channel mapped at 6.10; PickleballTV, a sister channel to T2 focusing onpickleball mapped at 6.11; and GameLoop, an interactivevideo game-focused channel that has playable versions of games such asPac-Man andTetris mapped at 6.20.[18]
PLEASE NOTE: UPN 53 carries WB primary and UPN secondary, so our schedule is different than the national UPN site. UPN 53 is a dual-affiliate, carrying both WB and UPN programming.
With Paramount's WWHO Columbus and WLWC Providence about to make a long-planned switch from the WB to UPN…
A modest brick building surrounded by parabolic dishes here by the Scioto River sports three signs: WSYX, WTTE, WWHO.
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