 | |
| |
|---|---|
| Channels | |
| Branding | WBAY-TV 2;Action 2 News |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
|
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| History | |
First air date | March 17, 1953 (72 years ago) (1953-03-17) |
Former channel number(s) |
|
Call sign meaning | Green Bay (callsign taken from former sister radio station WBAY (AM), nowWTAQ) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 74417 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 372 m (1,220 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 44°24′34.6″N88°0′6.7″W / 44.409611°N 88.001861°W /44.409611; -88.001861 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WBAY-TV (channel 2) is atelevision station inGreen Bay, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated withABC and owned byGray Media. The station's studios are located on South Jefferson Street in downtown Green Bay (across from the historicBrown County Courthouse), with aFox Citiesnews bureau on College Avenue on the west side ofAppleton, just south ofFox River Mall; its transmitter is located inLedgeview, Wisconsin.
The only television station broadcasting in Wisconsin prior to the FCC's1948 freeze on television licenses wasWTMJ-TV inMilwaukee. After the FCC's freeze ended in 1952, WBAY-TV became the second television station on the air in the state, on March 17, 1953. WBAY-TV was originally owned by theNorbertine Order of Priests, whose abbey is in nearbyDe Pere. The priests runSt. Norbert College in De Pere, and already operated WBAY radio (1360 AM, nowWTAQ) in Green Bay andWHBY radio in Appleton. Like WTMJ when that station started in 1947 – as the only station in the market – WBAY originally carried programming from all four networks of the day – channel 2 was a primaryCBS affiliate with secondary affiliations withNBC,ABC andDuMont.
ABC moved to WNAM-TV (channel 42, nowWFRV-TV on channel 5) inNeenah when it started up in January 1954. Then, NBC moved toMarinette's WMBV-TV (channel 11, nowFox affiliateWLUK-TV) when it signed on in September of that year. With the shutdown of DuMont in August 1956, WBAY was left as an exclusive CBS affiliate. The station upgraded its transmitter and began broadcasting network programming in color in the fall of 1956.[2][3] WBAY-TV would remain the only station licensed to Green Bay proper until the 1959 relocation of WLUK to the city. Locally produced programs were broadcast in color starting in 1966.
The station's studios in downtown Green Bay were built in 1924 as a formerKnights of Columbus clubhouse and later was turned into a privateRoman Catholichigh school during theGreat Depression when the Norbertines took over the building. The former gymnasium/auditorium is now called the WBAY Auditorium and is used as the studio for the station'scerebral palsytelethon. During the early years of WBAY, it served as the main studio until 1954 when an addition was built behind the main building. The auditorium has also been used for local theatrical productions. The station's newsroom is in the basement of the building in an area that originally held aswimming pool andbowling alley. The WBAY building also served as the home of the WBAY radio stations (now WTAQ andWIXX), which were later purchased byMidwest Communications in the late 1970s, but remained in the building until Midwest built a combined Green Bay operations facility/company headquarters in 2007 and a news-weather sharing agreement was maintained between WBAY-TV and its former radio sisters for many years before it was discontinued in favor of an agreement with WLUK-TV.
As a CBS affiliate, WBAY-TV benefited from that network'scoverage ofNational Football League games, primarily those of theGreen Bay Packers. The station carried its first Packers game a few months after signing on, and continued to air most Packers games until 1991 by virtue of CBS holding the rights to the Packers' conference, theNational Football Conference (for the 1992 and 1993 seasons, Packers games moved to WFRV when that station switched to CBS). Packers games drew up to a 90 percent share of the audience during the team's championship era of the 1960s underVince Lombardi (including the team's first two Super Bowl triumphs inSuper Bowl I andSuper Bowl II, the former of which was also carried by then-NBC affiliate WFRV), and the station carried the team's coaches' showThe Vince Lombardi Show. The station also originated the team's exhibition game coverage from the 1960s to 2002, with some exceptions. Main anchor Bill Jartz has beenLambeau Field'sPA system announcer since the start of the 2005–2006 season. The station continued to airMonday Night Football Packer games originating fromESPN beginning with the move ofMNF to cable starting with the 2006 until the 2015 season. For the 2016 season, WLUK-TV, the Packers' primary home by virtue ofFox presently holding the rights to the NFC, acquired the syndication rights to the ESPN games under a multi-year agreement.[4] It was the first time that WBAY did not broadcast a Packers game during an NFL season in its 63-year history, and the station would not carry another Packers game untilDecember 19, 2022, a home matchup with theLos Angeles Rams, as ABC began to simulcast selectMonday Night Football games with ESPN.
In 1974, WBAY was sold toNationwide Communications, which operated the station until 1993, when it was sold toYoung Broadcasting along with its two ABC-affiliated sistersWATE-TV inKnoxville, Tennessee, andWRIC-TV inRichmond, Virginia.
In 1991, CBS purchased the assets of Midwest Television to acquire its long-dominant affiliate inMinneapolis–Saint Paul,WCCO-TV. Midwest also owned channel 2's longtime competitor, WFRV. CBS considered WBAY a strong affiliate, and tried to sell WFRV and theirEscanaba, Michigan–based satellite station,WJMN-TV, after the deal with Midwest closed. However, after FCC rules were relaxed at the time to allow one company to own more stations, the network decided to keep the two stations as a result and switched WFRV/WJMN to CBS in 1992 (CBS sold WFRV/WJMN toLiberty Media in 2007, which in turn sold the stations toNexstar Media Group in 2011, Nexstar sold WJMN to Sullivan's Landing in 2024 and that station is now operated byMorgan Murphy Media and again an ABC affiliate as the satellite ofWBUP).
After it was announced that WFRV would join CBS, channel 2 then decided to take WFRV/WJMN's ABC affiliation; WBAY management insisted that the change take place on or near the anniversary of its sign-on date, March 17. Since that date fell on a Tuesday in 1992, WFRV and WBAY swapped networks on March 15, which fell on a Sunday.[5] This brought WBAY-TV's ABC affiliation in line with sister stations WATE-TV in Knoxville and WRIC-TV in Richmond, which had recently renewed their ABC relationships.
The station formerly preempted the first hour of the ABC lineup (7–8 p.m.Central) on Tuesday evenings during the football season to carry the local programTuesday Night Touchback, which was formerly known asMonday Night Countdown before it was moved in 2007 because ofDancing with the Stars and the departure ofMonday Night Football from ABC (for most of the 2000s, the slot was among the lowest-rated on ABC's prime time schedule, as was the case with the pre-MNF timeslot). Programs normally seen during that hour then aired later on early Wednesday morning afterJimmy Kimmel Live! during the football season. However, in November 2009, this was changed temporarily due to viewer feedback involving the preemption of the series premiere ofV, which forced that program to be aired after the Saturday 10 p.m. newscast; for the remainder of November,V aired at 7 p.m., whileTuesday Night Touchback preemptedThe Insider and aired before prime time in a truncated half-hour format. The station's football coverage eventually was merged into the station's newscasts, along with occasional special coverage which is usually contained to Friday evenings and preemptsShark Tank.[citation needed]
On December 1, 2004, WBAY launched their first permanent digital subchannel service, an internally-run full-time weather feed known then as "Stormcenter 2 24/7", now "First Alert Weather 24/7", featuring a four-pane display of rolling weather conditions, forecasts, traffic reports and advertisements; a seven-day outlook; current radar; and real-time current observations from the regional network ofWeatherBug reporting stations. It has never been associated with a national weather network and is run and maintained by the station's meteorologists. It simulcasts the main WBAY channel and goes into a commercial-free format during severe weather events.
Previously, WBAY-DT2 had been activated in the summer of 2004, carryingABC News Now during theRepublican andDemocratic conventions, along with that year'spresidential election. It also broke format in the spring and summer of 2006 to carry gavel-to-gavel coverage ofSteven Avery's trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach, and until the move of special coverage to a secondary webfeed, did so for other trials of interest.
WBAY was one of seven Young-owned stations whose management and operations were handled byGray Television as part of a proposed takeover of Young Broadcasting by its secured creditors (a plan tentatively approved by a New York bankruptcy judge on July 22, 2009; it was approved in late April 2010[6]). Under Gray management, this made it a semi-sister station in Wisconsin to NBC affiliatesWMTV inMadison andWEAU inEau Claire, and CBS affiliateWSAW-TV inWausau. The Gray management agreement ended in 2012 as Young returned to some financial stability and the pursuit of a sale partner.
In late January 2010, the station stoppedsigning off during the early morning hours on Saturdays and Sundays, after a major transmitter problem forced the station to reconsider this mode of operation. WBAY was the last commercial station in the state to start broadcasting 24 hours a day daily, the former off-hours on WBAY's main signal are now taken up by a simulcast of WBAY-DT2.
On June 6, 2013, Young Broadcasting announced that it would merge withMedia General. The sale was approved on November 8, and consummated on November 12.[7] At that time it became both Media General's first station in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, and the company's northernmost asset.
On March 21, 2014,LIN Media entered into an agreement to merge with Media General in a $1.6 billion deal. Because LIN already owned WLUK-TV andCW affiliateWCWF (channel 14), with WBAY and WLUK ranking among the four highest-rated stations in the Green Bay market in total day viewership, the companies were required to sell either WBAY or WLUK to another station owner in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to those rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibitsharing agreements.[8][9][10] On August 20, 2014, Media General announced that it would retain WBAY, trading WLUK and WCWF toSinclair Broadcast Group as part of several exchanges between other broadcast groups.[11]
On January 27, 2016, Media General announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Nexstar Broadcasting Group.[12][13] Because Nexstar already owned WFRV, it was required to sell that station or WBAY to another owner, though with the financial outlay Nexstar had invested into WFRV since its 2011 purchase, a swap for WBAY was unlikely despite the latter's first-place market ranking.
On June 3, 2016, it was announced that Nexstar would retain WFRV, selling WBAY to Gray Television for $270 million; this time in addition to the original Gray stations in the 2010 management deal, WBAY also became a sister station to CBS affiliate WSAW-TV and Fox affiliateWZAW-LD in Wausau, and dual NBC/Fox affiliateWLUC-TV in Marquette (which had been an on-and-off sister station to WLUK over the years), which Gray acquired more recently.[14][15] The sale was closed on January 17, 2017, with a possible removal of WBAY onDish Network due to Gray's previousretransmission consent deal ending averted with a renewal only hours later. The ownership transaction saw WBAY remove the Media General-mandated infotainment programHollywood Today Live from their schedule (airing in late night on tape delay rather than in the mid-afternoon; the program was canceled at the end of April) after March 3, along with Gray taking control of the station's website and mobile apps. With WBAY now having sister stations statewide, Gray began to distribute WBAY's Sunday night sports show,Sunday Sports Night: Cover 2, to their other stations with the start of the2017 NFL season.
The station sponsors the yearly "WBAY Boat Show" and the "WBAYRV andCamping Show", both held in the winter months, formerly at theBrown County Arena/Shopko Hall (which moved to the newexpo center in 2021), along with aBoy Scout door-to-door food drive ("Scouting for Food") in the fall, and the market'sToys for Tots effort with theMarine Corps Reserve.
WBAY holds the record for the longest running telethon on the same channel, as it airs the CP Telethon, which has been broadcast on the station since 1954 and benefits Cerebral Palsy, Inc., a local organization involved in the care of cerebral palsy patients and which provides a number of services from their facilities in Green Bay,Suamico,Kimberly, andTwo Rivers. The telethon airs for 22 hours from 8 p.m. Saturday to 6 p.m. Sunday during the first weekend in March, although prior to WBAY switching to 24-hour daily broadcasts in 2010, it broke between midnight and 6 a.m., as the station signed off in the overnight hours on weekends (the break allowed WBAY's Saturday syndicated programming to air without interruption). Past hosts of the telethon have includedGloria DeHaven,Raymond Burr,Dennis James (who would later host theUnited Cerebral Palsy national telethon),Dennis Weaver,[16] andTom Wopat. Currently, the telethon is a local-only effort, using local broadcasters and people to host the broadcast, and the funds raised benefit the local organization. Before the sale of the WBAY stations by the Norbertine Fathers, the telethon wassimulcast over WBAY (AM) (later WGEE, now WTAQ) and WBAY-FM (now WIXX).
WBAY's cerebral palsy telethon both pre-dated and succeeded the national telethon for United Cerebral Palsy, which ran on numerous stations nationwide from the mid-1970s to 1997.
The station continues to air aSunday Mass on Sunday mornings, as it has since signing on under the ownership of the Norbertine Fathers. After the sale of the station, however, theRoman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay began producing the Mass at WBAY's studio. The Diocese provided a presider,choir, liturgical coordinator, and producer while WBAY provided camera operators, atechnical director and audio technician.
On December 27, 2009, the Diocese of Green Bay ended local production of the Mass, instead choosing to contract with the Passionist Spiritual Center to carry their nationally syndicated Mass program fromRiverhead, New York, by mutual agreement of the station and the Diocese, a transition that was planned two years before and took priority after the September 2009 death of the Diocese's communications director and Mass producer Tony Kuick.[17]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion with: further information on the history of WBAY's news department. You can help byadding to it.(November 2010) |
WBAY-TV presently broadcasts 36 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays), along with a half-hour sports-focused extension of the Sunday late news known asSunday Sports Night: Cover 2 in football season (as mentioned above, that program airs statewide on Gray's stations as of September 2017). The station currently exchanges news stories withHearst Television'sWISN-TV in Milwaukee, in addition to airing that station's Wisconsin-focusedSunday morning talk show,UpFront with Adrienne Pedersen. Other sharing partners outside of its Gray sisters in Wisconsin areQuincy Media's slate of ABC stations throughout the western part of the state, andHubbard Broadcasting's ABC stations inMinneapolis–St. Paul andDuluth, Minnesota. The station utilizes theNEXRAD radar from theNational Weather Service office just north ofAustin Straubel International Airport. It formerly maintained an older self-owned Doppler unit until it mothballed the unit and removed its radar dome atop the station's downtown building in 2015.
WBAY's news operation is branded under theAction News title asAction 2 News, and has used the title since the mid-1980s (with theHD suffix added upon its transition to high definition newscasts), predating its ABC affiliation. The station rarely refreshes its graphical imaging, having only done so four times since 1995, but has maintained long-term dominance in the local ratings for most of its history. Until September 2012, when WFRV debuted its 4 p.m. newscast, it was the only one in the market to have a late afternoon newscast in that timeslot. In late 2011, the station released mobile applications foriOS andAndroid devices, followed by a separate weather app for both platforms in February 2013.
Because the station decided to maintain its noon newscast, WBAY-TV was among the few ABC affiliates that carriedThe Chew on a one-day delay (three days with the Friday edition) at 11 a.m. weekdays due to the network not offering an alternate feed for stations who wish to air the program at an earlier time, which was continued from a one-day delay onAll My Children since 1992; this caused complaints among viewers, especially during the holidays when episodes timed to them aired after their occurrence, making the recipes presented in them superfluous. As of September 14, 2015, this was rectified, withThe Chew moved to a same-day airing on tape at 2 p.m. and the delay is maintained for the replacement show forThe Chew,GMA3: What You Need To Know. The only times of year the station does not run a newscast are onChristmas morning, during the CP telethon, and the evening beforeEaster when ABC runsThe Ten Commandments yearly (due to the film presentation ending after midnight; a one-year shift to an 11 p.m. show was made in 2020 in order to provide up-to-date coverage of theCOVID-19 pandemic; two days later, the station also added a special weeknight late night newscast from Gray,Full Court Press Now, to their late night schedule for the next month).
The station began the process of upgrading to full HD production with a control room upgrade in the second quarter of 2011, a process hamstrung by the Young bankruptcy until Gray was able to begin operating the company's stations. The news department's conversion began on October 15 after that morning's newscast when construction began on a new set and the relocation of the older set (which had been in use with constant refreshing since the late 1980s) to another part of the building; the new set was completed by mid-December after a training/rehearsal period, using a common set design and graphics package used by all of the New Young stations.[18] On December 14, 2011, WBAY became the second commercial station in the Green Bay market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in HD (after WFRV-TV, which upgraded on June 23, 2011).[19][20] Stormcenter 2 24/7 was switched over on March 12, 2012, to a new presentation format with the current graphics package. After all four local news operations established HD or widescreen presences, WBAY dropped the "HD" suffix from their brandings on June 2, 2014. On November 1, 2019, the station unveiled its first new slogan in decades, abandoning "Coverage You Can Count On" for the new tagline "Your First Alert Station" to tie into thepush notifications sent from the station's news and weathermobile apps; likewise, weather is now branded as "First Alert Weather". A plan by Gray Television to build a new set to complement the rebranding was delayed to the last part of the second quarter of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the existing set moved to another part of the building, and the station taking advantage of most of the station's weather team presenting their forecasts from home through the early part of the pandemic during the build-out requiring no use of the weather center, allowing it to be constructed with full secrecy (those meteorologists who did need to be in the building stayed in front of the chyron, and their interactions with the anchors were adjusted to obscure there was a new set being built). The new set was unveiled on September 8, 2020.
On September 14, 2020, the station launched two additional newscasts; a 9 a.m. weekday newscast, along with a 4:30 p.m. newscast to create a2+1⁄2-hour news block in the mid-afternoon, matching WFRV's scheduling in the same time period. The 4:30 p.m. show is hosted by sports director Chris Roth and has a different format from the station's traditional newscast where Roth checks in with the station's reporters and local subjects in the news for longer-form features regarding those stories, along with an extended weather andastronomy segment with meteorologist Brad Spakowitz entitled "Three Brilliant Minutes" (Spakowitz went into semi-retirement in July 2021, but remains with the station for that segment, along with maintaining its weather systems, and as a backup meteorologist).[21]
From 2019 until 2022, the station carriedFull Court Press, a national Sunday morning talk show from Gray featuring Appleton nativeGreta Van Susteren,[22] who regularly provided commentary to WBAY-TV regarding national and local politics as part of her role as the station group's chief national political analyst. The program ended with Van Susteren's departure toNewsmax TV.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | 720p | 16:9 | WBAY-HD | ABC |
| 2.2 | 480i | WBAY-WX | First Alert Weather 24/7 | |
| 2.3 | The365 | 365BLK[29] /MyNetworkTV | ||
| 2.4 | WBAY-HI | Heroes & Icons | ||
| 2.5 | WBAYSTV | Start TV | ||
| 14.3 | 480i | 16:9 | Charge! | Charge! (WCWF) |
The station currently features their main channel and six other subchannels, with one set aside for the ATSC 1.0 channel forWCWF's third subchannel, which carriesCharge as WCWF serves as the market'sATSC 3.0 lighthouse station; likewise, WCWF carries WBAY's main channel in that format, still in 720p. WBAY-TV was the first commercial station in the market to carry subchannel services, doing so in July 2004 whenABC News Now was launched to cover that year's political conventions.
In late June 2010, WBAY-TV became the third commercial station in Green Bay to air syndicated programming (previously only the ABC schedule and ESPN HD broadcasts ofMonday Night Football) inhigh definition. WBAY-TV also began to produce some outside advertising for local businesses and internal station promos in both HD and16:9standard definition in mid-2010.
Since July 2013, the station uses theAFD #10 flag to present all programming in letterboxedwidescreen for viewers watching oncable television and over-the-air through traditional 4:3 sets, with the same done for 2.2. and 2.3 within the same year; a re-imaging in November 2015 saw the station's graphical image adjusted to meet this presentation mode. The 2.1 signal had aSAP audio channel added in late September 2013, allowing the station to transmitaudio description andSpanish-languagedubs of ABC network programming, along with a 2017 upgrade to allow automated description of on-screen weather warning scrolls per new FCC rules.
As of 2021, WBAY's secondary weather station transmits natively in 720p after an upgrade, and is available in high definition through the station's website and any simulcasts on WBAY's main channel.
In February 2023, the station added programming fromMyNetworkTV to the overnight schedule of WBAY-DT3 after theE. W. Scripps Company declined to renew its affiliation agreement forWACY-TV in the summer of 2022. The move of MyNetworkTV's all-repeat schedule to overnights on a subchannel has become an increasingly common fate for the service, especially for Gray stations. MyNetworkTV programming airs Tuesday through Saturday mornings from 1 to 3 a.m.
WBAY-TV shut down its analog signal, overVHF channel 2, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United Statestransitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transitionUHF channel 23,[30] usingvirtual channel 2.