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|---|---|
| City | Omaha, Nebraska |
| Channels | |
| Branding | First Alert 6 |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| History | |
First air date | August 29, 1949 (1949-08-29) |
Former call signs |
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Former channel numbers | Analog: 6 (VHF, 1949–2009) |
Call sign meaning | Woodmen of the World (original owner of WOW radio) + Television |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 65528 |
| ERP | 1,000kW |
| HAAT | 418 m (1,371 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°18′40″N96°1′38″W / 41.31111°N 96.02722°W /41.31111; -96.02722 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WOWT (channel 6) is atelevision station inOmaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated withNBC and owned byGray Media. The station's studios are located at theKiewit Plaza on Farnam Street near downtown Omaha, and its transmitter is located on a "tower farm" near North 72nd Street and Crown Point Avenue in north-central Omaha.
WOWT is Gray's only Nebraska station that is not part of its Nebraska News & Weather Network which includessister stationsKOLN/KGIN,KSNB-TV, andKNOP-TV.
The station signed on the air on August 29, 1949, at noon as WOW-TV; it was the first television station inNebraska and is one of the oldest in theUpper Midwest. It also claims to have gone on the air earlier than any station in four other Midwestern states—Iowa,Kansas,North Dakota andSouth Dakota. The station was owned by Radio Station WOW, Inc., alongside WOW radio (590 AM, nowKXSP, and 92.3 FM, nowKEZO).[2] The owners operated under aUnited States Supreme Court ruling which had forced theWoodmen of the World, who had founded WOW in 1923, to divest itself of the radio stations because they threatened the Woodmen's tax-exempt status.
The station was originally a primary NBC affiliate and secondaryABC affiliate; it lost ABC programming in 1953, whenKFOR-TV signed on fromLincoln as an ABC affiliate. However, in 1954, Lincoln was separated from the Omaha market, and WOW-TV resumed sharing ABC programming withKMTV (channel 3) until 1957, whenKETV signed on as an ABC affiliate.Meredith Corporation bought WOW-AM-FM-TV in 1951. The station claims it was bought by formerSecretary of the NavyFrancis P. Matthews in 1954, but this is false as Matthews had died two years earlier. On January 24, 1955, after the radio stations dropped their longtime affiliation with theNBC Red Network in favor of theCBS Radio Network, WOW-TV became a secondaryCBS television affiliate. This was part of CBS' multi-year, five-station affiliation deal with Meredith Corporation, as a compensation for Phoenix sister stationKPHO's initial loss of the CBS affiliation toKOOL-TV before it reclaimed that affiliation in 1994 (KCMO-AM-FM-TV also switched to the network several months earlier).[3] On January 1, 1956, WOW-TV officially became Omaha's CBS outlet, trading affiliations with KMTV.[4]
WOWT's most famous former employee is formerTonight Show hostJohnny Carson, who worked at WOW-TV in the early 1950s in his first television job as the host of a program calledThe Squirrel's Nest, where he told jokes. Another prominent former employee is former ABCGood Morning America reporterSteve Bell, who worked for Channel 6 during the early and mid-1960s. He was the only local reporter to go toDallas in November 1963 to cover the aftermath of theJohn F. Kennedyassassination. Bell left channel 6 in 1967 to joinABC News, where he remained until 1986.
In 1974, Meredith tried to sell WOW-TV toPulitzer Publishing Company for $8 million, but the deal collapsed and Pulitzer ended up buying KETV instead.[5]
When Meredith sold channel 6 to theSan Francisco-basedChronicle Publishing Company in 1975, it changed its call letters to WOWT on July 9, due toFederal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions regarding the usage of the same call letters by different owners at the time. Normally, channel 6 would have had to adopt a callsign starting with "K" when it changed its call letters, since the WOW call letters had been assigned before the current K/W dividing line was moved to theMississippi River. However, Chronicle wanted to continue trading on the WOW calls, and got a waiver from the FCC to retain a "W" in its calls. To this day, WOWT is one of the westernmost stations with a callsign starting with "W". After negotiations with the network, Channel 6 reversed the 1956 swap and rejoined NBC on June 29, 1986.
Not surprisingly, channel 6 owns a lot of firsts in the market. It was the first Omaha station to broadcast local programming in color, starting in the mid-1950s; it was the first station to provide live reports during its daily newscasts; it was the first of the three local stations to broadcast three live daily newscasts, at 5, 6, and 10 p.m.; and in 1993, WOWT was the first local television station to offer a website. During the analog era, WOWT-TV was relayed inClarinda, Iowa, on a UHF repeater, K58AE, which has since been shut down and deleted from the FCC database.
In 1999, Chronicle sold its media holdings (including its newspapers and four television stations) to separate buyers; WOWT was sold toBenedek Broadcasting viaLIN TV Corporation in a three-way deal forWWLP inSpringfield, Massachusetts. Three years later, Benedek Broadcasting was acquired byGray Television. In 2021, WOWT reunited with some former sister stations after being separated for 46 years when Gray Television acquired Meredith.[6]
Until 2014, WOWT was considered the default NBC affiliate for Lincoln, thestate capital, located 52 miles (84 km) from Omaha. Despite Lincoln being in a differentmarket, most Lincoln-area cable systems carried WOWT, and channel 6's analog signal decently covered Lincoln. It even went as far as including Lincoln in its legal IDs. Whendirect broadcast satellite gained more penetrationKHAS-TV (now KNHL) inHastings, which had long served as the NBC affiliate for the western half of the Lincoln market, was offered as the local NBC affiliate. However, most Lincoln cable systems opted to continue carrying WOWT. With the acquisition ofKSNB-TV inSuperior by Gray, that station took over the primary local NBC affiliation for Lincoln, replacing WOWT on the localTime Warner Cable (nowCharter Spectrum) system. Until 2016, WOWT was carried in standard definition on digital channel 83 in Lincoln and surrounding Spectrum systems. However, it is no longer available in the Lincoln area.
On January 7, 2015, Gray Television stations WOWT,WIBW (Topeka, Kansas), andKAKE (Wichita, Kansas; no longer owned by them) were dropped from Cox cable lineups as a retransmission deal expired.[7] The previous agreement expired on December 31, but a one-week extension was agreed upon before the current blackout. After a dispute lasting several days, a new agreement was reached on January 11, 2015, and the three Gray Television stations returned to Cox cable lineups.[8]
In October 2005, WOWT launched a seconddigital subchannel as aUPN affiliate, branded as "UPN Omaha". The subchannel became anindependent station branded as "62O", whenThe WB and UPN shut down in September 2006 (former WB affiliateKXVO (channel 15) now carries WB and UPN successorThe CW, whileFox affiliateKPTM (channel 42) carriesMyNetworkTV on its second digital subchannel).
After that, 6.2 became affiliated withUniversal Sports. However, when Universal Sports transitioned exclusively to cable and satellite distribution, WOWT dropped the network on October 1, 2011, replacing it with a local weather service known as "The Weather Authority Channel", an affiliate ofThe Local AccuWeather Channel. KETV (channel 7) dropped The Local AccuWeather Channel in September 2011 to switch its second subchannel toMeTV.
WOWT currently broadcasts 40 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday and2+1⁄2 hours on both Saturdays and Sundays); in regard to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it has the highest local newscast output of any broadcast television stations in the Omaha market.
In 1991, WOWT rebranded its newscasts fromAction News 6 toChannel 6 News. In 1995, WOWT launched a cable news channel called "NEWS on ONE", which featured live simulcasts and taped rebroadcasts of the station's newscasts onCox Communications channel 1. The channel was eventually rebranded as "News 4 You", concurrent with its move to Cox channel 4 in 2009. Also in 1995, WOWT's sports department launched a weekly half-hour sports news program titledChannel 6 Sunday Sports Extra, which aired after the station's 10 p.m. newscast on Sunday evening. It was the only program of its kind in Omaha, and was hosted from its inception by sports producer (now sports director) Ross Jernstrom. In 2006, WOWT lost its longtime spot in first place in most timeslots to KETV, who remains there as of 2020. In October 2013, the newscasts were rebrandedWOWT 6 News. On July 16, 2018, WOWT re-added a 4 p.m. newscast on weekdays, competing with KMTV's newscast at that time slot. WOWT had been the first Omaha station to have a 4 p.m. newscast, launching it in 1994. Its current moniker is "First Alert 6".
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WOWT | NBC |
| 6.2 | 480i | COZI | Cozi TV | |
| 6.3 | HandI | Heroes & Icons | ||
| 6.4 | ION TV | Ion Television | ||
| 6.5 | StartTV | Start TV | ||
| 6.6 | The 365 | 365BLK | ||
| 6.7 | Outlaw | Outlaw |
WOWT ended regular programming on its analog signal, overVHF channel 6, on February 17, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television (which Congress had moved the previous month to June 12).[10] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transitionUHF channel 22,[11] usingvirtual channel 6. WOWT andPBS member station KYNE (part of theNebraska Public Media TV network) were the only two stations in the Omaha market to end analog broadcasts on the original deadline.[12]
Upon the switch to digital, WOWT aired a 60-second farewell video bookending the analog era from beginning to end. It began with the words "Welcome to the Future", followed with archived film footage of WOW-TV's transmitter being turned on 1949 as it was covered by then-sister station WOW radio (now KXSP), outdoor scenes set to the song "America the Beautiful", and concluded with the station logo and digital call sign "WOWT-DT Omaha" set to theNBC chimes.Voiceover artistCharlie Van Dyke provided narration: "Sixty years ago, WOWT turned on its analog signal to be the first television station in Omaha. Now, join us for the digital age as we shut off our analog signal and transition to digital television. We look forward to the new journey ahead. This is WOWT, Channel 6."[13]
As part of theSAFER Act,[14] WOWT kept its analog signal on the air temporarily to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a scrolling message.
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state ofNebraska | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Nebraska | ||
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Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state ofMissouri | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Missouri | ||
| ABC | ||
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| The CW | ||
| Ion Television | ||
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