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Call sign meaning | Voice of the University of Alabama (in reference to university-owned radio stationWVUA-FM) |
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| Translator | WDVZ-CD 3Tuscaloosa |
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| Website | wvua23 |
WVUA-CD (channel 7) is alow-power,Class A television station licensed to bothTuscaloosa andNorthport, Alabama, United States, affiliated with the classic television networkCozi TV.[1] Owned by theUniversity of Alabama, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities within the Digital Media Center atBryant–Denny Stadium on the university's campus in Tuscaloosa.
As WVUA-CD'sbroadcasting radius does not reach the entireBirmingham–Tuscaloosa–Annistonmarket, the station's programming issimulcast to the remainder of the area on full-powersatelliteWVUA (channel 23), which is also licensed to Tuscaloosa with its transmitter located atopRed Mountain, near the southern edge of Birmingham.
Despite being owned by theUniversity of Alabama System, the station is financially independent from the University of Alabama.[4] WVUA islicensed and operates as acommercial television station, and as such, most of its funding is generated from advertising revenue; WVUA/WVUA-CD is one of only two commercial television stations in the United States that is owned by a public institution, alongsideUniversity of Missouri-ownedNBC affiliateKOMU-TV inColumbia, Missouri. The station has a full-time paid professional staff including station and advertising sales executives, production and news department staff (including anchors, reporters and anews director), and relies heavily on University of Alabama students who act as on-air and production staff, and sales assistants.
The station's originalconstruction permit, for operation on UHF channel 49, was issued by theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1994 under thecall letters W49BO; the permit was held by Krypton Broadcasting, who intended to operate the station as a repeater of Birminghamindependent stationWABM (channel 68). Channel 49 first signed on the air in 1998 as WJRD-LP, broadcasting on UHF channel 49. It originally operated out of studio facilities located on Jug Factory Road in Tuscaloosa, that formerly housed the operations ofWDBB (channel 17) until the shutdown of its news department in December 1995. The station became a charter affiliate of Pax TV (nowIon Television) when the network launched on August 31 of that year; in August 1999, WJRD-LP became the secondary Pax TV outlet for the Birmingham–Tuscaloosa–Anniston market, when the network's parent company Paxson Communications (nowIon Media) converted itsCBS affiliate inGadsden, WNAL-TV (channel 44), into a Paxowned-and-operated station under the callsignWPXH-TV.
The University of Alabama acquired WJRD-LP in 2001, as part of a $1 million gift from the family ofAlabama Crimson Tide football coachPaul "Bear" Bryant. Once the donation was finalized, the station moved its operations to the University of Alabama campus. In January 2002, its call letters were changed to WVUA-CA (named after the call letters of the university-owned radio stationWVUA-FM (90.7)), after its license was upgraded toClass A status; the station subsequently became an affiliate ofAmerica One at that time.
In November 2004, Channel 23 LLC filed an application with the FCC to donate full-power station, WLDM (channel 23), to the university. Shortly after that donation was finalized in March 2005, the station's call letters were changed to WUOA (for the University of Alabama), taken from the original call letters of the university-ownedAlabama Public Radio stationWUAL-FM (91.5); the University of Alabama then converted WUOA into a full-power satellite station of WVUA-CA in order to extend its signal deeper into most of the Birmingham market. In 2006, satellite providersDish Network andDirecTV both began carrying WVUA-CA as part of their respective lineups of Birmingham area broadcast television stations.
In November 2008, WVUA-CA became a part-time affiliate ofThis TV, while continuing to carry syndicated programming and local newscasts to fill certain time slots during which the station does not air the network's programs (this results in periodic scheduling issues due to the network's movie-dominant schedule, as some films run into time slots where WVUA-CD runs syndicated programs depending on their length or scheduled airtime). Since the station did not carry all of This TV's programming on its main channel nor on one of its subchannels, WVUA-CD was the largest part-time affiliate by market size that did not carry the network's full schedule.
On May 8, 2015, the call sign of the full-power satellite station was changed from WUOA to WVUA. On June 3, 2015, WVUA-CA was granted a license to operate a digital signal on UHF channel 23, and amended its call letters to WVUA-CD.
In October 2020, WVUA's primary affiliation was withCozi TV. This TV is now on the station's third subchannel.
WVUA carries Cozi TV part-time on its main channel, running only the network's overnight films and classic television programs, and daytime and early prime time films, with a more limited schedule on Saturdays and Sundays due to its carriage of syndicated and university-related sports programs.
Through its ownership by the University of Alabama, the station also carries most team-related magazine programs focused on theAlabama Crimson Tide (which are mainly produced by the university's commercial television production unit, Crimson Tide Productions), including the team'sfootball coach's showTheNick Saban Show and the sports talk showsTide TV This Week andTider Insider.
Unlike most low-power or Class A television stations, WVUA-CD produces its own local newscasts, consisting solely of early-evening newscasts on Monday through Friday nights and a late-evening 10 p.m. newscast seven nights a week. The station presently broadcasts8+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with1+1⁄2 hours each weekday, and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).
The station's news department began operations at WVUA-CD's sign-on in 1998, providing local news coverage to west-central Alabama for the first time since WDBB and WCFT-TV (channel 33, nowWSES) shifted focus to the Birmingham area during the mid-1990s (the latter being a byproduct of WBRC's conversion into a Fox owned-and-operated station, which resulted in WCFT taking over the market'sABC affiliation as part of the "ABC 33/40" trimulcast arrangement involving Birmingham-based W58CK (channel 58, nowWBMA-LD) andAnniston-based WJSU-TV (channel 40, nowWGWW) in September 1996).
Approximately 80% of the staff employed with the station is made up of University of Alabama students, working in either paid or unpaid positions, with its operations drawing on the resources of the Department of Journalism and Creative Media of theUniversity of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences;[5] the remainder consists of non-student staff hired by the university. Students are involved in all aspects of the newsgathering and production process, with much of its reporting and most behind-the-scenes staff consisting of students in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media.
From its inception in 2002 until 2014, the station's operations were originally housed in thebasement area of Reese-Phifer Hall. On June 12, 2012, WVUA began broadcasting portions of its local newscasts, particularly weather segments, inhigh definition.[6] In April 2014, WVUA/WUOA migrated its operations into the newly completed Digital Media Center atBryant–Denny Stadium.[7]
The stations' signals aremultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
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| 3.1 / 7.1 / 23.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WVUA | Cozi TV |
| 3.2 / 7.2 / 23.2 | 480i | 4:3 | Shop LC | Shop LC |
| 7.3 / 23.3 | Movie | MovieSphere Gold | ||
| 3.3 / 23.4 | RADAR |
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Because it was granted an originalconstruction permit after the FCC finalized theDTV channel allotment plan on April 21, 1997,[10] the then-WUOA did not receive a companion channel for a digitaltelevision station. Instead, on June 12, 2009, the end of theconversion period from analog to digital transmissions for full-power television stations in the United States, WUOA was required to turn off its analog signal andflash-cut its digital signal into operation. The university was granted a construction permit for WUOA to move to channel 6, usingvirtual channel 23.
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