WBBZ-TV

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WBBZ-TV is a television station licensed to Springville, New York, serving the Buffalo television market. It transmits on channel 7 but is virtually reassigned via PSIP to channel 67. It is owned by ITV of Buffalo, a company controlled by former news photographer Philip A. Arno, and carries programming from Memorable Entertainment Television. It is carried on Time Warner Cable channel 5, DirecTV channel 067, Dish Network channel 5, and Verizon FiOS Local Broadcast channel 5. The studio and business office are located at the Eastern Hills Mall, 4545 Transit Road, Clarence, NY. The transmitter, near Springville in the hills of southern Erie County, makes the over-the-air signal viewable throughout the Buffalo metro area.

History

Early years

The station was founded as WNGS in 1996 by Bill Smith, an amateur radio enthusiast, and his wife, Caroline Powley, daughter of late LPTV innovator John R. Powley, who built several full-service UHF TV stations using economical "ham" radio equipment and surplus educational TV "translator" transmitters.

WNGS initially broadcast on analog channel 67. Although licensed as a full-power station, it transmitted its analog signal at low power with a directional northward pattern covering much of the Southtowns but not reaching the city proper. Radiated power in the direction of Buffalo was limited due to a treaty with Canada that protected the coverage area of fellow Channel 67 station CHCH-TV-3, a Midland-based satellite station of the Hamilton-based independent station. Thus, from the city of Buffalo northward, it was only available on cable or satellite, and in certain places in the Southern Tier, it was not available at all.

The station started with an infomercial/home shopping format, but added general-entertainment barter talk shows, cartoons and low-budget sitcoms in 1997. WNGS became a UPN affiliate in April 1998, but lost the affiliation to LIN TV-owned WNLO in January 2003. Shortly afterward, WNGS dropped most of its entertainment programming in favor of infomercials.

For most of its time as an independent and UPN affiliate, WNGS operated out of West Valley, New York.

Olean low-powered station WONS-LP shared the UPN affiliation under mutual agreement with WNGS until the network was picked up by WNLO, at which time the station began carrying programming from The Sportsman Channel. At least one television listings provider (Decisionmark Corporation, then-owner of TitanTV which is now owned by Broadcast Interactive Media) had erroneously listed WONS as a translator of WNGS. As of 2011, WONS is affiliated with the America One network.

Equity and WKBW era

After Equity Broadcasting took ownership of the station, WNGS became an affiliate of Equity's Retro Television Network (RTN). During Equity's ownership, the station was controlled by Granite Broadcasting, owner of WKBW-TV, under a local marketing agreement. As part of the agreement, WNGS was carried on WKBW's digital subchannel. Along with RTN programming, WNGS aired sports programming from WKBW, repeats of Buffalo Bills preseason games, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, and New York Mets games that are broadcast over-the-air by WKYC (Channel 3) in Cleveland, WWOR (Channel 9) and WPIX (Channel 11) in New York City, respectively.

Equity sold RTN to Luken Communications in 2008. Following a dispute between Equity and Luken, all of Equity's RTN affiliates, including WNGS, disaffiliated from the network on January 4, 2009. Non-RTN WNGS programs, such as sports and locally-produced Off Beat Cinema, were not affected. Following this, WNGS switched its affiliation to This TV. The RTN affiliation in the Buffalo market has since moved to a new subchannel of WGRZ, channel 2.3.

Temporary shutdown and return

On April 16, 2009, as a result of it bankruptcy, Equity Media Holdings auctioned off 60 of its television stations. WNGS was sold to Daystar Television Network, who already owned WDTB-LP in nearby Hamburg, along with six other full-service stations and nine LPTV and Class A stations for a total of US$7.4 million. Also around this time, WNGS's agreement with WKBW ended. The sale was approved by the FCC in August 2009. WNGS went off the air on June 12, 2009 after not being able to complete its digital transition in time, and remained silent for almost a year. Meanwhile, on May 14, 2010, Daystar filed to sell the station to ITV of Buffalo, LLC, a partnership owned by local TV personalities Philip Arno and Donald Angelo, for $2,750,000, with plans to program the station from Clarence. Angelo later dropped his involvement in the station.

WNGS finally completed its digital transmitter and returned to the air in late May 2010, carrying Daystar programming. Coincidentally, by May 24, Granite reactivated the old RTN-11 Web site, complete with updated news from WKBW, even though the RTN affiliation is now on another station; the site was subsequently removed once again. WKBW retained the former wngstv.com and/or rtn11.com domains (though the latter is of no use any longer as WNGS is neither an RTV affiliate or on cable channel 11 any longer). The sale was completed on September 16, 2010; at that time, the station rejoined This TV. However, as part of the deal, Daystar must remain on WNGS in the form of a digital subchannel for 10 years, a deal which was previously made with KOCE-TV in the Los Angeles area as a compromise after Daystar was unable to purchase that station.

Relaunch as WBBZ

WNGS changed its its call sign to WBBZ-TV at 5:00 am on August 1, 2011, as part of a drastic increase in the channel's local programming. The This TV affiliation moved to a digital subchannel, while MeTV takes over the main channel. WBBZ's new studio is in the Eastern Hills Mall which is located in an eastern suburb of Buffalo. Arno had preferred to use the Studio Arena Theater but had been unable to secure a deal since its shuttering; he also passed on the Buffalo Central Terminal due to the building's state of disrepair.

Programming

WBBZ currently runs a straight feed of MeTV, with the exception of I Love Lucy and Cheers, which will be added in September due to a rights dispute with WGRZ. Cash Cab, a carryover from the station's time as This TV, will air in the latter's time slots until then, while I Love Lucy will be replaced by its successor, The Lucy Show. A marathon of The Lucy Show will air on August 6, in conjunction with LucyFest in Jamestown, New York that weekend.

Among the programming Arno seeks to add to the station beginning in fall 2011 includes "a morning show, a game show, a local (late-night talk show) with a local comedian as host, a local talk show version of ABC’s The View (which will likely include former Buffalo TV personalities Susan Hunt and Susan Banks) and a show geared to the military (...) a local Battle of the Bands and a show that reviews video games that is aimed at younger viewers." Also slated for the future are a sports talk show hosted by Sabres Hockey Network personalities Rob Ray and Danny Gare, "a weekly made-for-TV play produced in conjunction with a local theater company drawing on its actors and production crew," and a wine-tasting show. The morning show is expected to launch in September, while the local version of The View is slated to debut in October.

Digital television

WNGS, formerly on a digital subchannel of WKBW-TV, had planned to start its own digital signal on WKBW-TV's former analog location, channel 7, at the end of 2009 digital transition.

There were concerns that this could cause interference in some areas of the Southern Tier as WBNG (which covered an area all the way up to WKBW's coverage boundary in Steuben County) uses channel 7 as its digital signal, but WBNG apparently reduced its coverage area, ceding some of its western territory to another station, which alleviated these concerns.

As of December 2008 both the ability of WNGS to transition to its own digital facilities and its ability to continue broadcasting were directly jeopardized as (according to the station's most recent DTV status report), "On December 8, 2008, the licensee's parent corporation filed a petition for bankruptcy relief under chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, case #4:08-BK-17646-M, US district court for the district of Arkansas. This station must obtain post-petition financing and court approval before digital facilities may be constructed. The station will cease analogue broadcasting on June 12, 2009, regardless of whether digital facilities are operational by that date. The station will file authority to remain silent if so required by the FCC."

While the station had applied for an extension of its DTV construction permit, it was unable to continue analog operations as it is not only a full-service station, but it also operated on a frequency which is to be reallocated for non-broadcast use at the end of the digital television transition. Further complicating matters is that Kitchener, Ontario's CKCO-TV, a station serving portions of southern Ontario with a signal that penetrates Western New York, being assigned the same channel 7 by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for its own digital signal should it apply to simulcast digitally before its analog channel 13 broadcasts end in August 2011, when that station would move digital broadcasts to channel 13.

Daystar's last-minute proposal to transmit from the WNYO-TV broadcasting tower in Folsomdale, New York instead of using WKBW's Colden tower was rejected due to WNYO/Sinclair's last-minute shift of broadcasting on its lower power digital channel 34 from Grand Island, and receiving FCC approval to transfer its digital signal to a full-power channel 49 transmission from Folsomdale on June 12.

Because WNGS failed to begin digital broadcasts on channel 7 after June 12, 2009, local cable systems had an out to no longer carry the station despite WNGS's direct fiber connection to the providers from West Valley. As the Buffalo market stretches west to near Erie, east towards Rochester, north towards Toronto and several counties in northern Pennsylvania in an area with several varieties of terrain, pay television service is almost a requirement for optimum viewing in outlying areas, resulting in the Buffalo–Hamilton–Toronto area having one of the highest pay-television penetration rates in the Northeast. Very few households watch the over-the-signals of many of the stations, resulting in serious trouble for WNGS if it were unable to continue maintaining its must-carry status. While Daystar's existing analog translator stations could maintain the station's service in the area, WDTB-LP only covers small portions of the city of Buffalo, far from providing market-wide coverage by any means.

On June 12, 2009, WNGS switched to a "nightlight" service, broadcasting only a still screen reading "WNGS has ceased operations as of June 12, 2009." Though it technically extended the broadcast life of the station, this was not allowed to continue any later than July 12, far too soon for a digital over-the-air signal to be ready. DirecTV customers in the Buffalo market stopped receiving WNGS on June 22, 2009.

As of March 2010, the station still had not returned to the air in any form. Time Warner Cable ended its hold on WNGS's universal channel 11 cable slot and replaced it with its new cable news channel, YNN Buffalo; to make room, YNN was placed on channel 9 while the then-current occupant of the channel 9, WNLO, was moved into WNGS's former channel position on channel 11.. Daystar's national network feed has been available on Time Warner digital cable since well before the sale of WNGS to Daystar.

In late May 2010, WNGS finally started transmitting its ATSC signal on channel 7. It invoked must carry and returned to Time Warner Cable on channel 5 (a prime cable position that WNGS specifically lobbied to obtain) in November 2010. The station's website returned sometime in December 2010.

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External links

• WBBZ-TV Official Website
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• WNGS-TV at fccinfo.com