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WMYD is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station for Southeast Michigan licensed to Detroit. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 21 (PSIP virtual channel channel 20) from a transmitter on Eight Mile Road in Oak Park along the Oakland and Wayne County line. The station can also be seen on Comcast channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 235. Owned by the Granite Broadcasting Corporation,[citation needed] the station has studios in Suite 1120 the American Center Building in Southfield.[1][2]

However, master control and some traffic responsibilities originate from central casting facilities at sister stations ABC affiliate WPTA and NBC affiliate WISE-TV on Butler Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Syndicated programming on WMYD includes: Family Guy, The Office, Friends, House of Payne and The 700 Club. It also carries Fox's Saturday morning infomercial block, Weekend Marketplace, that its owned-and-operated station WJBK chooses to pre-empt.

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming
20.1 720p 16:9 WMYD-HD Main WMYD programming / MyNetworkTV
20.2 480i WMYD-SD Cozi TV
File:Wmyd dt2 2011.png
Former logo of WMYD-DT 20.2 "TheCoolTV"

WMYD formerly carried the Universal Sports on a second digital subchannel from October 2007 until August 2008, later a standard definition simulcast of the main MyNetworkTV programming was send on subchannel 20.2. Later the subchannel was deleted altogether, though it was reactivated on September 12, 2011 as an affiliate of TheCoolTV.[3] On September 19, 2012, TheCoolTV was dropped from WMYD-DT 20.2, due to a payment dispute. From that time, until March 8, 2013 when it was replaced with Cozi TV, 20.2 was a 16:9 480i SD simulcast of 20.1.

Analog-to-digital conversion

Since the station qualified for the nightlight clause in the DTV Delay Act,[4] it was required to keep its analog signal on for two weeks to inform viewers of the DTV transition in the United States. From February 17 to March 4, 2009, the analog signal consisted of a loop of DTV transition public service announcements while the digital channel was used for normal programming. This became Detroit's only major station not to terminate on the new June 12 date. Prior to the digital switchover, WMYD transmitted its signal from a 1,000 foot tower at the intersection of Eleven Mile and Inkster Roads in Southfield along with WTVS and WKBD. Today, only the latter and WPXD broadcasts from that tower.[citation needed]

History

As an independent station

The station first took to the air on September 15, 1968 as WXON-TV broadcasting an analog signal on UHF channel 62. It moved to channel 20 in 1972 after two short-lived stations abandoned the frequency in the 1950s and 1960s. WPAG-TV in Ann Arbor was first assigned to channel 20 and started broadcasting in April 1953.[5] Little is known about WPAG except that it was owned by the same people (Washtenaw Broadcasting) who operated WPAG radio (now WTKA) and that it suspended operations in December 1957 in a futile attempt to get an allocation for channel 12.[6] That station may have also been a DuMont affiliate.[7]

In 1967, WJMY-TV in Allen Park was awarded a construction permit for channel 20 but never made it to the air except for a brief test signal one night in 1968. This consisted merely of a card displaying its calls and city-of-license. Finally in November 1972, WXON took over WJMY's construction permit and shifted to channel 20 for good. WGPR-TV (now CBS O&O WWJ-TV) took over the channel 62 frequency in 1975. This station initially had its studios in Walled Lake (in southwestern Oakland County north of Novi) but later moved to its present location in Southfield. Through the 1970s, WXON aired cartoons, lower-rated sitcoms, off-network dramas, old movies, religious shows and the annual Variety Club of Detroit telethon hosted by Soupy Sales. It offered live action Japanese sci-fi kids shows (dubbed into English) such as Ultraman, Johnny Sokko and Space Giants. WXON also brought the infamous late-night horror movie cult favorite The Ghoul Show back to Detroit television after WKBD had cancelled it in 1975. In addition, the station broadcast the anime series, Robotech, initially as a 1985 summer replacement series with two consecutive episodes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, each weekday. Continuing much as channel 62 had earlier, TV20 also often aired a package of films primarily sourced from American-International Pictures and heavily balanced toward 1950s and early 1960s horror and science-fiction features.[citation needed]

ON-TV

In 1979, WXON added subscription television after 8 pm. The programming was provided by a service called ON-TV and the broadcasts were encoded in a scrambled format requiring a rented set-top box for decoding. The service was not cheap at $22.50 a month (equivalent to $70.32 in 2011 adjusted for inflation[8]). Many people, especially those living across the river in Windsor, Ontario, built their own decoder boxes and watched ON-TV for free. The network carried uncut movies, concerts, and local sports action. However, since many games began before 8 in the evening, fans missed the start of many contests. In one famous incident, the Detroit Red Wings racked up a 5–0 lead in a game against the Calgary Flames before ON-TV began its coverage.[9]

In 1982, WXON began airing ON-TV on weekend afternoons and faced a challenge from in-Home Theatre which aired 24 hours a day on what is now WPXD in Ann Arbor. Still lagging far behind WKBD-TV in the ratings, WXON dropped ON-TV on March 31, 1983 and resumed a full-service entertainment format full-time. It added a number of movies to its lineup. It also acquired several barter cartoons as the children's programming business peaked in 1984–1985. As the 1980s progressed, the station began acquiring stronger off-network sitcoms. It got a significant boost after WKBD switched to Fox as a charter affiliate on October 6, 1986. It was an established independent station by 1991 and was unaffected by the network affiliation swaps at the end of 1994. Until that year, the station signed-off at 1 in the morning and signed back on at 5 o'clock the following morning. The station has generally gone 24/7 ever since although it has signed-off and signed back on periodically during the late-1990s.

The WB

On January 15, 1995, WXON joined The WB at the network's inception. Granite Broadcasting bought WXON two years later in January 1997 and on October 14 of that year, the station's call letters were changed to WDWB-TV. In 2004. the station shocked the Detroit media by becoming the new over-the-air broadcast home of the NBA's Detroit Pistons taking them from longtime home WKBD and was the broadcast home for 15 to 20 games of Detroit Tigers baseball produced by Fox Sports Detroit. WDWB carried the full WB network schedule, but after joining the network it frequently preempted programming that it rescheduled or didn't air in favor of programming such as movies, Big Ten Conference basketball, the Pistons, the Tigers, and since 1999 the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Like the baseball and basketball games, the annual MDA telethon is broadcast live, but since the station has no studios to accommodate the local telethon segments, it is produced out of WTVS' studios in the New Center area of downtown Detroit.

WDWB was the last remaining commercial television station in the Detroit market to broadcast children's programming, such as Garfield and Friends every Monday through Friday. WTVS, a public television station, continues to broadcast such programming. The weekday afternoon kids block, known as Kids' WB, was replaced by reruns of programs such as Reba in a block known as Daytime WB.

Planned sale

In September 2005, Granite announced that WDWB and its sister station KBWB (now KOFY-TV) in San Francisco to AM Media Holdings, Inc. (a unit of Acon Investments and several key Granite shareholders) for a price rated, on WDWB's end, to around $97 million. The low price (Granite had purchased the station for $175 million) was largely out of Granite wanting to cut down its debt load while keeping control of the stations. On February 15, 2006, Granite announced the restructuring of the sale considering the changing conditions of the station[10] but the sale eventually fell apart. In May 2006, DS Audible announced its intent to purchase the stations for about $84 million on WDWB's end. On July 18, 2006, this sale also fell apart and Granite announced its intention to retain the station.[11] In November, Granite Broadcasting announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but would continue to operate its stations including WMYD.

MyNetworkTV

On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that they would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of its corporate parents, CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming independent and to compete against The CW.

Like many stations about to lose The WB or UPN affiliation due to The CW, WDWB changed its on-air logo to remove the "WB". Its new logo was introduced during a Pistons-Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game on February 1. The station had also announced that it would no longer promote any WB programing. The station changed its call letters to the current WMYD on May 7 in recognition of its future affiliation. On July 29, 2006, the new WMYD logo was introduced during a Tigers-Minnesota Twins baseball game in preparation for its switch. The station was then re-branded as "My TV 20". During the time before the actual launch, WMYD covered up all WB branding during programming and did not carry network promos. It became a MyNetworkTV affiliate on September 5 and WKBD joined The CW on September 18.

Occasionally as time now permits, WMYD may carry network programming from Fox, NBC or ABC should either WJBK, WDIV or WXYZ-TV preempt for specials, breaking news stories or any other emergency. As of now, it has not done so. In April 2008, WMYD began airing Wolfman Mac's Nightmare Sinema (now known as Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In), a ninety-minute comedic "horror host" series hosted by "Wolfman" Mac Kelly featuring vintage sci-fi and horror films, skits, and cartoons. It's the first original locally produced show of its kind to be seen in Detroit in over a decade. The program stopped airing on February 14, 2010 three months after Chiller Drive-In made a deal with the Retro Television Network (RTV) to show reruns as well as new episodes.[12]

Sports

During its days as a carrier of ON-TV, WXON carried games by Detroit's major league teams. However because ON-TV signed on at 8, WXON did not broadcast the starts of many games. In 2006, WMYD began carrying more sporting events on its lineup involving local teams including Detroit Tigers baseball (produced by Fox Sports Detroit) and Detroit Pistons basketball, although in 2007 the Tigers moved to WJBK and both the Pistons and Tigers moved exclusively to FSN beginning in 2008. WMYD added the World Championship Sports Network to its second digital subchannel on October 15, 2007, but it was removed in August 2008 shortly after its re-branding to "Universal Sports". That network found a new home in the Detroit area on WADL-DT2, until January 2012 when it went to pay providers exclusively.

News programming

File:Wmyd 2010 news.png
My TV 20 News at 10 title card.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the station aired various live news updates. In the 1990s, it had a short-lived weekly show called NewsWrap which aired late-Sunday nights. It also carried programming from the All News Channel during overnight hours. On July 14, 2008, WMYD launched a weeknight prime time newscast produced by the Independent News Network (INN) in order to compete with WJBK. Known as My 20 News at 10, it aired for thirty minutes from INN's facilities on Tremont Avenue in Davenport, Iowa.

Although news anchors, meteorologists, and sports anchors were provided by the centralized news operation, WMYD maintained two locally-based reporters that contributed to the show. In a report in the Macon, Georgia Telegraph, it was announced the Independent News Network filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and would end all news productions (including those for WMYD) by January 9, 2009.[13] According to the newspaper, all broadcasts would then be reinstated under the production of Fusion Communications also based in Davenport.

In September 2009, Granite terminated the agreement with INN, and shifted production of WMYD's newscast (which became My TV20 News at 10) to WISE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana (which is part of Granite's Indiana's NewsCenter operation). The switch came after Granite's Fort Wayne stations became a master control hub for the company's Midwestern stations. As with the previous INN production, the newscast is produced in advance using anchors based in Fort Wayne, along with reporters based in Detroit.[14]

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

  • My 20 News at 10 (2008–2009)
  • My TV20 News at 10 (September 2009–present)

News team

Current on-air staff[15]

Anchors
  • Melissa Long - weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
  • Curtis Smith (AMS Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
Reporters
  • Jorge Avellan - multimedia journalist
  • Dave Leval - multimedia journalist (also seen on WPTA/WISE-TV)
  • Sharon McClendon - community affairs director
  • Kristin Pierce - multimedia journalist
  • Greg Russell - entertainment reporter and host of Movie Show Plus

See also

References

  1. ^ "Contact TV20 Detroit." TV20. Retrieved on December 8, 2012. "27777 Franklin Road, Suite 1220 Southfield, MI 48034"
  2. ^ "ENERGY STAR Labeled Building Profile American Center Building 27777 Franklin Rd. Southfield, MI 48034." Energystar.gov, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved on December 8, 2012.
  3. ^ Granite Adds CoolTV in Detroit Broadcasting & Cable September 15, 2011
  4. ^ FCC.gov Appendix B All Full Power Station By DMA, Indicating Those Terminating Analog service On Or Before February 17, 2009
  5. ^ St. Joseph Herald Press, March 4, 1953, p. 5
  6. ^ Ironwood Daily Globe, December 28, 1957, p. 2
  7. ^ http://www.dumonthistory.tv/a10.html
  8. ^ As calculated by the US Bureau of Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator
  9. ^ This was on October 29, 1981, at Detroit: the Red Wings won, 12-4.
  10. ^ http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-15-2006/0004282523&EDATE=
  11. ^ http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-18-2006/0004398783&EDATE=
  12. ^ http://www.chillerdrive-in.com/
  13. ^ Macon Telegraph: "Future of Macon TV station’s nightly newscast uncertain", 1/5/2009.
  14. ^ "Good evening, Detroit". KPC Media Group, Inc.
  15. ^ News Team

Template:Granite Broadcasting Template:Indiana's NewsCenter

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