WDAY-TV (channel 6) is a television station in

Fargo, North Dakota Fargo ( /ˈfɑɹɡoʊ/) is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, North Dakota, United States. According to the 2020 census, its population was 125,990, making it the most populous city in the state and the 219th-most populous city in ...

, United States, affiliated with ABC. It serves as the

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the fi ...

television property of locally based Forum Communications Company, which also owns WDAY radio (970 AM) and '' The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead''. The television and radio stations share studios on South 8th Street in downtown Fargo, while WDAY-TV's transmitter is located near Amenia.

Semi-satellites

WDAY-TV serves one of the largest geographic viewing areas of any station in the United States. It consists of all of North Dakota as well as northwestern Minnesota, northern South Dakota, eastern Montana,

southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...

Manitoba, Canada including Winnipeg, and far western Ontario, Canada including

Kenora Kenora (), previously named Rat Portage (french: Portage-aux-Rats), is a city situated on the Lake of the Woods in Ontario, Canada, close to the Manitoba boundary, and about east of Winnipeg by road. It is the seat of Kenora District. The his ...

. It covers this region with a network of three full-power

semi-satellites A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tra ...

: WDAZ-TV (channel 8) in

Grand Forks Grand Forks is the third-largest city in the state of North Dakota (after Fargo and Bismarck) and the county seat of Grand Forks County. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 59,166. Grand Forks, along with its twin city o ...

, KBMY (channel 17) in Bismarck, and KMCY (channel 14) in Minot, which itself is a semi-satellite of KBMY.

WDAZ-TV

WDAZ-TV (channel 8), serving Grand Forks and licensed to Devils Lake, operates as a semi-satellite of WDAY-TV. As such, it simulcasts all network and

syndicated Syndication may refer to: * Broadcast syndication, where individual stations buy programs outside the network system * Print syndication, where individual newspapers or magazines license news articles, columns, or comic strips * Web syndication, ...

programming as provided through WDAY-TV, and the two stations share a website. However, WDAZ-TV airs separate legal identifications and commercial inserts targeting the Grand Forks metro and northern portion of the Fargo–Grand Forks market. Local newscasts, produced by WDAY-TV, are simulcast on both stations. The two stations are counted as a single unit for ratings purposes.

KBMY/KMCY

KBMY (channel 17) in Bismarck, and KMCY (channel 14) in Minot, clear all network programming as provided through WDAY-TV and simulcast WDAY-TV's newscasts, but airs a separate offering of syndicated programming; there are also separate commercial inserts and legal station identifications. Internal operations are based at WDAY-TV's studios in Fargo.

History

WDAY-TV went on the air for the first time in 1953 as the second television station in North Dakota (after KCJB-TV, now KXMC-TV, in Minot), and the first in Fargo and the eastern part of the state. It was owned by a group of Fargo investors led by Norman Black, owner and publisher of ''The Forum.'' It took its call letters from WDAY radio, which has been owned by ''The Forum'' since 1935. Black bought the remaining shares in 1958. It originally carried programming from all four networks of the day– CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont. However, it was a primary NBC affiliate owing to its radio sister's long affiliation with NBC radio. It lost CBS to

KXJB-TV KXJB-LD (channel 30) is a Low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power television station licensed to Horace, North Dakota, United States, serving the Fargo, North Dakota, Fargo–Grand Forks, North Dakota, Grand Forks media market, market as an ...

(channel 4) in 1954, lost DuMont later in 1955 as that network was winding up operations, and lost ABC in 1959 when KXGO-TV (channel 11, now KVLY-TV) signed on. In 1983, WDAY-TV swapped affiliations with channel 11, then known as KTHI-TV, and became an ABC affiliate. Although it was apparent that Fargo and Grand Forks were going to be a single market, channel 6 did not cover the northern portion of this vast market very well. It was required to conform its signal to protect

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

's Winnipeg station, CBWT, which took to the air on channel 6 a year after WDAY-TV signed on. As a result, it was barely viewable in northern Grand Forks and could not be seen at all in much of the northern part of the market. To solve this problem, it signed on WDAZ-TV in 1967 as a semi-satellite for the northern portion of the market. WDAY-TV and WDAZ-TV began operating cable-only WB affiliate "WBFG" in 1998. WDAY/WDAZ replaced The CW Plus successor of "WBFG" with the Justice Network (which moved from 6.4) on new digital broadcast subchannels WDAY 6.2 and WDAZ 8.2 on September 12, 2016 and WDAY'Z Xtra (which launched in 2013) on digital subchannel 6.3 in the Fargo area and 8.3 in the Grand Forks area. WDAY-DT4 returned to the air in 2017 as an affiliate of Ion Television. WDAY-TV is one of the westernmost stations in the country whose call sign begins with W. Most stations west of the Mississippi River begin with K; however, WDAY radio signed on in 1922, a year before the U.S. government moved the K-W boundary from the state borders between 102 and 104 degrees West longitude (including the North Dakota–Montana border) to the Mississippi River.

WDAY Xtra

WDAY Xtra is a

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compress ...

carried on WDAY 6.3, WDAZ 8.3, KBMY 17.3, and KMCY 14.3, airing as a primary affiliation to MyNetworkTV on KBMY and KMCY but independent without interruption on WDAY-TV and WDAZ-T
⁴
This subchannel airs syndicated programming, North Dakota and Minnesota high school sports, North Dakota high school state tournaments, Minnesota State University Moorhead athletics, and select University of North Dakota athletic events. It airs Doppler weather radar and "Storm Tracker" weather loop with easy listening music during overnights. WDAY Xtra is carried on all cable providers in the coverage area. WDAY Xtra became available in HD in 2014, and in 2016, MyNetworkTV programming began airing in prime time, although on KBMY and KMCY only (in Bismarck and Minot respectively) but not on WDAY or WDAZ; KRDK-TV in Valley City serves as Fargo's MyNetworkTV affiliate.

News operation and programming

WDAY-TV presently broadcasts 36½ hours of locally produced newscasts and other programming each week (with 6½ hours each weekday, 2½ hours on Saturdays, and two hours on Sundays). WDAY's newscasts have traditionally led the ratings in the Fargo–Grand Forks market. WDAZ once had a larger news presence, as it aired separate 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 10 p.m., and weekend newscasts, with the only WDAY newscast airing being the morning ''First News''. WDAZ's weekend news was taken over by WDAY in 2011 and its 5 p.m. weekday newscast was taken over in July 2014. The decision to replace the 5 p.m. broadcast was met with an immediate backlash from viewers, including those who circulated a petition on Change.org demanding that Forum restore the local 5 p.m. news to WDAZ. On February 22, 2012, WDAY-TV began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. KBMY and KMCY began airing some of WDAY's newscasts in 2014. WDAY-TV signs off briefly in the overnight hours; as a result, ABC's overnight news program, '' World News Now'', is not broadcast. It goes off the air at 3:37 a.m. and signs on again at 4 a.m. to broadcast '' America This Morning''. In August 2016, WDAY-TV launched a half-hour prime time newscast on its second and third subchannels called ''WDAY Xtra News at 9''. It is simulcast on WDAZ's subchannels in Grand Forks, as well as KBMY/KMCY's subchannels in the Bismarck–Minot market. On September 11, 2017, WDAY-TV launched a 4 p.m. weekday newscast that is simulcast on sister station WDAZ. It was the first afternoon newscast ever to air in the market. On November 30, 2018, it was announced that WDAZ would merge its news department with that of WDAY-TV, resulting in the cancellation of WDAZ's separate 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts, effective December 21. General manager Joshua Roher cited "changes to distribution of television, emerging technologies and economic factors in our area" as reasons for the consolidation, in a statement to the ''Grand Forks Herald''. WDAY-TV continues to maintain a news bureau and sales office in Grand Forks. On September 5, 2021, WDAY-TV launched a Sunday morning newscast that is simulcast on sister stations WDAZ and KBMY/KMCY. It was the first Sunday morning newscast to air in the market.

Past on-air staff

* Ed Schultz (deceased)

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WDAY-TV shut down its analog signal, over

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

channel 6, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...

channel 21. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 6.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wday-Tv ABC network affiliates True Crime Network affiliates Ion Television affiliates Defy TV affiliates TrueReal affiliates Forum Communications Company Television channels and stations established in 1953 Television stations in North Dakota 1953 establishments in North Dakota