WEAU (channel 13) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
licensed to
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, United States, serving the
La Crosse
La Crosse is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of La Crosse County, Wisconsin, La Crosse County. Positioned alongside the Mississippi River, La Crosse is the largest city on Wisconsin's western border. La Crosse's populat ...
–Eau Claire
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
* Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
* Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, a ...
as an affiliate of
NBC and
The CW Plus
The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...
. The station is owned by
Gray Television
Gray Television, Inc. is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 stations across the United St ...
, and maintains studios on South Hastings Way /
US 53 Business in
Altoona (with an Eau Claire
postal address); its transmitter is located north of
Fairchild Fairchild may refer to:
Organizations
* Fairchild Aerial Surveys, operated in cooperation with a subsidiary of Fairey Aviation Company
* Fairchild Camera and Instrument
* List of Sherman Fairchild companies, "Fairchild" companies
* Fairchild Fash ...
, near the
Eau Claire Eau Claire (French for "clear water", ''pl.'' ''eaux claires'') is the name of a number of locations and features in North America. The name is pronounced as if it were spelled "O'Clare".
Place names (Canada)
Communities
*Eau Claire, Calgary, a n ...
–
Clark
Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educate ...
county line.
History
WEAU-TV signed-on
December 17, 1953 under the ownership of Central Broadcasting Company. This ownership group was led by a predecessor to
Morgan Murphy Media and also included the ''
Eau Claire Leader-Telegram'' along with WEAU radio (790 AM now
WEAQ
WEAQ (1150 AM) is a radio station in the Eau Claire area of Wisconsin, with its studio and offices located in Altoona, Wisconsin. Its transmitter is located in Lake Hallie, Wisconsin.
History
The station was originally WEAU at the 1050 AM freq ...
at 1150 AM, and 94.1 FM now
WIAL).
It has always been a primary NBC affiliate but initially carried programs from
CBS,
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
, and
DuMont. The station later lost DuMont following that network's shutdown in 1956, CBS when La Crosse and Eau Claire were mixed into one giant market in 1958 (with
WKBT
WKBT-DT (channel 8) is a television station licensed to La Crosse, Wisconsin, United States, serving the La Crosse– Eau Claire market as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Morgan Murphy Media, the station maintains studios on South ...
becoming the market's affiliate), and ABC when
WXOW (channel 19) signed on in 1970. During the late-1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the
NTA Film Network.
One of the first well-known personalities on WEAU was "Sheriff Bob" Dawson who hosted a children's show during the 1950s and 1960s.
The station initially broadcast from a tower immediately behind the WEAU studios on South Hastings Way in Eau Claire. A new tower, approximately tall, was built in the same location in 1956 before an approximately tower was constructed near Fairchild in 1966. The tower in Eau Claire is now topped by the digital transmitter of rival ABC affiliate
WQOW
WQOW (channel 18) is a television station in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, United States, serving the Chippewa Valley as an affiliate of American Broadcasting Company, ABC. Owned by Entertainment Studios, Allen Media Broadcasting, the station has studios ...
(channel 18).
Morgan Murphy sold off WEAU radio in 1959; in 1962, it sold WEAU-TV to The
Post Corporation of
Appleton (Morgan Murphy would later purchase rival
WKBT
WKBT-DT (channel 8) is a television station licensed to La Crosse, Wisconsin, United States, serving the La Crosse– Eau Claire market as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Morgan Murphy Media, the station maintains studios on South ...
, channel 8). WEAU's departure from radio proved short-lived as The Post Corporation purchased
Chippewa Falls
Chippewa Falls is a city located on the Chippewa River (Wisconsin), Chippewa River in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, Chippewa County in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 14,778 in the 2021 census. Incorporated as ...
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
WAXX (1150 AM) in 1963,
and two years later, established a new WEAU-FM at 100.7 (moving to 104.5 when the Fairchild tower was built) which largely simulcasted WAXX's
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
format. WEAU-FM's call letters were switched to
WAXX-FM in 1977,
and in 1978, the country format was moved exclusively to WAXX-FM with the AM station becoming
WAYY
WAYY (790 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It broadcasts a sports radio format and is owned by Mid-West Family Broadcasting. Programming is mostly from CBS Sports Radio. It also carries Milwaukee Brewers base ...
(which later moved to 790 AM in a swap with WEAQ).
In 1984,
Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...
-born
George N. Gillett Jr.
George Nield Gillett Jr. (born October 22, 1938) is an American businessman. Originally from Wisconsin, he lives in Vail, Colorado.
Biography
Gillett graduated from Lake Forest Academy in 1956. He attended Amherst College and is a 1961 graduate ...
purchased the Post Corporation stations, including WEAU-TV, making it a sister station to
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
's
WITI
Witiness Chimoio João Quembo (born 26 August 1996), known as Witi, is a Mozambican professional footballer who plays for Portuguese club C.D. Nacional as a winger.
Club career
Born in Beira, Witi began his career with Sporting Club da Be ...
for a short time. WAXX and WAYY were spun off to Central Communications at the same time, and in 1985, the two radio stations moved out of the WEAU building to a new facility behind its parking lot. Despite being under separate ownership, WEAU continued to provide
weather forecasting
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia a ...
services for WAXX and WAYY as well as other stations purchased by Central Communications (which included WEAU's original radio properties, WEAQ and WIAL, in addition to
WECL
WECL (92.9 FM, "The X") is an active rock formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Lake Hallie, Wisconsin, serving the Eau Claire/ Chippewa Falls area. WECL is owned and operated by Mid-West Family Broadcasting.
History
The station origin ...
and
WDRK) until December 31, 2001. WEAU resumed providing weather services to those same six stations, now under the ownership of Maverick Media, on September 11, 2006.
Gillett began defaulting on some of his purchases in the late-1980s culminating in 1990 when he sold WEAU to Busse Broadcasting, owner of
KOLN
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...
in
Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 292,657 in 2021. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska and the 73rd-largest in the United Sta ...
and KGIN in
Grand Island, Nebraska
Grand Island is a city in and the county seat of Hall County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 53,131 at the 2020 census.
Grand Island is the principal city of the Grand Island metropolitan area, which consists of Hall, Merrick, ...
(and at one point also owned
WWMT in
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropolit ...
and
KOKH-TV in
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...
). In 1998, Gray Communications Systems (which was subsequently renamed Gray Television) and Cosmos Broadcasting (the broadcasting division of the
Liberty Corporation
The Liberty Corporation was a media corporation originally based in Greenville, South Carolina. At its peak, Liberty owned 15 network-affiliated television stations across the Midwest and Southern regions of the United States. Cable advertising ...
which was later merged into
Raycom Media and itself sold to Gray) teamed up to purchase the Busse stations with WEAU going to Cosmos and KOLN/KGIN going to Gray. Cosmos then traded WEAU back to Gray in exchange for
WALB (Gray's original flagship station) in
Albany, Georgia (that station returned to Gray in 2019 after WALB's last owner Raycom merged with Gray). Technology was the highlight of the following decade as WEAU-DT, which originally transmitted on channel 39, signed-on April 30, 2002 with the digital transmitter located at the top of the tower in Fairchild.
The station turned off its analog transmitter at 12:30 p.m. on February 16, 2009. At around 1 o'clock, WEAU's digital signal relocated from channel 39 to channel 13. On October 1, 2012, WEAU dropped the -TV suffix from its
call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
.
The transmission tower for WEAU was the tallest structure in the state of Wisconsin topping out at , or over taller than the
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from "Empire State", the nickname of the st ...
. The tower was shared with former sister radio station WAXX. On March 22, 2011, this tower collapsed during an intense
winter storm
A winter storm is an event in which wind coincides with varieties of precipitation that only occur at freezing temperatures, such as snow, mixed snow and rain, or freezing rain. In temperate continental climates, these storms are not necessar ...
that brought a mixture of terrible weather conditions. A replacement tower was completed by December 15, 2011 and broadcasts resumed on UHF channel 38 in late December.
Programming
Syndicated programming
Syndicated programing on WEAU includes ''
Wheel of Fortune The Wheel of Fortune or ''Rota Fortunae'' has been a concept and metaphor since ancient times referring to the capricious nature of Fate. Wheel of Fortune may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Art
* ''The Wheel of Fortune'' (Burne-Jo ...
'', ''
Jeopardy!
''Jeopardy!'' is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given genera ...
'', and ''
The Kelly Clarkson Show
''The Kelly Clarkson Show'' is an American daytime television variety talk show hosted by American singer Kelly Clarkson. It is produced and distributed by NBCUniversal Syndication Studios and features Clarkson interviewing celebrities and segm ...
'', among others.
News operation
WEAU tends to focus its local news coverage on Eau Claire and the Chippewa Valley, with a secondary focus on La Crosse.
WEAU constructed its own
Doppler weather radar
Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation (meteorology), precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern wea ...
in 1979, becoming the first television station in the market to have its own device and no longer rely on delayed data from the
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...
. It premiered a 5 o'clock weeknight newscast on September 14, 1981. A satellite truck to provide live remote broadcasts came into use by 1983. The station was met with tragedy in September 1991 when weeknight news anchor Cindy Schott died unexpectedly. Her death was later the subject of a story on ''
Real Life with Jane Pauley
''Real Life with Jane Pauley'' was a newsmagazine television program aired in the United States by NBC from 1990 to 1991. ''Real Life with Jane Pauley'' seemed to be presented as an answer to both critics and members of the general public to the f ...
'' and ''
Dateline NBC''. WEAU resorted to a solo anchor format for the 6 and 10 p.m. news (John Froyd) following Schott's death but returned to a co-anchor format for their weeknight 10 o'clock program (Pat Kreitlow and Judy Clark) in August 1998 upon Froyd's retirement.
On August 28, 2006, WEAU entered into a news share agreement with
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
affiliates
WLAX/WEUX (then owned by
Grant Broadcasting System II
Milton Grant (May 13, 1923 – April 28, 2007) was an American disc jockey and owner of television stations. Born in New York City, it was in Washington, D.C., where he made his mark as a disc jockey at radio stations WINX and WOL. Beginning ...
). The arrangement resulted in those stations airing a weeknight prime time newscast produced by this NBC outlet. Known as ''Fox 25/48 News at 9'', the half-hour broadcast would eventually be expanded to weekends starting January 20, 2007.
WLAX/WEUX features a majority of WEAU's on-air team except for maintaining a separate weeknight
meteorologist and weekend news anchor (although they can fill-in on the NBC outlet when needed). ''Fox 25/48 News at 9'' originates from a secondary set at WEAU's studios and is fed to the WLAX/WEUX facility through a fiber-optic link. On August 5, 2011, WEAU upgraded its newscasts to high definition level. However, the WLAX/WEUX newscasts were not included in the change because they were produced from a secondary set that lacked HD cameras. As of fall 2015, ''Fox 25/48 News'' is broadcast in high definition.
Notable former on-air staff
*
Craig Coshun
Current broadcasters
Radio: Flagship WTMJ 620 plus other stations in the Midwest on the Brewers Radio Network.
Television (English): Bally Sports Wisconsin
Television (Spanish): A schedule of mainly Sunday home games is carried by Milwaukee's Te ...
–
BS Wisconsin Broadcaster/Big Ten Play-By-Play Announcer; WEAU Reporter/Anchor: 1988–90
*
Pat Kreitlow –
Wisconsin State Senator, 23rd District (
D-
Chippewa Falls
Chippewa Falls is a city located on the Chippewa River (Wisconsin), Chippewa River in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, Chippewa County in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 14,778 in the 2021 census. Incorporated as ...
), 2007–2011; WEAU Anchor/Reporter: mid 1990s–2005
*
Cameron Sanders
Ronald L. "Cameron" Sanders (born May 30, 1958) is an American journalist.
He served as business editor and host of public radio's ''Marketplace'' and a correspondent for CNN from 1989–1993, being based in Los Angeles. He served as a Vice Pres ...
–
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
Correspondent & Host of public radio's ''
Marketplace
A marketplace or market place is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a '' souk'' (from the Arabic), ' ...
''; WEAU Reporter: 1979–80
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed:
Translators
From July 2020 to September 13, 2021, WEAU was rebroadcast via a Digital Replacement Translator in the La Crosse area on RF channel 30.
References
External links
*
*
*
{{Gray TV
NBC network affiliates
The CW affiliates
Cozi TV affiliates
MeTV affiliates
Heroes & Icons affiliates
Movies! affiliates
Start TV affiliates
Gray Television
Television channels and stations established in 1953
EAU
Eau or EAU may refer to:
* The French word for water
* Eau (trigraph), a trigraph of the Latin script
* EAU, the IATA code for the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, United States
* East Africa University, a private university in Puntl ...
1953 establishments in Wisconsin