WIVB-TV (channel 4) 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 ear ...
in
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
, United States, affiliated with
CBS. It is owned by
Nexstar Media Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 tele ...
alongside
CW owned-and-operated station
In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an network af ...
WNLO (channel 23). WIVB-TV and WNLO share studios on Elmwood Avenue in
North Buffalo; through a
channel sharing agreement, the two stations transmit using WNLO's spectrum from a
tower
A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures.
Towers are specifi ...
in
Colden, New York. However,
master control
Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as swit ...
and some internal operations are based at
Springfield, Massachusetts–licensed Nexstar
sister station
In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement.
Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...
and
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
affiliate
WWLP
WWLP (channel 22) is a television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW Plus. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station has studios at Broadcast Center in the Sandy Hill section of Chicopee at the ...
's studios in
Chicopee.
History
The station first signed on the air on May 14, 1948 as WBEN-TV. It was Buffalo's first television station, and the fifth-oldest station in New York state. The station was originally owned by the Butler family, along with the ''
Buffalo Evening News'' and WBEN radio (
930 AM and 106.5 FM, now
WTSS at 102.5); the holding company for the WBEN stations was WBEN, Inc. Its radio sister had been one of
CBS Radio
CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broa ...
's first 16 affiliates when that network premiered in 1928, but by that point had switched networks to
NBC Blue. Accordingly, channel 4 originally signed on as an
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
television affiliate, and with it aired ''
The Howdy Doody Show
''Howdy Doody'' is an American children's television program (with circus and Western frontier themes) that was created and produced by Victor F Campbell '', a show hosted by local native
Bob Smith, who had spent the past few years at WBEN radio before departing for national television. WBEN-TV picked up CBS programming in January 1949, and has remained with that network ever since.
As the only station in Buffalo for its first several years, channel 4 also carried secondary affiliations with
ABC and
DuMont. It lost NBC when WGR-TV (channel 2, now
WGRZ
WGRZ (channel 2) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill R ...
) signed on in August 1954, and ABC to WGR-TV when NBC moved its programs to newly purchased
WBUF-TV
WBUF-TV was a television station that broadcast on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 17 in Buffalo, New York, United States. It broadcast from August 17, 1953, to February 1955 and again from March 1955 until the morning of October 1, 1958.
Th ...
(channel 17) in 1956. WBEN-TV continued to share DuMont programming with WGR-TV until 1956 when that network ceased operations. It operated from studios on the 18th floor of the Statler Hotel until 1960, when it moved to its current facilities on Elmwood Avenue. That studio—expanded by the WBEN stations—had originally been built for WBUF-TV, which had gone dark in 1958, two months before the sign-on of present-day ABC affiliate
WKBW-TV
WKBW-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Street ...
(channel 7).
One early show running from the late 1940s until 1970 was ''Meet the Millers'', a weekday afternoon series featuring Bill and Mildred Miller providing cooking and household tips. Two educational local shows aimed toward children were the hour-long ''Fun to Learn'' consisting of 15-minute segments which taught various subjects including the
language of Spanish at 5 p.m. weekdays and the half-hour ''Your Museum of Science'', which featured the curator of the
Buffalo Museum of Science
The Buffalo Museum of Science is a science museum located at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Buffalo, New York, United States, northeast of the downtown district, near the Kensington Expressway. The historic building was designed by August Es ...
on Saturday mornings. Another staple throughout the 1950s and early 1960s was a short visit to the
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...
with
Santa Claus
Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring children gifts during the late evening and overnigh ...
and Forgetful the
Elf. This was a daily show that aired only during December and was sponsored by Hengerer's Department Store. On September 23, 1977, the then-newly-renamed WIVB took over production of the
public-access cable television program ''
Disco Step by Step''.
When the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...
(FCC) disallowed same market
co-ownership of newspapers and broadcast licenses in the early 1970s, the combination of the ''Buffalo Evening News'' and WBEN-AM-FM-TV was
grandfathered
A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...
under the new rule. However, the 1974 death of Katherine Butler (longtime owner and publisher of the ''Evening News'') led to the placement of the ''Evening News'' properties in a blind trust (since Butler left no heirs). This trust company then sold the newspaper to its current owner,
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from ...
in 1977. This sale brought an end to 101 years of Butler family ownership of the ''Evening News''. With the loss of the WBEN stations' grandfathered protection, Berkshire Hathaway opted to keep the newspaper and sell off the broadcasting properties. WBEN-TV was sold to newspaper publisher Robert Howard of
Oceanside, California
Oceanside is a city on the South Coast of California, located in San Diego County. The city had a population of 167,086 at the 2010 census. The city is a popular tourist destination, owing to its historic landmarks, beaches, and architecture.
...
for $25.5 million. The new owner, whose company was called Howard Publications, Inc., changed channel 4's callsign to WIVB-TV, which stands for "We're Channel IV (
Roman numeral
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
4) Buffalo", on November 1, 1977, the day after he purchased the station. The call-letter change was triggered due to an FCC regulation at the time prohibiting TV and radio stations in the same city, but with different owners, from sharing the same call letters. The WBEN callsign remains on 930 AM, which along with its FM sister station had been sold to Larry Levite's Algonquin Broadcasting (both of those stations are currently owned by
Audacy
Audacy, previously known as Radio.com, is a free broadcast and Internet radio platform owned by the namesake company Audacy, Inc. (formerly known as Entercom). The Audacy platform functions as a music recommender system and is the national umb ...
). Channel 4 was then sold to
King World Productions
King World Productions, Inc. (also known as King World Entertainment, King World Enterprises, or simply King World) was a production company and syndicator of television programming in the United States independently established in 1964 until acq ...
(at that time a separate entity from both
Viacom and CBS; the two would later split and remerge) for $100 million in 1988.
In the late 1970s, WBEN/WIVB ended up playing an early role in the emerging
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
industry. Their satellite uplink facility, initiated by general manager Les Arries in 1976, uplinked sporting events for worldwide distribution, and was used to transmit American TV programming into Canada until Canadian authorities put an end to this practice.
Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment then began leasing the uplink facility to transmit the signals of their then-new cable networks
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...
and
The Movie Channel
The Movie Channel (TMC) is an American premium television network owned by Showtime Networks, a subsidiary of Paramount Global operated through its Media Networks unit. The network's programming mainly features first-run theatrically relea ...
(originally known as Star Channel). Both networks moved to an uplink facility in
Hauppauge, New York
Hauppauge ( ) is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the towns of Islip and Smithtown in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island. The population was 20,882 at the time of the 2010 census.
Geography
Hauppauge is located at (40.818205, - ...
, by the end of 1981, after Warner-Amex was unable to reach a deal with WIVB's ownership over a planned expansion of the facility to handle uplinking and studio programming for their new music video channel
MTV.
WIVB-TV nearly dropped its CBS affiliation and became an NBC affiliate in
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...
, when King World put itself up for sale (NBC parent company
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
's announced purchase of the company never materialized). After attempts by
Westinghouse Broadcasting
The Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, also known as Group W, was the broadcasting division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It owned several radio and television stations across the United States and distributed television shows for syndica ...
(whose
parent company
A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
would later purchase CBS),
New World Communications
New World Pictures (also known as New World Entertainment and New World Communications Group, Inc.) was an American independent production, distribution, and (in its final years as an autonomous entity) multimedia company. It was founded in 197 ...
(to make the station a
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'').
Twelv ...
affiliate),
Tribune Broadcasting
Tribune Broadcasting Company, LLC was an American media company which operated as a subsidiary of Tribune Media, a media conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois. The group owned and operated television and radio stations throughout the United S ...
(to make a station a
WB affiliate),
Paramount Stations Group (to make a station a
UPN affiliate) and
E. W. Scripps Company (to make the station an ABC affiliate) to purchase the station fell through, WIVB-TV was sold to LIN TV Corporation (which would later take the name
LIN Media
LIN Media was an American holding company founded in 1994 that operated 43 television stations. All except one were affiliates of the six major U.S. television networks. One of the remaining stations was a low powered weather station in In ...
) in 1995; King World was acquired by CBS in 2000 and has since been absorbed into
Paramount Global
Paramount Global (Trade name, doing business as Paramount) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquar ...
's
CBS Media Ventures
CBS Media Ventures, Inc. (formerly CBS Television Distribution, Inc. and CBS Paramount Domestic Television, Inc.) is an American television distribution company owned by CBS Studios, part of CBS Entertainment Group, a division of Paramount Glob ...
unit, while E. W. Scripps would later acquire rival WKBW in 2014 and, ironically, WIVB's current parent Nexstar would later acquire Tribune in 2019. The new owner renewed the station's CBS affiliation through a long-term contract; it was renewed in 2014, along with most of the rest of the contracts for LIN's CBS affiliates, and will expire at an unknown date. As a result of the cancellation of the deal, Buffalo was one of the few
NFL
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...
markets that was not affected by the affiliation switches. At the time of the aborted NBC purchase, WIVB-TV's viewership was in a strong second place in the local ratings, while NBC's existing affiliate WGRZ-TV was in third place, although not as distant as it had been throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Both stations have since passed then-first-place WKBW-TV.
WIVB-TV gained the local rights to the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
from WGRZ-TV in
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
, when the
American Football Conference package moved to
CBS. WGRZ-TV had aired most Bills games since 1965.
Van Miller
Van Miller (November 22, 1927 – July 17, 2015) was an American radio and television sports announcer from Dunkirk, New York, where he began his career at Dunkirk radio station WFCB calling play-by-play for high school football games. In the 1 ...
, channel 4's longtime
sports director, was the Bills' play-by-play announcer from 1960 to 2003, except for a brief time in the 1970s when
WKBW radio was the flagship. However, beginning in 2014 with the introduction of "cross-flex" scheduling, the NFL started arbitrarily moving select Bills games to
WUTV, the local
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'').
Twelv ...
affiliate.
In 2000, LIN bought the station then known as WNEQ-TV, the market's secondary
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of ed ...
member station. On January 23, 2001, WNEQ-TV was relaunched as
independent station
An independent station is an independent radio or terrestrial television station which is independent in some way from broadcast networks. The definition of "independence" varies from country to country, reflecting governmental regulations, market ...
WNLO; that station became a UPN affiliate in 2002. The previous UPN stations, WNGS/WONS, later switched to the
Retro Television Network
Retro TV (stylized as retrotv), formerly known as Retro Television Network, is an American broadcast television network owned by Get After It Media. The network mainly airs classic television sitcoms and drama series from the 1950s through t ...
and were eventually sold to the
Daystar Television Network
The Daystar Television Network (commonly referred to as Daystar Television, often shortened to Daystar) is an American evangelical Christian-based religious television network owned by the Word of God Fellowship, founded by Marcus Lamb in 1993 ...
(Daystar has since sold WNGS, which today serves as Buffalo's
MeTV
MeTV, an acronym for Memorable Entertainment Television, is an American broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. Marketed as "The Definitive Destination for Classic TV", the network airs a variety of classic television program ...
and
This TV
This TV (also known as This TV Network and alternately stylized as thisTV) is an American free-to-air television network owned by Allen Media
Broadcast Networks, LLC, part of the Allen Media Group division of Entertainment Studios. Originally f ...
affiliate under new call letters
WBBZ-TV). In September 2006, WNLO became Buffalo's CW affiliate. On May 18, 2007, LIN announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company; such a sale would not materialize until March 21, 2014, when it announced a merger with
Media General
Media General was an American media company based in Richmond, Virginia. The company's origins can be traced back to 1887 when Richmond attorney Joseph Bryan acquired ''The Richmond Daily Times'', which later became ''The Richmond Times-Dispatch ...
. The merger was completed on December 19, bringing WIVB-TV and WNLO under common ownership with ABC affiliate
WTEN
WTEN (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Albany, New York, United States, serving the Capital District as an affiliate of ABC. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is a sister station to Fox affiliate WXXA-TV (channel 23, also licens ...
and the same management as Fox affiliate
WXXA-TV in
Albany; because Media General is part-owned by
Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett ( ; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net w ...
, the merger also brought WIVB back under co-ownership with ''The Buffalo News'', as Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns that newspaper, and the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban has since been lifted. The two entities remain operated separately. Media General later merged with Nexstar Broadcasting Group to form
Nexstar Media Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 tele ...
.
Programming
WIVB-TV currently airs no local non-news programming, except for the
public affairs program ''By the People'', which has been a staple of its programming on Sundays at 6 a.m. for many decades. Syndicated programming includes ''
Rachael Ray'', ''
The Drew Barrymore Show'', ''
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 ge ...
'' and ''
Wheel of Fortune'' (the latter two of which were acquired in 2012 after having spent most of their runs on WKBW), all distributed by CBS Media Ventures.
Under LIN ownership, WIVB (and LIN's other CBS affiliates in markets where the company owned a station duopoly) did not broadcast ''
CBS This Morning Saturday'' nor (in most cases) the weekend editions of the ''
CBS Evening News
The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature s ...
'', broadcasting extended hour-long local evening newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays instead. Sister station WNLO aired the weekend editions of the ''CBS Evening News'' but, unlike most LIN duopoly stations in this scenario, did not carry ''CBS This Morning Saturday'' as it is committed to The CW's Saturday morning block (currently ''
One Magnificent Morning
One Magnificent Morning (OMM) is an American programming block that is programmed by Hearst Media Production Group (formerly Litton Entertainment) and distributed by CBS Media Ventures, and debuted on October 4, 2014, as a replacement for the an ...
''). As an exception, if
CBS Sports
CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street (Manhattan), 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS ...
programming ran into the 6:30 p.m. half-hour on weekends, local news would air from 6 to 7 on WNLO, and the abbreviated network newscast, if any, might air on WIVB-TV.
In fall 2015, WIVB, now under Media General ownership, began to consistently carry both ''CBS This Morning Saturday'' and the weekend editions of the ''CBS Evening News''.
On the numerous occasions that CBS' coverage of the men's final of the
US Open tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball c ...
tournament was pushed back from Sunday to Monday afternoon (and occasionally other sports coverage held over to weekdays), WIVB-TV delegated this coverage to WNLO in order to air its regular local and syndicated programming. If necessary due to the length of the match, WIVB-TV simulcasted coverage during the usual ''CBS Evening News'' timeslot and took over coverage fully once WNLO began airing CW programming at 8:00 p.m. The station did carry the final in full in
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment ...
, when it was scheduled for Monday instead of Sunday from the outset. This arrangement ended in
2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
when
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
became the exclusive carrier of the tournament.
As part of the team's new regional media deal with Nexstar, Buffalo Bills preseason broadcasts moved to WIVB in 2021 (the move was originally scheduled for 2020 before the NFL canceled its 2020 preseason due to
COVID-19 concerns). The contract took effect across Nexstar's other stations in the Bills' market in 2018.
News operation
WIVB-TV presently broadcasts 37 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday and 3½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). In addition, the station produces an additional 18½ hours of newscasts weekly for WNLO (with 3½ hours on weekdays, and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). This totals 55½ hours of newscasts on a weekly basis between the two stations; in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among all broadcast television stations in the Buffalo market (in contrast, WGRZ produces 30½ hours and WKBW-TV produces 24½ hours of newscasts each week).
Appropriately for a station with roots in a newspaper, WIVB-TV has a strong news tradition. WBEN-TV was the early news leader in Buffalo until approximately 1972, when (briefly) WGR-TV and then (more long-term) WKBW-TV overtook it. Channel 4 then spent most of the next 30 years as a solid, if usually distant, runner-up to WKBW-TV, well ahead of market laggard WGR-TV (later WGRZ). However, it was a major beneficiary of various changes (including WKBW-TV changing hands to a smaller company, aging of its news team, and general programming mistakes) at WKBW-TV in the mid-1990s. Most notably, it snagged local rights to ''
The Oprah Winfrey Show
''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', often referred to as ''The Oprah Show'' or simply ''Oprah'', is an American daytime broadcast syndication, syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicag ...
'' from WKBW-TV in 1995. By 2000, after the retirement of WKBW-TV's longtime anchorman
Irv Weinstein
Irwin B. "Irv" Weinstein (April 29, 1930 – December 26, 2017) was an American local television news anchor and occasional radio actor. He hosted WKBW-TV's ''Eyewitness News'' in Buffalo, New York, for 34 years, from 1964 to 1998, becoming an i ...
and weather anchor
Tom Jolls
Tom Jolls (born August 16, 1933) is a retired television personality best known for his 34-year tenure at WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York. At WKBW, Jolls hosted "The Weather Outside" segments during ''Eyewitness News'', performed many of the station ...
– the last of the traditional "Irv,
Rick and Tom" team at channel 7 – and Nielsen's adoption of market metering in Buffalo at the same time, WIVB-TV had taken over the number-one spot for the first time in over a quarter century. It remained number one for the next decade until a series of budget cuts, a retransmission consent dispute with Time Warner Cable,
[ and the slow response to replace departing news anchors pushed most of its newscasts to second, behind WGRZ, who has since also come under ownership of a major national media company. By 2013, WIVB-TV, despite producing the most hours of news content, had the smallest news staff of any of the three stations in the market, after WKBW-TV went on a hiring spree to boost its staff.
WIVB has long been considered to favor older viewers, even dating back to the 1970s when its rivals were promoting flashier, more sensational approaches to the news. Jacquie Walker, the station's lead co-anchor, has been with the station since 1984, the longest continuous run of any news anchor in the history of Buffalo television. The station frequently places significant emphasis on its weather operation. Don Paul spent nearly 30 years as WIVB's chief meteorologist before he was pushed into retirement in 2016; after a stint at WKBW, Nexstar reversed its decision and invited Paul back in a part-time position. The station's current chief meteorologist is Todd Santos, a former personality on ]The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather foreca ...
and NBC Weather Plus
NBC Weather Plus was an American weather-oriented digital broadcast and cable television network owned as a joint venture between NBC Universal and the local affiliates of the NBC television network. The service, which was broadcast in standa ...
; another prominent meteorologist on the staff is Mike Cejka, who has been with WIVB since 1983. The station has also typically differed in its approach to hiring meteorologists in that none of them are Western New York natives (whereas WKBW and WGRZ hired mostly local personalities); Kaylee Wendt, the last meteorologist to have lived in western New York before arriving at WIVB, left the station in February 2019.
The news operation at WIVB-TV has historically favored a straight newscast, as opposed to the more activist approach of WGRZ (WIVB-TV highlighted this in an advertising campaign in the mid-2000s, when it used the slogan "today's news and tomorrow's weather" and asserted that it "doesn't take sides," a reference to WGRZ's use of the "On Your Side" slogan).
Since 1993, the station has produced an annual holiday promo featuring a custom version of Jolly Demis's "Christmas Time Again." The promos, featuring short snippets of the families of each member of the WIVB news team, have become a tradition in Western New York, long after most other stations discontinued using the song (only WIVB and KSAZ-TV
KSAZ-TV (channel 10) is a television station in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, broadcasting the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV station KUTP (channel 45). Both ...
in Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the o ...
still use it).
This station debuted a weekday morning newscast on September 19, 1994, known as ''Wake Up!''. It was the second local broadcast in the market after WKBW-TV's ''Good Morning Western New York'', which launched in 1987. Unlike the WKBW-TV broadcast, which was (and remains) a weekday-only program, ''Wake Up!'' has aired seven days a week from its inception, with a two-hour version (originally only one hour from 1994 to January 2013) airing on Saturdays and Sundays. (The weekend edition was originally co-anchored by Chuck Gurney, the first openly gay television personality in the Buffalo market.) During the mid-1990s, WIVB-TV used the 24 Hour News Source format, which had previously been used earlier in the decade on WGRZ-TV. In March 2001, WIVB-TV began airing a nightly 10 p.m. newscast on WNLO known as ''The 10 O'Clock News''. During the week, this program competes with WGRZ-TV's prime time newscast that currently airs on Fox affiliate WUTV (and previously ran on WPXJ-TV and WNYO-TV); WNLO has led the ratings race at 10 p.m. ever since the program's debut.
Starting on February 2, 2009, WNLO began airing a two-hour extension of WIVB-TV's weekday morning newscast. It has since cut the extended morning show by an hour to make room for a partially brokered local talk show. It also rebroadcasts WIVB-TV's weekend morning newscast and may air the hour-long weekend 6 p.m. newscasts which normally air on WIVB-TV, if CBS Sports programming runs over into the timeslot.
WIVB-TV began broadcasting its newscasts in true high definition
High definition or HD may refer to:
Visual technologies
*HD DVD, discontinued optical disc format
*HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format
*HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tape
* HiDef, 24 frames-pe ...
on February 1, 2012. It was the last of the television stations in the Buffalo market to upgrade its news programming to HD; WKBW-TV had done so in 2011, and WGRZ aired some HD content as early as February 2010. The 10 p.m. newscast on WNLO was included in the upgrade.
From approximately 1995 until the end of 2009, WIVB-TV built and operated a large network of over eighty AWS/ WeatherBug weather stations (under the name "Neighborhood WeatherNet"), mostly at local schools. WIVB-TV's involvement in the Neighborhood WeatherNet was discontinued at the beginning of 2010, though the stations, now under WeatherBug's control, remain operational. In 2020, WIVB signed on with the New York State Mesonet
In meteorology and climatology, a mesonet, portmanteau of mesoscale network, is a network of automated weather and, often, environmental monitoring stations designed to observe mesoscale meteorological phenomena and/or microclimates.
Dry lines ...
, a state-operated weather station network. WIVB-TV also previously operated a local Doppler radar
A Doppler radar is a specialized radar that uses the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance. It does this by bouncing a microwave signal off a desired target and analyzing how the object's motion has altered the fr ...
in the 1990s and early 2000s (known as "4 × 4 Warn Doppler" because it factored in stations in Rochester
Rochester may refer to:
Places Australia
* Rochester, Victoria
Canada
* Rochester, Alberta
United Kingdom
*Rochester, Kent
** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area
** History of Rochester, Kent
** HM Prison ...
, Syracuse
Syracuse may refer to:
Places Italy
*Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa''
*Province of Syracuse
United States
* Syracuse, New York
** East Syracuse, New York
** North Syracuse, New York
* Syracuse, Indiana
*Syracuse, Kansas
*Syracuse, M ...
and Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...
), but shut it down in the early 2000s in favor of using data from the nearby National Weather Service
The National Weather Service (NWS) is an agency of the United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weather-related products to organizations and the public for the ...
Doppler Radar in Cheektowaga
Cheektowaga () is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town has grown to a population of 89,877. The town is in the north-central part of the county, and is an inner ring suburb of Buffalo. The town is the ...
.
WIVB-TV ended its separate sports segments in March 2015 and integrated sports reports into the regular newscasts. The sportscasts returned under Nexstar ownership in 2017. A one-hour afternoon newscast was added in the 4 p.m. weekday time slot in early 2016.
Accolades and honors
For most of the time since 2000, WIVB-TV has been the most-watched news station in Western New York (according to Nielsen) after rival WKBW-TV's long winning streak ended. The station regularly scores ratings wins for every newscast it airs from morning to night. It has become so dominant in the market that it at one time garnered the highest television ratings for a local newscast in the entire nation, according to advertisements run by the station, an honor regained in February 2008. As of late, rival WGRZ, which has also had strong ratings in the area has begun to challenge WIVB-TV's dominance, specifically in the weeknight 5 and 5:30 newscasts according to Nielsen's May 2007 sweeps data.
This station reclaimed the top position in the November 2007 sweeps although still in a statistical tie with WGRZ, and as of May 2009, is now solidly back in first place. All three stations in the Buffalo market have been, at various times in their history, among the highest-rated stations in the country and they continue to be fiercely competitive. The cable carriage disputes in October 2008 threatened WIVB-TV's high standing, pushing the station to a distant third, but with the official November sweeps out and the disputes resolved, WIVB-TV regained the lead. The end of ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' in 2010, which traditionally has given a strong lead-in to WIVB-TV's newscasts, were expected to mark the end of WIVB-TV's lead in the ratings. Ratings for its replacement for the 2011–12 and 2012–13 seasons, '' Anderson'', had initially been very poor, to the point where despite being placed in an earlier time slot, it had caused harm to both the show airing immediately after it (''The Dr. Oz Show
''The Dr. Oz Show'' (or simply ''Oz'') is an American syndicated daytime television talk show, hosted by Mehmet Oz, that aired between September 14, 2009, and January 14, 2022. Each episode features segments on health, wellness, and medical infor ...
'') and the evening newscasts, which are currently firmly in second place, halfway between new market leader WGRZ (which has ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show
''The Ellen DeGeneres Show'' (often shortened to ''Ellen'' or ''The Ellen Show'') is an American daytime television variety comedy talk show that was created and hosted by its namesake Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it was pr ...
'' as a lead-in to its evening newscast) and third-place WKBW-TV (which had '' The Doctors'' as its lead-in). By the start of the 2012 season, the ratings for both ''Anderson'' and the WIVB-TV newscasts had recovered. By November 2018, WIVB had reclaimed the lead in news viewership following several years in which WGRZ had the highest viewership.
The station and its staff have won several Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
s including one in 1999.
Notable former staff
* Marty Angelo – producer, creator, writer (1977–1980) – '' Disco Step-by-Step'' Dance TV Show
* Stan Barron
Stan Barron (January 21, 1921 – November 27, 1984) was an American sports broadcaster.
Barron, a native of New York City, and having previously worked in Joplin, Missouri, is best known for his work in Buffalo, New York, where he spent 32 y ...
– occasional sports contributor (1965–1984)
* John Beard John Beard may refer to:
* John Beard (artist) (born 1943), Welsh artist and painter
* John Beard (colonial administrator) (died 1685), Chief Agent and Governor of Bengal
* John Beard (embryologist) (1858–1924), Scottish embryologist and anatomis ...
– anchor (1978–1981; later worked in Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
at KNBC
KNBC (channel 4) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Corona-li ...
and KTTV
KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV ou ...
, then returned to Buffalo to anchor ''Daybreak'' for WGRZ
WGRZ (channel 2) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo, and its transmitter is located on Warner Hill R ...
)
* Jericka Duncan
Jericka Duncan (born August 12, 1983) is an American national TV news correspondent for CBS News in New York City. In 2018, she made headlines when she came forward with texts that Jeff Fager sent to her as she covered sexual allegations made t ...
– reporter; now at CBS News
* Tom Jolls
Tom Jolls (born August 16, 1933) is a retired television personality best known for his 34-year tenure at WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York. At WKBW, Jolls hosted "The Weather Outside" segments during ''Eyewitness News'', performed many of the station ...
– WBEN-TV news anchor (early 1960s); left for WKBW-TV
WKBW-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Street ...
in 1965 to become weather anchor for 34 years
* Chuck Lampkin – anchor (1970–1980)
* Van Miller
Van Miller (November 22, 1927 – July 17, 2015) was an American radio and television sports announcer from Dunkirk, New York, where he began his career at Dunkirk radio station WFCB calling play-by-play for high school football games. In the 1 ...
– sports director, weather anchor and host of ''It's Academic
''It's Academic'' is the name for a number of televised academic student quiz shows for high school students through the United States and internationally. ''It's Academic'' programs have notably aired on NBC-owned WMAQ-TV Chicago, WRC-TV ...
'' and ''Beat the Champ'' (1955–1998); also radio broadcaster for the Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
* John Murphy – sports director from (2008 to 2012); now at WGR as a radio host
* Kevin O'Connell – weather anchor (1970s); left for Los Angeles at KNBC
KNBC (channel 4) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Corona-li ...
, KCBS-TV
KCBS-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent ...
and KABC-TV
KABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains ...
; hosted the NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
game show '' Go!;'' then returned in the mid-1980s before moving to WGRZ-TV in the mid-1990s
* Pam Oliver – reporter (1988–1990; left to become a sideline reporter for NFL on Fox
The ''NFL on Fox'' (also known as ''Fox NFL'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games produced by Fox Sports and televised on the Fox broadcast network. Game coverage is usually preceded by '' Fox NFL Kickof ...
and NBA on TNT)
* Dick Rifenburg
Richard Gale Rifenburg (August 21, 1926 – December 5, 1994) was an American football player and a pioneering television broadcaster for the forerunner to WIVB-TV in Buffalo. He played college football for the University of Michigan Wolverin ...
– sports (1951–1982)
* Tom Torbjornsen – automotive expert (2000s)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WIVB-TV discontinued regular programming on 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 4, at 9 a.m. 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 39. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver' ...
as its former VHF analog channel 4. It is one of several Buffalo area stations seen in the southern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
, including Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
, which is the station's largest target audience. On April 30, 2009, Shaw Broadcast Services and Shaw Direct
Shaw Direct is a direct broadcast satellite television distributor in Canada and a subsidiary of the telecommunications company Shaw Communications. As of 2010, Shaw Direct had over 900,000 subscribers. It broadcasts on Ku band from two communic ...
stopped transmitting the WIVB-TV signal, replacing it with CBS-owned WWJ-TV
WWJ-TV (channel 62) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, owned and operated by the CBS television network. Under common ownership with CW affiliate WKBD-TV under the network's CBS News and Stations group, both stati ...
in Detroit. WIVB-TV also served as the default CBS station for portions of Steuben County, New York
Steuben County (stu-BEN) is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 93,584. Its county seat is Bath. Its name is in honor of Baron von Steuben, a Prussian general who fought on the American ...
, due to the absence of a local affiliate in the Elmira
Elmira may refer to:
Places Canada
* Elmira, Ontario
* Elmira, Prince Edward Island
United States
* Elmira, California
* Elmira, Idaho
* Elmira, Indiana
* Elmira, Michigan
* Elmira, Missouri
* Elmira, New York
** Elmira Correctional Facility
...
market; this lasted until 2009 when Elmira ABC affiliate WENY-TV launched a third digital subchannel (on DT2) that is affiliated with CBS.
Spectrum reallocation
On April 14, 2017, WIVB announced that it had sold its spectrum in the FCC's broadcast incentive auction and that it would no longer broadcast on 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 39. The station's programming would be unaffected, as WIVB shares UHF channel 32 with sister station WNLO while holding a separate license; WIVB continues to remap to virtual channel 4.1. The change took effect April 16, 2018.
Because WNLO's broadcast signal is centered further north than the former WIVB-TV tower that was in Colden, the move further deteriorated reception of the channel in the western Southern Tier
The Southern Tier is a geographic subregion of the broader Upstate New York region of New York (state), New York State, consisting of counties west of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County, New York, Delaware County and geographically situ ...
, where it had already been marginalized after the first digital transition and move to UHF, while at the same time improving the station's coverage along the Golden Horseshoe
The Golden Horseshoe is a secondary region of Southern Ontario, Canada, which lies at the western end of Lake Ontario, with outer boundaries stretching south to Lake Erie and north to Lake Scugog, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The ...
in Ontario, including a city-grade signal in Toronto.[RabbitEars Contour Map for WIVB-TV](_blank)
/ref> To restore its Southern Tier coverage area, Nexstar reached an agreement to transfer channel 32 to WUTV, which has historically put a greater emphasis on its Canadian viewership than WIVB has; WIVB and WNLO would in turn receive the channel 36 allocation (being vacated by adjacent-market channels WENY-TV and CITS-DT) that WUTV had originally purchased, which will allow it to reposition its signal so that it again serves the Southern Tier. The realignment took effect on the day of the repack, August 1, 2019.
Carriage disputes
WIVB-TV has had significant contract disputes with both of the major cable television providers in the station's coverage area, Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operat ...
(which covers most of Western New York
Western New York (WNY) is the westernmost region of the U.S. state of New York. The eastern boundary of the region is not consistently defined by state agencies or those who call themselves "Western New Yorkers". Almost all sources agree WNY in ...
) and Atlantic Broadband (which covers much of its Northern Pennsylvania
The Northern Tier is a geographic region consisting of five rural counties in north-central Pennsylvania.
Geography
The region is bordered to the north by the Southern Tier of New York state. Together, these regions are known as the Twin Tier ...
area as well as the rest of the Western New York region). In both cases, WIVB-TV demanded a rights fee of 25 cents per month per subscriber (in addition to another 25 cents for sister station WNLO) and refused to allow the carriers the right to carry the signal. The agreement with Time Warner expired on October 2, 2008. WIVB-TV and WNLO were taken off Time Warner Cable at 12:30 a.m. on October 3 and were replaced with CBS College Sports Network and HBO Family
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...
respectively when an agreement between LIN Television and Time Warner Cable could not be reached. According to the station, LIN Television and Time Warner Cable were still trying to work on a deal even after the channels were dropped. Time Warner Cable stated negotiations broke off at the time of the shutoff.
After that, WIVB-TV openly advocated for Time Warner Cable customers to switch to Dish Network
DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling TV ...
. Time Warner Cable, in turn, gave away free antennas and struck a deal with the Buffalo Bills Radio Network
The Buffalo Bills Radio Network is a broadcast radio network based in Buffalo, New York. Its primary programming is broadcasts of Buffalo Bills home and away games to a network of 24 stations in upstate New York, the Northwestern and Northern ...
to simulcast the audio of the games on cable channel 4. Buffalo Bills games and some CBS programs were restored in Niagara County through Toronto-based CTV
CTV may refer to:
Television
* Connected TV, or Smart TV, a TV set with integrated internet
North America and South America
* CTV Television Network, a Canadian television network owned by Bell Media
** CTV 2, a secondary Canadian televisio ...
station CFTO-TV (and in other parts of the region through WROC-TV and WSEE-TV). In Erie
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 at ...
, Cattaraugus, Allegany, and western Steuben counties, WIVB-TV continues to (in addition to block its signal) enforce its syndication exclusivity
Syndication exclusivity (also known as syndex) is a federal law () implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States that is designed to protect a local television station's rights to syndicated television programs b ...
on Bills games preventing them from being brought in from another market. An agreement was reached between LIN TV and Time Warner Cable on October 29 allowing WIVB-TV and WNLO to return to Time Warner channel lineups. The deal, the financial terms of which were not made available, was to expire on May 31, 2013.[Pergament, Alan (May 23, 2013)]
Ch. 4, TWC in money dispute again
. ''The Buffalo News''. Retrieved May 23, 2013.
There was no agreement or negotiation with Atlantic Broadband, but that company continued to retransmit WIVB-TV without permission through 2008. Atlantic Broadband announced it would discontinue carrying WIVB-TV in favor of WSEE-TV on January 1, 2009 and were apparently making no effort to negotiate a new deal. However, due to this date falling on a holiday, WIVB-TV granted a 30-day extension at the end of which was an agreement that allowed WIVB-TV to continue to be carried uninterrupted. The agreement, originally set to expire in January 2012, was presumably renewed, as the channel remains available on that company's providers. WNLO was not included in the agreement, and CW service is now provided in these areas by WSEE-DT2.
On March 4, 2011, LIN Media pulled WIVB-TV and WNLO from Dish Network (the same service WIVB-TV and WNLO explicitly advised viewers to change to during the Time Warner Cable dispute) due to the expiration of the existing retransmission consent agreement; the blackout lasted nine days.[http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/business/DISH-may-drop-WIVB-and-WNLO?ts=1298942768]
WIVB was pulled from DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California, El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary ...
as part of a broader dispute between DirecTV and Nexstar on July 4, 2019, a dispute that has been resolved as of August 29.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wivb-Tv
CBS network affiliates
Court TV affiliates
IVB-TV
Television channels and stations established in 1948
Buffalo Braves broadcasters
Nexstar Media Group
1948 establishments in New York (state)