WKRC-DT2

WKRC-TV (channel 12) is a television station in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to MyNetworkTV affiliate WSTR-TV (channel 64) under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Deerfield Media. Both stations share studios on Highland Avenue in the Mount Auburn section of Cincinnati, where WKRC-TV's transmitter is also located.

History

Early history

WKRC-TV first signed on the air on April 4, 1949, originally operating as a CBS affiliate on VHF channel 11; it is Cincinnati's second-oldest television station, but the first to receive an FCC license. The station was owned by the Ohio-based Taft family, who were active in both politics and media. The Tafts published ''The Cincinnati Times-Star'', and also owned WKRC radio (550 AM and 101.9 FM, now WKRQ) under their broadcasting subsidiary, Radio Cincinnati. In 1958, the Tafts sold the ''Times-Star'' to the locally based rival E. W. Scripps Company, owner of ''The Cincinnati Post'' and WCPO-AM- FM- TV. The Tafts' broadcasting interests were then reorganized as Taft Broadcasting, with WKRC-AM-FM-TV as the flagship stations. The WKRC stations' call letters were derived from the original owner of WKRC radio, Clarence Ogden of the Kodel Radio Company ("Ko" for Clarence O. and "del" for Della his wife). Following the release of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s ''Sixth Report and Order'', WKRC-TV moved to channel 12 on October 12, 1952.

Tri-State Network

In 1953, three television stations owned by Taft Broadcasting Company and Cox Enterprises formed the short-lived "Tri-State Network" to compete with entertainment programming produced by Crosley Broadcasting Corporation on Crosley television stations in the Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton broadcast markets. On January 11, 1954, ''The Wendy Barrie Show'' premiered from the studios of WHIO-TV in Dayton, simulcast on Taft Broadcasting's WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WTVN (now WSYX) in Columbus. Barrie's contract was terminated in October 1954, and she was replaced by her co-host of nine months, Don Williams.

As an ABC affiliate

In 1961, the station became an ABC affiliate, switching networks with WCPO-TV. This came after that network's founder Leonard Goldenson persuaded Taft president Hulbert Taft Jr., a longtime friend, to switch several of the company's stations to ABC. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. WKRC's nickname in the 1960s was "Tall 12", a reference to the station's transmitter tower which was the tallest in Cincinnati at the time. Like WCPO-TV, channel 12 used a distinctive jingle ID at the top of the hour in the 1960s. The upbeat, orchestrated "Channel 12" jingle was followed by children's show host Glenn Ryle announcing: "This is WKRC-TV Cincinnati". Also, during its tenure with ABC, WKRC (through ABC) aired a number of animated shows produced by Hanna-Barbera, which Taft purchased in 1967. In 1975, it began airing movies on late night Saturdays in a program called ''The Past Prime Playhouse''. Hosted live by local personality Bob Shreve, the show would air until 1988.

On June 23, 1983, after a yearlong field trial, WKRC began broadcasting teletext magazines to Cincinnati-area owners of Electra decoders, making Cincinnati the first market in the United States where teletext was commercially available.
/ref> WKRC broadcast 100 screens of information and games, along with closed captioning of ABC programming, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Electra's manufacturer, Zenith Electronics, marketed the service with a mobile demonstration van at locations around the city to promote sales of its decoder. David Klein, the media critic for ''The Cincinnati Post'', wrote a negative review of the service, noting slow loading time, unengaging content, and primitive graphics. WKRC's teletext magazine was later syndicated nationally by Satellite Syndicated Systems.

In 1987, Taft was dissolved in a hostile takeover of its board and all of its stations (except WTVN-TV in Columbus and WGHP-TV in High Point, North Carolina) were absorbed into Great American Broadcasting. In 1993, Great American Broadcasting became Citicasters shortly before filing for bankruptcy. The Electra service shut down that year.

Return to CBS

While Cincinnati was initially unaffected by the 1994–96 affiliation switches, as WCPO was in a middle of a long-term affiliation contract with CBS, the affiliation contract was abruptly stopped. The station returned to CBS in 1996, reversing the 1961 affiliation swap. WCPO had agreed to affiliate with ABC in September 1995, but WKRC's contract with ABC was not set to expire for another year. In May 1996, WKRC began airing half-hour-long special programs detailing upcoming programming changes at the two stations. On June 3, 1996, WKRC's contract ended, and WKRC rejoined CBS while WCPO rejoined ABC. The last ABC program to air on WKRC was the ''ABC Sunday Night Movie'' airing of the 1993 telefilm ''The Only Way Out'', and the first CBS program since it rejoined was ''CBS This Morning''.

In September 1996, WKRC was acquired by Jacor after most of Citicasters' other television stations were sold to New World Communications, which had become involved in an affiliation deal with Fox that was announced in May 1994. The Jacor deal reunited channel 12 with its AM sister, which had been bought by Jacor in 1993 during Great American Broadcasting's bankruptcy reorganization. Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications in 1998.

Although owned by Clear Channel at the time, the station changed its branding to "Local 12" in 2003. This was inspired by the "Local Mandate", a station brand standardization adopted by Post-Newsweek Stations for its own television stations.

In 2006, Clear Channel ranked WKRC as the top CBS affiliate in the United States. On November 16 of that year, the company announced that it would sell its entire television division, including WKRC, after being bought by private equity firms in order to focus on its radio and event properties. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its stations to Providence Equity Partners. Providence Equity teamed up with Sandy DiPasquale to form a new holding company, Newport Television, for the station group. Concurrently, Clear Channel applied to place WKRC and several other stations to the Aloha Station Trust just in case Newport Television failed to close on the group. However, as a result of Newport Television closing on the purchase of WKRC and the other stations on March 14, 2008, Aloha Station Trust and the would-be new owners of Clear Channel opted not to consummate on the acquisition of the station. As a result, Newport Television became WKRC's fourth owner in just over 20 years. As a result of the sale, the Citicasters name disappeared from WKRC's license, dissolving channel 12's last link to Taft Broadcasting; the Citicasters name is still alive as a holding company within the corporate structure of Clear Channel's successor, iHeartMedia.

On June 18, 2008, Newport announced that it was eliminating 7.5% of the jobs at its 56 stations, attributing the layoffs to a weak economy. As a result, WKRC fired 18 staff members. On July 19, 2012, Newport Television reached deals to sell 22 of its 27 stations to three station groups – Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cox Media Group. WKRC-TV was among the six sold to Sinclair. WSTR-TV (channel 64) was transferred to Deerfield Media (who also received San Antonio's CW affiliate KMYS in the same deal) because the Cincinnati market, despite being the 35th-largest market, has only seven full-power commercial stations, which are not enough to legally permit a duopoly. However, Sinclair retained control of WSTR through a shared services agreement. The deal also reunited WKRC-TV with WSYX (the former WTVN-TV), another station formerly owned by Taft. The sale was completed on December 3.

WKRC-DT2 (The CW Cincinnati)

WKRC-DT2, branded on-air as The CW Cincinnati, is the CW-affiliated second digital subchannel of WKRC-TV, broadcasting in high definition on channel 12.2.

History

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. WKRC signed a deal to affiliate with the new network on a new second digital subchannel resulting in UPN affiliate WBQC-CA (channel 25) becoming an independent station. Meanwhile, WB affiliate WSTR-TV joined another new network, News Corporation-owned MyNetworkTV (now owned by Fox Corporation) which launched on September 5. With the affiliation, WKRC-DT2 became the largest subchannel-only CW affiliate by market size, and was one of the few such stations located in the top 100 markets (most CW-affiliated stations that carry the network via a subchannel are located in the 110 smallest U.S. television markets and carry The CW Plus, an automated feed featuring a pre-packaged schedule of syndicated programs outside CW programming hours; the few that are located among the top 100—such as WTVG-DT2 in Toledo—maintain an independently programmed schedule as their primary channel counterparts do). This distinction ended on May 31, 2017, when San Diego's CBS affiliate, KFMB-TV, affiliated its DT2 subchannel with The CW (which had previously been carried on the primary feed of Tijuana, Mexico-based XETV).

Cincinnati cable viewers were concerned that WKRC-DT2 would face the same problems as WBQC. For years, Time Warner Cable had refused to carry that station full-time, and eventually the station brokered an agreement to air WB prime time on a leased access channel which was barely promoted. However, Time Warner Cable was a division of Time Warner at the time (who would be half-owner of The CW), so it was in the company's best interest to air WKRC-DT2 over its systems. By late in the day on September 17, Time Warner Cable agreed to carry the new station only hours before the network's launch on September 18. WKRC-DT2 launched on Time Warner channel 2 in prime time only to start out with and 24 hours a day on digital cable channel 913, before earning a full-time broadcast basic placement on channel 20 as of October 18, displacing WBQC and a commercial access channel. The station also debuted on Insight Communications and DirecTV under WBQC's former channel slots. As a result, the channel can be viewed by 66% of the local population.

While now branded as simply "The CW Cincinnati," the subchannel originally branded as "The CinCW," a portmanteau

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