WNEM-TV

WNEM-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Bay City, Michigan, United States, serving northeastern Michigan as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Gray Television, the station maintains studios on North Franklin Street in downtown Saginaw, with a second newsroom in downtown Flint. Its transmitter is located on Becker Road in Robin Glen-Indiantown, in Buena Vista Township, east of Saginaw.

History

NBC affiliate

On the week before May 5, 1952, Goodwill Stations, owner of WJR radio in Detroit, announced the intent of applying for four station licenses which would operate as a regional network—UHF channel 50 in Detroit, channel 11 in Toledo, Ohio, channel 12 in Flint and channel 5 in Bay City. WNEM-TV was founded by the Northeastern Michigan Corporation, hence the call letters, on February 16, 1954, as an NBC affiliate. Originally, its main studios were located on rented space at Bishop International Airport in Flint with auxiliary studios in its city of license, Bay City. In the 1960s, it moved its main studios to the transmitter site in Indiantown, after flirting with the idea of co-locating the television station on the WSAM tower in Saginaw. During its first four years, WNEM-TV had a secondary affiliation with ABC sharing programming from that network with WKNX-TV (channel 57, now WEYI-TV channel 25) until 1958 when WJRT-TV signed-on and took that affiliation. WNEM-TV also aired programming from DuMont until that network dissolved in August 1956.

Professional violinist James Gerity's Gerity Broadcasting bought the station in 1961 and sold it to the Meredith Corporation in 1969. The transition to Meredith was first announced in 1968, and was at that time, the first and only NBC affiliate owned by the company (a distinction later held by WSMV, until it was transferred to Gray). In the mid-1980s, the station moved its primary studios to their current location in downtown Saginaw. The Becker Road studios would later be used for the Buena Vista campus of Delta College, though the complex still houses WNEM-TV's transmitter. By the late 1980s, mirroring a trend in many other television markets, WNEM-TV was the dominant station in Mid-Michigan, helped by NBC's then-dominant prime time lineup.

CBS affiliate

On January 16, 1995, WNEM-TV and WEYI swapped networks, and WNEM-TV became a CBS affiliate (announced June 30, 1994). The move came as part of the larger U.S. television network affiliation switches of 1994 that saw CBS' longtime affiliate in Detroit, WJBK-TV, switch to the Fox network, and CBS was unable to get WXYZ-TV (whose ABC affiliation was renewed), WXON-TV, WKBD, WDIV, or WADL to switch networks; CBS eventually purchased independent station WGPR-TV and transformed it into WWJ-TV in December 1994.

The day that WNEM-TV became a CBS affiliate, it also took on secondary affiliations with both UPN and The WB and aired programming from the two networks late at night. The station relinquished the secondary WB affiliation in October 1999 to WEYI. It dropped CBS' daytime soap opera ''Guiding Light'' in 1996 due to low ratings, which made it one of two CBS stations in the nation that did not carry the program for what would turn out to be its final 13 years (the other was KOVR in Sacramento, California). However, by 2007 the show was aired instead on My5 at 10 a.m., and stayed there for the rest of its run. WNEM now clears the entire CBS daytime lineup on its primary channel, having moved ''Guiding Light''s replacement ''Let's Make a Deal'' over from My5 in 2012. It currently airs at 10 a.m.

As of April 1, 2011, Comcast cable subscribers in Holly, Michigan and surrounding areas recently had WNEM-TV replaced with Detroit's WWJ-TV as the main CBS network affiliate. My5 was also replaced with WMYD as the main MyNetworkTV affiliate. While Holly is much closer to Flint than Detroit ( compared to ), it is in the far northern portion of Oakland County, which is technically part of the Detroit television market.

On May 3, 2021, Gray Television announced it would acquire Meredith's Local Media stations for $2.7 billion. At the time, Gray owned WJRT-TV and as both stations rank among the top four in terms of total viewers, it intended to keep WNEM and sell WJRT to a third party. On July 14, Gray announced it would sell WJRT to Allen Media Group, a subsidiary of Byron Allen's Entertainment Studios, which was in the process of also acquiring several Quincy Media stations through Gray until August 2, 2021. The acquisition was completed on December 1, a couple months after Gray divested WJRT.

Programming

Little to no records are held regarding the station's early programming. The few that were remembered are ''Chester the Clown'', ''Hoss 'n' Stuff'', ''Mr. Hot Dog'', "Captain Muddy" hosting ''Popeye

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