WSMH (channel 66), branded on-air as Fox 66, 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 eart ...

licensed to Flint, Michigan, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for northeastern Michigan. It is owned by

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, ...

, which provides certain services to

Saginaw Saginaw () is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Saginaw County. The city of Saginaw and Saginaw County are both in the area known as Mid-Michigan. Saginaw is adjacent to Saginaw Charter Township and considered part of Greater ...

-licensed

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 are l ...

affiliate

WEYI-TV WEYI-TV (channel 25), branded on-air as NBC 25, is a television station licensed to Saginaw, Michigan, United States, serving northeastern Michigan as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Howard Stirk Holdings, which maintains a shared services ...

(channel 25, owned by

Howard Stirk Holdings Armstrong Williams (born February 5, 1962) is an American political commentator, entrepreneur, author, and talk show host. Williams writes a nationally syndicated conservative newspaper column, has hosted a daily radio show, and hosts a nationa ...

) and Bay City-licensed CW affiliate

WBSF WBSF (channel 46), branded on-air as CW 46, is a television station licensed to Bay City, Michigan, United States, serving northeastern Michigan as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, which maintains a shared serv ...

(channel 46, owned by Cunningham Broadcasting) through separate shared services agreements (SSAs). However, Sinclair effectively owns WBSF as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The three stations share studios on West Pierson Road in Mount Morris Township (with a Flint mailing address); WSMH's transmitter is located on Amman Road (near Gary Road) near

St. Charles, Michigan St. Charles is a village in Saginaw County, Michigan, Saginaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The village is located in the northwest corner of St. Charles Township, Michigan, St. Charles Township with portions of the village located within B ...

. There is no separate website for WSMH; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station WEYI-TV.

History

Flint Broadcasting Limited Partnership requested a station with the call letters WSMH, which were assigned on September 27, 1984. WSMH first went on the air on January 13, 1985 as an independent station with Frederick (Fritz) Mills as general manager. Mills was formerly director of national sales, UPI Media in Chicago. A fire at the transmitter in April 1985 forced the station to go off the air for about one month until repairs could be made. Flint Broadcasting sold the station to Gerald J. Robinson by July 1986. On October 9, 1986, it became a charter Fox affiliate. Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the station in 1996. Per a new five-year affiliation agreement reached between Sinclair and Fox on May 15, 2012, WSMH would remain a Fox affiliate until at least December 31, 2017, although currently, its Fox affiliation remains to this day.

Programming

Syndicated programming

Syndicated programming on WSMH includes '' Judge Jerry'', ''

The People's Court ''The People's Court'' is an American arbitration-based reality court show, featuring an arbitrator handling small claims disputes in a simulated courtroom set. Within the court show genre, it is the first of all arbitration-based reality sty ...

'', ''

Family Feud ''Family Feud'' is an American television game show created by Mark Goodson. It features two families who compete to name the most popular answers to survey questions in order to win cash and prizes. The show has had three separate runs, th ...

'', ''

The Big Bang Theory ''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro, all of whom also served as head writers. It premiered on C ...

'', and '' The Goldbergs'', among others.

News operation

As of December 2021, WSMH presently broadcasts 16½ hours of locally produced newscast each week (with 3 hours each weekday, 30 minutes on Saturdays, and an hour on Sundays). On October 28, 2002, WSMH started up a news department and began airing local broadcasts every night at 10. Called ''Fox 66 News at 10'', it was assisted by Sinclair's centralized news department under the '' News Central'' brand. Local news originated from WSMH's studios while national news, weather, and sports aired from ''News Central'' headquarters in

Hunt Valley, Maryland Hunt Valley is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, near the site of the Maryland Hunt Cup Steeplechase. It lies just north of the city of Baltimore, along York Road (Maryland Route 45), parallel to Interstat ...

. The station was the first Sinclair-owned property to use the ''News Central'' service and marked the first time it had ventured into the local news market. In January 2006, Sinclair announced plans to end its ''News Central'' operation due to low ratings and expense. On April 10, Sinclair announced that

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

affiliate

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 ...

would begin producing a nightly 10 o'clock show on WSMH known as ''TV 5 News at 10 on Fox 66''. This began airing on April 24 from WNEM's studios on North Franklin Street in Downtown

. After the final ''News Central'' broadcast on April 21, many local WSMH news employees were laid off. It had been expected that some personalities would join the WNEM-produced newscast in the future according to a press release. This was the case for former WSMH reporter David Custer who joined the WNEM news team on May 3. The final ''News Central'' broadcast featured, in its last few minutes, clips from past shows. At the end, the studio was darkened and Jim Kiertzner and his boss left for the last time. Even after WSMH shut down its news operation,

Mark E. Hyman Mark E. Hyman is an American political commentator and former television executive. He was vice president for corporate relations for Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest chain of local television stations in the United States, until 2005. Hyman b ...

's controversial "The Point" editorials continued to air following the end of the WNEM-produced newscasts. Hyman ended his commentaries on November 30. On May 1, 2009, the 10 o'clock news title was re-branded and the broadcast received updated graphics. Every night at 10:45, a fifteen-minute sports highlight show called ''Sports Extra'' airs. There is also a segment called "Fugitive Files" airing every week on Mondays which is a common segment offered by local news departments operated by Sinclair. Although WNEM upgraded its newscasts to 16:9 enhanced definition

widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...

on October 14, 2010, the newscasts on WSMH remain in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition because this channel lacks a modern

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 sw ...

facility at its separate studios to receive the newscast in widescreen. Effective April 27, 2015, WEYI took over duties of producing the 10 p.m. newscast for sister Sinclair station WSMH, ''Fox 66 News at 10''. Prior to April 27, WNEM-TV produced WSMH's evening newscast as part of a local agreement with WSMH. '' Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson'', a Sinclair Broadcast Group produced half-hour investigative news program, airs on the channel on Sunday morning starting October 4, 2015.

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 ...

: On September 30, 2006, WSMH began broadcasting The Tube on its secondary subchannel. In late 2010 and early 2011 with new carriage deals by owner Sinclair, WSMH added two music video networks to its digital subchannels,

TheCoolTV TheCoolTV was a digital broadcast television network and online music video " jukebox" streaming service owned by Cool Music Network, LLC of Lawrence, Kansas. History As a digital broadcast television network Launched in March 2009, the netw ...

on 66.2 and

The Country Network The Country Network is an American cable, streaming and broadcast television network that specializes in broadcasting country music videos and exclusive original music-based content; its playlist of videos extends from the 1990s through the pres ...

on 66.3. In late August 2012, TheCoolTV was dropped from all 32 Sinclair stations that carried the channel, including WSMH, with no replacement due to non-renewal of affiliation. Sinclair signed an agreement in June 2014 which added

GetTV getTV is an American digital multicast television network owned by the Sony Pictures Television Networks subsidiary of Sony Pictures Television. Originally formatted as a movie-oriented service, the network has since transitioned into a genera ...

to 33 TV markets with WSMH adding that channel on channel 66.2 effective July 2. Zuus was replaced on WSMH-DT3 by

Comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

on October 31, 2015. In December of that year, the station replaced GetTV with

Antenna TV Antenna TV is an American digital television network owned by Nexstar Media Group. The network's programming consists of classic television series, primarily sitcoms, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Antenna TV's programming and advertising operati ...

Analog-to-digital conversion

WSMH discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 66, on May 21, 2009. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 16, using

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the AT ...

to 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's ...

as its former UHF analog channel 66, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

References

External links

* {{SBGI Fox network affiliates Antenna TV affiliates Comet (TV network) affiliates Stadium (sports network) affiliates Sinclair Broadcast Group SMH Television channels and stations established in 1984 1984 establishments in Michigan