WCWF (channel 14) is a television station licensed to Suring, Wisconsin, United States, serving the Green Bay area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Fox affiliate WLUK-TV (channel 11). The two stations share studios on Lombardi Avenue (US 41) on the line between Green Bay and Ashwaubenon; WCWF's transmitter is located on Scray Hill in Ledgeview.
History The station launched on February 22, 1984, as religious independent station WSCO-TV, under the ownership of Northeastern Wisconsin Christian Television Incorporated. The station's former analog transmitter was located outside of the unincorporated Oconto County community of Krakow, four miles (6 km) north of Pulaski on WIS 32. Financial problems would force the station off the air by 1987; VCY America would purchase the station's license that year and return it to the air by 1993 as a sister station to Milwaukee's WVCY-TV with religious and home shopping programming. On April 30, 1997, Paxson Communications (now Ion Media Networks) purchased the station and converted it to a paid programming format under Paxson's inTV service. On August 31, 1998, WSCO became a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV (later i: Independent Television, now Ion Television) under the new call sign WPXG (for "Pax Green Bay"). On June 2, 1999, Paxson sold WPXG to ACME Communications; the station immediately became a primary WB affiliate and changed its call sign to WIWB, originally branded as "WB 14" and later "Wisconsin's WB" (The WPXG-TV callsign has been moved to a TV station in Manchester, New Hampshire). Before it joined the network, WB programming in Northeastern Wisconsin was previously seen either through cable providers that carried Chicago-based superstation WGN and/or Milwaukee's WVTV or during off hours on UPN affiliate WACY-TV (channel 32; Kids' WB programming aired as part of WACY's children's lineup). WIWB also continued to air Pax programming in the mornings, overnights and weekends for a few years after ACME's purchase was finalized; it would drop that network by 2004, at which time the station's programming lineup adopted a more general entertainment format that was heavily reliant on sitcom reruns and court shows, in addition to WB programming. Pax TV's successor, Ion Television, would not return to the market over-the-air until November 2015, when WBAY-TV launched it on their DT3 subchannel. 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. Due to ACME's ownership by former WB executive Jamie Kellner, WIWB's pursuit of the CW affiliation was assumed to be a formality. Indeed, on March 9, 2006, ACME Communications affiliated most of their stations with The CW, including WIWB. The station officially joined the network upon its September 18, 2006, launch. Prior to that date, it temporarily carried not only WB programs, but also shows from UPN after WACY-TV dropped UPN before that network's closure to join MyNetworkTV. At the time, ACME decided not to change the callsigns of any of their WB-to-CW affiliates to avert any further confusion from the launch of the two new networks. On June 4, 2010, LIN TV Corporation, owner of Green Bay's Fox affiliate WLUK-TV, as part of an agreement with ACME Communications in three markets where both companies owned stations, announced that it would begin to operate WIWB through separate shared services and joint sales agreements; WLUK would provide WIWB with technical, engineering, promotional, administrative and other operational support services, as well as joint advertising sales for the two stations. As part of its agreements with ACME, LIN TV had the option to purchase WIWB, an option it exercised in September 2010, purchasing not only WIWB but another CW station in a similar arrangement, Dayton, Ohio's WBDT. LIN TV included in its license transfer request to the Federal Communications Commission a "failing station waiver", an indication that the station was in an economically non-viable position and that FCC should relax ownership limits that apply to the Green Bay market so that Channel 14 could stay on the air; that limit (found in CFR§73.3555(b)(2) of the FCC's rules) permits ownership duopolies in markets with at least eight full-power stations, whereas Green Bay has only seven (Journal Communications would also seek a waiver in its 2012 purchase of WACY-TV, which has been operated through Journal-owned WGBA-TV since 1994).
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