WTTO (channel 21) is a television station licensed to Homewood, Alabama, United States, serving the Birmingham area as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside ABC affiliate WBMA-LD (channel 58, branded as ABC 33/40) and WABM (channel 68), an independent station with MyNetworkTV. The stations share studios at the Riverchase office park on Concourse Parkway in Hoover (with a Birmingham mailing address); WTTO's transmitter is located atop Red Mountain in southwestern Birmingham. In Tuscaloosa, west Alabama, and the western portions of the Birmingham area, WTTO's CW channel and two subchannels of WBMA-LD are rebroadcast on WDBB (channel 17), which is licensed to Bessemer. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting and managed by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement (LMA); however, Sinclair effectively owns WDBB, as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. WTTO had a tortuous history prior to starting operations. It took nearly two decades for the station to be approved and built. Once on air, the station was a successful independent for the Birmingham area. It served as the Fox affiliate for the market from 1990 to 1996, when an affiliation shuffle resulted in the loss of the affiliation.
History
A long way to air In December 1963, Chapman Radio and Television Company—then the owners of radio station WCRT (1260 AM, now WYDE and 96.5 FM, now WMJJ)—filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new television station in Homewood, using Birmingham's channel 54 allocation. This application was designated for hearing with one by Symphony Network Association, Inc., in 1964. In 1965, the UHF table of allocations was overhauled, and channel 21 was substituted for 54 on Chapman's application. The FCC granted the permit to Chapman in August 1965; however, the FCC chose to resume hearings on the matter after other applicants protested the granting of Chapman's petition. (In the meantime, the Chapmans built, and then sold, WCFT-TV in Tuscaloosa.) One of the new bidders was a startup station—WBMG (channel 42), the first commercial UHF station in Birmingham—which hoped it could replace channel 42 with 21. When the contest resumed, there were five applicants. Besides Chapman and WBMG, there was Tele-Mac of Birmingham, owned by John McClendon, who also ran a chain of Black-oriented radio stations including WENN in Birmingham; Alabama Television Corporation, owned by John S. Jemison; and Birmingham Broadcasting Company, which was owned by Black businessman A. G. Gaston. Tele-Mac bowed out in late November, leaving four parties seeking the channel. Hearing examiner James Kraushaar's initial decision, released in September 1968, awarded the channel to Alabama Television, based on its superior technical proposal. However, Chapman and WBMG contested the award, and the FCC agreed, finding that Alabama Television had failed to contact Black people in the process of ascertainment of community needs required of prospective licensees. WBMG's petition also raised a 1969 incident in which a cemetery owned by Jemison refused to bury the body of a Black soldier killed in Vietnam. In 1971, two other Alabama Television shareholders, George J. Mitnick and Joseph Engel, were sued by the United States Department of Justice for violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the FCC opened new hearings on the firm's qualifications in light of the lawsuit. Meanwhile, another applicant, Birmingham Broadcasting—which pledged the first integrated TV station in the country—was facing trouble in its ownership group. One of its stakeholders was Oscar Hyde, who was convicted on extortion charges in 1968 but still owned a third of the firm, putting it at a serious disadvantage in comparative hearing until Hyde sold his stake in 1973. WBMG had dropped out by this point, leaving Chapman and Birmingham Broadcasting the lone contenders for the construction permit; the Hyde stake was still being contested, but the FCC found the programming proposals from Chapman inadequate. Furthermore, the two financial institutions that had promised Birmingham Broadcasting funding in 1964 no longer existed in 1976. Hearings were held by the FCC that fall, but one Birmingham Broadcasting stakeholder, Jesse L. Lewis, refused to come; he was serving as the State Highway and Traffic Safety Director, making him the only Black leader of a state agency, and he feared that if he left town, his department would be abolished by the state legislature. The question of financial backing turned out to be the deciding factor when an administrative law judge found in favor of Chapman's bid in 1977. The decision was appealed to the full FCC, which upheld the ruling in March 1979. An attempted appeal in federal court turned out to have been filed one day late, while a petition for reconsideration made to the FCC was also dismissed.
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