WFXW

WAWV is the ABC-affiliated television station for the Wabash Valley

area of west central Indiana that is licensed to Terre Haute. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 39 from a transmitter at their studios on U.S. 41 and U.S. 150 south of Farmersburg. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, the station is operated through a joint sales agreement (a.k.a. JSA) by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group. This makes WAWV a sister station to NBC affiliate WTWO. Syndicated programming on this station includes: Two and a Half Men, Family Guy, and Judge Judy.

History
The station began on April 3, 1973 as WIIL-TV, a full-time affiliate of ABC. Prior to 1973, the network had been relegated to partial clearances on WTHI-TV and WTWO. Originally assigned to broadcast on UHF channel 66, the station eventually gained permission to broadcast on UHF channel 38. The original owner, Alpha Broadcasting, poured money into the new operation. However, the local market situation led the station immediately into the red.

Viewers had strongly entrenched viewing habits with the longer-established VHF stations WTWO and WTHI, although WTWO was less than a decade old, and were not as familiar with the then-weaker ABC network lineup. At one point in 1974, the station nearly went off the air, but managed to survive. In 1978, North Carolina broadcaster Cy Bahakel purchased the station renaming it WBAK-TV (after his last name). Faith to Live By, a short daily devotional program that previously aired on WTWO, was seen weekday mornings immediately after WBAK's sign-on. Despite stronger ownership, WBAK barely registered as a blip in the Wabash Valley ratings.

&nbsp In 1995, the station changed affiliation to Fox citing low ratings from the then-overabundance of (stronger-rated) outlying ABC affiliates. Originally, most cable companies in the market carried either WRTV from Indianapolis, WTVW from Evansville, or Decatur, Illinois' WAND-TV in addition to WBAK. In addition to cable, the eastern half of the market (including most of Terre Haute itself) was covered fairly well by WRTV. Indiana's mostly flat terrain enabled those competing stations a stronger-than-normal signal reach than would have occurred had the landscape been hilly or mountainous.

While leaving the Terre Haute area without an over-the-air ABC affiliate, the network switch gave the market its first-ever Fox network affiliate. That network had previously only been available through cable via either the now-defunct Foxnet or Indianapolis' WXIN. Ironically, the network switch actually helped WBAK, which had languished for years as an ABC affiliate.

The outlying ABC affiliates also went through changes. In 1995, WTVW switched to Fox leaving many viewers in the southern half of the DMA without ABC programming. While WTVW's signal decently covered the southern half of the market, new Evansville ABC affiliate WEHT suffered from a weaker UHF signal. In 2005, WAND switched to NBC. ABC was then picked up in that market by WICD in Champaign which replaced WAND on cable systems in the Illinois part of the Terre Haute market. Over-the-air viewers actually benefited from this switch as WICD's transmitter is located near the Illinois/Indiana border and provides a stronger signal. Channel 38 is one of three original ABC affiliates in Indiana to have switched to Fox. The other two are WSJV in South Bend and sister station WTVW in Evansville.

Bahakel sold WBAK to Mission Broadcasting in 2003. The station then entered into a JSA Nexstar Broadcasting, owner of WTWO. WBAK's call letters were changed to the current WFXW on July 1, 2005, after an AM station from Geneva, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago) had gone silent which was using the WFXW call letters.

This station's analog signal was off-the-air between April 16, 2008 and May 9. Their transmitter failed and was dark approximately ten minutes into the American Idol results show. Many viewers were upset over missing the rest of the show. However, its digital signal was used to restore service to local cable systems as well as the signal seen on Dish Network. The American Idol broadcasts during the week of April 21 aired on sister station WTWO. On May 9, the analog signal was restored to service. WFXW's low-power digital signal went off-the-air December 3, 2008 at 9 in the morning to finish work on the digital transmitter. The station came back on-the-air later that same evening in full power digital with a much stronger signal. The analog signal was shut-off permanently at 6:01 P.M. on June 12, 2009.

On June 28, 2011, Fox announced that, in a reversal of its 1995 affiliation change, WFXW would disaffiliate from Fox and rejoin ABC (as part of a deal which called for long-term affiliation renewals between Nexstar and ABC in nine other markets) effective September 1. The call letters will be changed to WAWV-TV (which stands for ABC for the Wabash Valley) at that time. The move came after Nexstar was stripped of its Fox affiliations for WTVW in Evansville, WFFT-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and KSFX-TV in Springfield, Missouri following a dispute with the network over retransmission consent fees. Although no replacement Fox affiliate has been named yet, the Fox affiliation might move to WTHI (either as a primary affiliation or on a digital subchannel) after the switch; should no replacement affiliate be found, Terre Haute will be the only market in the United States with affiliates of all three historical commercial broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), but lacking over-the-air affiliates of all three current post-1986 networks (Fox, The CW and the MyNetworkTV program service) as none of the three commercial stations in the Terre Haute market currently have digital subchannels carrying CW or MyNetworkTV programming. When the station turned to an ABC affiliate. WAWV will be Owned and Operated (O&O) by Nexstar.

News operation
In 1973, the station carried a weeknight newscast known as the WIIL-TV Evening News, but this only lasted until 1974. In 1978, local news returned in the form of News 38 which was largely composed of former WTHI employees. This incarnation of local news, which ran as a single daily broadcast, folded in 1981. For the rest of its run as an ABC affiliate, practically the only newscast on the station was Good Morning Terre Haute, a morning show which consisted of taped interviews and a weather forecast.

At the same time that the station switched to Fox, an agreement was reached with WTHI to provide a 10 o'clock prime time news for the newly christened "Fox 38". The station's morning interview program, Good Morning Terre Haute, continued for a short period as Valley Focus on Fox 38. This ended in 1996 as did the devotional program Faith To Live By. Valley Point of View, a weekly public affairs program produced by the Leadership Terre Haute organization, continued on this station until 2004. The WTHI-produced newscast lasted until December 31, 2003 some time after WTWO had taken control of WBAK under a joint sales agreement (JSA). In mid-2004, that station premiered its own 10 P.M. newscast on WBAK entitled NewsChannel 2 Prime Edition. This broadcast utilized the same talent and resources as WTWO's weeknight 6 and 11 newscasts.

After the call letter switch, the 10 o'clock news was re-branded to Fox 38 News at 10 for a brief period then later to WFXW Prime Edition. At that point, the broadcast featured its own news anchor, set, graphics, and music package. On June 7, 2007, the branding was amended to WTWO Prime Edition on WFXW. The format of the newscast was once again essentially the same as WTWO by this point and featured the main WTWO talent and no longer utilized a separate news set.

On June 8, 2009, the news was revamped and re-branded to Fox 38 News: First at 10. Though still produced by WTWO, the revamped broadcast once again featured a separate news set, graphics package (the same used by many Fox owned-and-operated stations and affiliates), and the news music package Extreme by Stephen Arnold Music. It used to be solo anchored by Leanne Tokars who returned to the station in 2009, but left again in later 2010. She originally anchored the first WTWO-produced Fox 38 News at 10 incarnation in 2005. Weather and sports still originate from WTWO's staff. Aside from the stand-alone live weeknight 10 o'clock news, WFXW also rebroadcasts the 6 a.m. hour of WTWO's weekday morning news at 7 (known on this station as NBC 2 News Today on WFXW).

With Fox's announcement of WFXW's disaffiliation with Fox and re-afilliation with ABC, it is unclear if the station plans on starting its own news operation operating out of the same newsroom as WTWO (similar to the current arrangement of sister stations KODE-TV and KSNF in Joplin, Missouri), or if WTWO will continue to produce separate newscasts for the station. However, the 7 a.m. rebroadcast of WTWO's weekday morning newscast will be dropped or moved as ABC airs Good Morning America in that timeslot; the existing 10 p.m. newscast will be canceled as well, as unlike Fox, ABC provides primetime network programming during that hour.

News team
NBC 2 News Today (Weekday Mornings 7 to 8, repeated from WTWO)
 * Anchor:
 * Dana Winklepleck
 * Weather:
 * Anne Elise Parks

Fox 38 News: First at 10 (Weeknights 10 to 10:30)
 * Anchor:
 * Patrick Fazio
 * Weather:
 * Jesse Walker
 * Sports:
 * Jason Pensky

''Additional personnel from WTWO are seen on this station. See the WTWO article for a compete listing.''