WTVW

WTVW, virtual channel 7, is an independent television station based in Evansville, Indiana. The station broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 28, mapping to virtual channel 7 via PSIP, from a 905 ft-tall transmitter located just outside of Chandler. WTVW is owned and operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group.

From December 3, 1995 to June 30, 2011, WTVW was an affiliate of the Fox television network, a relationship that ended on July 1, 2011; Before then, WTVW served as Evansville's original ABC network affiliate. The current WTVW schedule includes syndicated programming and about 28 hours per week of locally-produced newscasts.

History
WTVW began operations on August 21, 1956 as an ABC affiliate locally owned by Evansville Television, Inc. and operating on VHF channel 7. It was Evansville's third television station, but its first on VHF, and in its early years on the air WTVW fought an attempt by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deintermix the market, which would have moved the station to UHF channel 31 (making Evansville a UHF island; its rivals, WEHT and WFIE, had operated on UHF since their inceptions in 1953) and reallocated channel 7 to Louisville, Kentucky.

Evansville Television went into bankruptcy in 1959, putting WTVW in the hands of a trustee; in 1962, the station was acquired by Polaris Corp., which merged with Natco Corp., a subsidiary of Fuqua Industries, in 1966. Fuqua decided to leave broadcasting in 1979; the following year, WTVW was purchased by Charles Woods, owner of WTVY-FM-TV in Dothan, Alabama. Banam Broadcasting, a subsidiary of BankAmerica, assumed ownership of the station in 1993.

Banam sold WTVW to Petracom Broadcasting in 1995. A 20-percent equity stake in Petracom was purchased by Fox soon afterward, eventually leading to a three-way affiliation swap in which WTVW ended its 39-year ABC affiliation and joined Fox on December 3, 1995, with ABC moving to former CBS affiliate WEHT and CBS moving to former Fox affiliate WEVV. (WTVW is one of three original ABC affiliates in the state of Indiana to have switched affiliation to Fox, the other two being WFXW in Terre Haute and WSJV in South Bend).

Petracom sold its stations to Quorum Broadcasting in 1997. Quorum attempted to sell WTVW to GNS Media in 2003; GNS was owned by former Liberty Corporation executive Neil Smith, and if the deal went through WTVW would have been operated under a joint sales agreement by Liberty-owned WFIE. In the meantime, on December 31, 2003 Quorum merged with Nexstar Broadcasting, which announced in January 2004 that the sale to GNS had fallen through.

On May 11, 2011, Nexstar announced that it would leave WTVW and, as of July 1, 2011, affiliate with a subchannel of WEVV-TV that is currently affiliated with MyNetworkTV (WEVV's main channel will remain with CBS); the move comes as Fox has been aggressively seeking shares of retransmission earnings gained by its affiliates as part of affiliation agreements, an approach that has openly irked WTVW owner Nexstar. WTVW became an independent station branded as "Local 7", with primetime programming including Inside Edition, The Insider, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit during the week, westerns on Saturdays, and movies on Sundays.

The Western programming and overnight classic television programming (which consists of twenty-two hours per week of the station's schedule at present) is provided by MeTV, a Weigel Broadcasting network which mainly airs on digital subchannels in most of the network's markets, though in WTVW's case the programming is recorded from the national feed and aired later in the station's schedule to compensate for current-day syndicated rights.

In 2011, WAZE-TV became defunct, but its repeaters: WAZE-LP, WJPS-LP and WIKY-LP went off the air in 2013. So, WTVW then would become a CW affiliate.

The station would also introduce increased local programming, including coverage of local high school and college sports. The shift made Evansville one of the only television markets in the United States with only four out of the six broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and The CW) having primary affiliations in a five station-market, with the remaining two (Fox and the MyNetworkTV program service) as digital multicast channels, along with one of the few markets where a analog-era VHF station has no network affiliation while all the market's UHF stations do. Nexstar would subsequently be stripped of its Fox affiliations in Springfield, Missouri (KSFX-TV) and Fort Wayne, Indiana (WFFT-TV) as well, and Nexstar decided to drop the Fox affiliation from its Terre Haute, Indiana affiliate (WFXW), which will become an ABC affiliate under the new callsign WAWV. The last Fox network program to air on WTVW was a repeat of Glee. All Fox programming moved to WEVV-DT2 when that show ended at 9 p.m. CDT. Subsequently with a lack of network affiliation and much syndicated high definition programming, WTVW's signal now airs in a 4:3 form of 720p without pillarboxing built into the image.

Broadcasting range
WTVW can be picked up by antenna in every county in Southeastern Illinois, Southwestern Indiana, Northwestern Kentucky, and just about every county bordering these regions. Its viewing area consists of all ten Southeastern Illinois counties, all eleven Southwestern Indiana counties, all nine Northwestern Kentucky counties and two more in South Central Indiana: Crawford and Orange, two more in North Central Kentucky: Breckinridge and Grayson, along with Butler County, Kentucky in south-central Kentucky, as well as Crittenden County and the adjacent Hardin County in Southern Illinois.

News operation
The station currently carries 27½ hours of local newscasts per week (with five hours on weekdays, 1½ hours on Saturdays and one hour on Sundays). Throughout the station's affiliations with ABC and Fox, the station has always operated a local news department. Branded for years as Eyewitness News until 1995, the station changed branding to Fox 7 News following the affiliation switch. News was expanded to two hours on weekday mornings, plus the addition of a 5 p.m. newscast.

Newscasts came and went, with the cancellation of the midday news in the late 1990s, then later the 5 p.m. and finally, the morning news. For a few years this left only the 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. newscasts (the 10 p.m. news had earlier been 'moved' into the 9 p.m. timeslot and expanded to an hour). However, in March 2002, the morning and midday newscasts made a return, under the names Fox 7 Morningside and Fox 7 Midday, respectively. In 2006, the morning news, now known as A.M. Evansville, expanded to three hours, the midday newscast moved to a later time slot and a 6:30 p.m. weeknight newscast was added to the schedule. The news branding changed a number of times as well, from Fox 7 News to Fox 7 First News in 1998, then back to Fox 7 News in 2000. The station once

briefly used WTVW NewsChannel 7 starting in 2004, before again returning to the Fox 7 News title in 2005. The branding was changed once more to Fox 7 WTVW News for a time in 2007 before again reverting to Fox 7 News. Just prior to the end of its Fox affiliation, in June 2011, the Fox 7 News branding was phased out; the station temporarily referred to its newscasts as News 7 in the last weeks of the affiliation, before changing it to Local 7 News on July 1. As an independent station, WTVW then expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to seven nights a week on July 9 (previously, the station's lone weekend early evening newscast was a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast on Saturdays, which expanded to one hour with the expansion), while A.M. Evansville will add a fourth hour in fall 2011.

Randy Moore, the station's 6, 6:30 and 9 p.m. weeknight anchor, is the longest-serving member of WTVW's on-air news team, having been with the station since 1980.

Newscast titles

 * Pulse (1956-1959)
 * The Tri-State Report (1959-1962)
 * The Big News on 7 (1962-1965)
 * News 7 (1965-1968 and June 2011)
 * EDGE (1968-1974)
 * (Channel 7) Eyewitness News (1974–1995; used with "The xx:00 Report" subtitle)
 * Good Morning Tri-State (morning newscast; 1991–1995)
 * Fox 7 News (1995–1998, 2000–2004, 2005–2007 and 2007–June 2011)
 * Fox 7 First News (1998–2000)
 * WTVW NewsChannel 7 (2004–2005)
 * A.M. Evansville (morning newscast; 2006–present)
 * Fox 7 WTVW News (2007)
 * Local 7 News (July 2011–present)

Station slogans

 * The Tri-State's 24-Hour News Source (1991–1998)
 * Fox 7 is On Your Side. (1998–2004)
 * NewsChannel 7 is On Your Side. (2004–2005)
 * The Most Local News. The Most Local Coverage. (2005–2009)
 * Evansville's Original Primetime News (9 p.m. newscast; 2005–2009)
 * On Your Side Through The Tri-State (2010–present)

News music packages

 * WNDU 1986 News Theme by Tuesday Productions (1986-1991)
 * News 88 by Tuesday Productions (1991–1995)
 * Good Morning America by Non-Stop Music (1991–1995; used for Good Morning Tri-State newscast)
 * WTVW 1995 News Theme (1994–1995)
 * FOX '95 by Stephen Arnold (1995–1998)
 * FOX 1998 Affiliate News Package by Killer Tracks (NJJ Music / HLC) (1998–2004)
 * Eyewitness News by Gari Communications (2004–2005)
 * The Paramount by Gari Communications (2005–2009; still used for weather and primetime health news opens)
 * Pinnacle by Stephen Arnold (2009–present)

Current on-air staff (as of July 2011)
Current anchors
 * Julie Dolan - weeknights at 6, 6:30 and 9 p.m.
 * Stefanie Martinez - weekday mornings AM Evansville (5-8 a.m.) and noon
 * Randy Moore - weeknights at 6, 6:30 and 9 p.m.
 * Shalah Sasse - weekends at 6 and 9 p.m.; also weeknight reporter

Weather team
 * Ron Rhodes (NWA Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 6, 6:30 and 9 p.m.
 * Drew Gardner - weather anchor; weekends at 6 and 9 p.m.
 * Tom Sandquist - meterorologist; weekday mornings AM Evansville (5-8 a.m.) and noon

Sports team
 * Drew Amman - sports anchor; weeknights at 6, 6:30 and 9 p.m.
 * Doug Kufner - sports anchor; weekends at 6 and 9 p.m.

Reporters
 * Drew Gardner - general assignment reporter
 * Lindsay Merwin - general assignment reporter
 * Brian Miller - general assignment reporter
 * Ian Preston - general assignment reporter

Notable former staff

 * David Goodnow - reporter (former anchor at HLN)
 * Mark Potter - reporter (now network correspondent for NBC News)
 * Casey Stegall - reporter (now network correspondent for Fox News Channel in Los Angeles)
 * Caroline Shively - weekend anchor (now network correspondent for Fox News Channel)
 * Chris Cannon - morning/midday anchor (now at WTVF in Nashville)
 * Jill Carlson - sports anchor/reporter (currently sports anchor at WFLD in Chicago; was first daily female sports anchor in Chicago)
 * Jim Gavin (now communications director for Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita)
 * Jennifer McGilvray - (now working for Indianapolis Department of Parks and Recreation)
 * Lauren Jones - weekend weather (now at WXIN-TV in Indianapolis)
 * Ann Moore - deceased wife of current head anchor Randy Moore
 * Jackie Monroe - anchor (2004-2009; now 9 and 10 p.m. anchor at WFIE)
 * Kelly Quinn - reporter/anchor (now at WSYR-TV in Syracuse, NY)
 * Rob Spicker - weekend anchor (now morning anchor at WINK-TV in Fort Myers, FL, was at WFTS-TV in Tampa, also been on Good Morning America, The Weather Channel and ABC News Radio)
 * Cheryl White - morning/midday anchor now morning meteorologist/traffic analyst at WAGA-TV in Atlanta

News personnel

 * Bob Walters - news director
 * Warren Korff - assignment editor
 * John Simpson - chief photojournalist
 * Steffen Miller - 6 and 9 p.m. newscast director
 * Aaron Carnal - morning producer
 * Jenny Goodman - 6 p.m. producer
 * Christy Monroe - 9 p.m. producer

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