Back

WFRV-TV

WFRV-TV
A silver CBS eye and numeral 5. Behind them is a blue-and-yellow swoosh starting from the left and swooping around the bottom and right to the top. The word "Local" is in silver on a black shape in the upper left.
Channels
BrandingLocal 5
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
WJMN-TV
History
FoundedJanuary 26, 1954 (1954-01-26)
First air date
May 20, 1955 (1955-05-20)
Former call signs
WNAM-TV (1954–1955)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 42 (UHF, 1954–1955), 5 (VHF, 1955–2009)
  • Digital: 39 (UHF, until 2019)
  • ABC (1954–1959, 1983–1992)
  • NBC (1959–1983)
  • DuMont (secondary, 1954–1955)
Call sign meaning
"Wonderful Fox River Valley"[1]
Technical information[2]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID9635
ERP1,000 kW
HAAT363.9 m (1,194 ft)
Transmitter coordinates44°20′0.1″N 87°58′55.7″W / 44.333361°N 87.982139°W / 44.333361; -87.982139
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.wearegreenbay.com

WFRV-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on East Mason Street in Green Bay, and its transmitter is located north of Morrison, Wisconsin.

WFRV-TV traces its history to WNAM-TV, a station that broadcast beginning in January 1954 from studios in Neenah. Owned by the Neenah-Menasha Broadcasting Company, it was the only ultra high frequency (UHF) outlet in northeastern Wisconsin at a time when UHF stations faced severe technical and economic handicaps against very high frequency (VHF) stations. At the end of 1954, WNAM-TV suspended operations and merged with the Valley Telecasting Company, a consortium of area investors that had obtained the construction permit for channel 5 in Green Bay. The new station, WFRV-TV, debuted on May 20, 1955, from the former WNAM-TV studios in Neenah and was ultimately owned entirely by Neenah-Menasha. In January 1957, the station opened its present studios in Green Bay. Originally an affiliate of the ABC network, the station switched to NBC in 1959.

From 1960 to 1980, WFRV-TV was owned by the Morton and Norton families of Louisville, Kentucky, under the aegis of what eventually became known as Orion Broadcasting. In 1969, the company opened WJMN-TV (channel 3) in Escanaba, Michigan, which served as a semi-satellite of WFRV for the central Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When Orion Broadcasting and Cosmos Broadcasting merged, WFRV and WJMN were divested to Midwest Radio and Television, which owned WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. Midwest switched the station's affiliation back to ABC in 1983 and invested in the news department. Midwest was acquired by CBS in 1991. This resulted in another affiliation switch in Green Bay on March 15, 1992, with ABC moving to WBAY-TV (channel 2). CBS continued to own WFRV-TV until 2007, when it traded the Green Bay and Escanaba stations to Liberty Media in exchange for shares of its stock.

Nexstar acquired WFRV and WJMN in 2011. WJMN was given more local news programming; that station lost its CBS affiliation in January 2022. WFRV-TV's studios continue to house master control and some internal operations for WJMN-TV, which maintains its own studios, sales offices and engineering operations in Marquette.[3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference calls was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Facility Technical Data for WFRV-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  3. ^ "WJMN-TV3 Ad Sales Office". Archived from the original on October 8, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2010.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia

Developed by Tubidy