WDJT-TV
Encyclopedia
WDJT-TV, channel 58, is the CBS
-affiliated
television
station located in Milwaukee
, Wisconsin
broadcasting on UHF digital channel 46, that displays WDJT's virtual channel
as its former analog channel assignment of 58 via PSIP. Its transmitter is located within Milwaukee's Lincoln Park next to WISN
(channel 12)'s tower, with the station's signal covering southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine
, Kenosha
, Sheboygan
and Waukesha
.
WDJT was until the digital transition the only UHF affiliate of CBS in the state of Wisconsin, but retains the highest PSIP channel number in the digital age. The station also gathers news for CBS Radio
in Milwaukee due to the lack of any area radio station broadcasting the network's radio newscasts (WOKY
had broadcast the network's hourly newscasts until a September 2008 format change, but does not have a news division), and has a forecast and advertising agreement with the stations of the Milwaukee Radio Alliance, which includes WLDB, WLUM-FM
, and WMCS
.
WDJT signed on the air on November 10, 1988 as an independent station
. Its call letters were selected in honor of its original owners, Debra Jackson and John Torres. Jackson died before the station took to the air, and Torres decided to sell controlling interest to Weigel in order to get more financing. (Weigel became the station's sole owner shortly after its sign-on.) At that time, its programming fare consisted of second-hand reruns of sitcoms, first-run syndicated shows, and a movie library. Locally based show The Bowling Game also moved to the station in 1989 after a two year hiatus from WVTV
, airing intermittently until 1991.
As an independent, WDJT found the going difficult against WVTV
and WCGV. Milwaukee, despite its relatively large size, wasn't big enough for what were essentially three independent stations (Fox
affiliate WCGV was essentially programmed as an independent, as Fox wouldn't air a full week's worth of programming until 1994). It was also hampered by a weak signal transmitting from the tower atop of the then Marc Plaza Hotel (a tower originally utilized by WVTV and currently used by low-power WMKE-CA
). This essentially limited channel 58's coverage area to Milwaukee itself and its close-in suburbs such as Cudahy
, Waukesha
and West Allis. The few syndicators who otherwise would have been willing to air their programming on channel 58 largely shied away due to its weak signal. The station also came to the air three years before must-carry
rules were put into place, thus until 1993, area cable systems chose not to carry it due to a lack of compelling programming or viewership.
announced that most of its stations, including Milwaukee's WITI, would become Fox affiliates. CBS approached all four of Milwaukee's major stations--WTMJ-TV
, WISN-TV
(who was affiliated with CBS from 1961 to 1977), WVTV (which ironically was a CBS O&O in the 1950s) and WCGV. None of those stations were interested, however although Gaylord Broadcasting
(the owner of WVTV's license who no longer controlled the station by that time) switched two of its other stations (KTVT
in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex
and KSTW
in Tacoma, Washington
) to CBS. This left CBS to negotiate with the city's lower-profile independents, WJJA (now WBME) and WDJT, as well as religious WVCY-TV
. After negotiations with both WJJA and WDJT fell through, CBS made an abortive attempt to buy WVCY before its ownership group decided not to sell.
With days to go before WITI was to join Fox, and faced with having to pipe in WISC-TV
in Madison
, WFRV-TV
in Green Bay
or WBBM-TV
in Chicago
for cable customers, the network finally affiliated with WDJT, even though it didn't even have a news department. CBS faced similar situations in Atlanta
, Austin
, Cleveland
and Detroit
. In all these cases, the longtime CBS affiliates all switched to Fox. While CBS was able to land on higher-profile stations in Atlanta
, Austin
and Cleveland
, it was unable to do so in Detroit or Milwaukee.
As WDJT had not expected to go to CBS, a hastily made logo with the CBS Eye to the left of WDJT's italic Times New Roman '58' of the time in red (and later yellow) was the station's logo for the next year and a half, along with a neutral image campaign using default CBS graphics while channel 58 built a news department and looked for upgraded studio facilities. The switch took place on the afternoon of December 11, 1994 (the same day CBS moved its Detroit affiliation to WGPR-TV, now WWJ-TV
).
WDJT's CBS affiliation caused major shuffles among area cable systems as they worked to quickly add it to their systems; it took until March 1995 for some Marcus Cable
(the precursor to Charter Communications
) cities to carry WDJT. As a result, many Milwaukee-area viewers without set-top or housetop antennas missed several major events, including the PGA Tour, Grammy Awards, Daytona 500, Big Ten Basketball, and the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments, all of which were CBS properties. The only major weekday effects of the move of CBS from WITI to WDJT were that The Young and the Restless
, which had been on a one-day delay at 9am weekdays since the early 1980s on Channel 6, moved to the network-mandated 11am time on WDJT, along with full clearance of CBS This Morning
for the full two hours, of which WITI pre-empted the first hour. Donahue moved to the station in September 1995 from WITI as WDJT's first true high-profile syndication acquisition, though most of the station's product outside of network hours continued to be made up of low-profile sitcoms and syndicated programs rejected by all other Milwaukee stations.
In early 1996, WDJT moved to a new studio on 60th Street, right on the line between Milwaukee and West Allis, from its original studio facilities on the top floors of the Marc Plaza, which is now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center
. It also launched a news department. In that year WDJT also began to carry Judge Judy
in its first season which gave the station its first ratings traction outside of network hours, though it moved to WITI by September 2000 as that station decided to move away from an afternoon schedule dependent on "tabloid" talk shows.
Three years later in 1999, the station's current Lincoln Park transmitter was put into service, giving the station an over-the-air signal comparable to the city's five other major commercial stations. Weigel would use this tower to launch two additional low-powered sister stations to WDJT (see below).
In 2007, WDJT gained national attention after its live news truck
broke through ice on Big Muskego Lake in Muskego
while covering a story on ice safety. The estimated cost of repair was $250,000. A week after, the station would air a public service announcement
on ice safety which premiered during CBS' Super Bowl XLI
coverage, making light of the situation by referring to their news department as providing "the most in-depth coverage in Milwaukee."
In 2010, WDJT once again made the news when one of the station's live trucks drove away from a scene with its telescoping mast raised and into high voltage electrical transmission lines. The two occupants of the vehicle were able to escape unharmed. This was the second time a WDJT truck hit electrical lines, the first time was in April 2005 when a truck hit wires in nearby Waukesha, causing the top of the mast to snap off.
In July 2011, WDJT relaunched its Web site through Broadcast Interactive Media.
to allow them to carry as many New York Jets
games as were available for the 2008 season, since that team acquired former Packer quarterback Brett Favre
on August 7, 2008, and expected high viewer interest from Milwaukee viewers for Jets games. Since CBS holds the rights to the AFC
contract, the majority of Jets games are carried on that network. Station general manager Jim Hall asserted that the Jets were the station's "adopted team".
without the assistance of Milwaukee Public Television
or other stations in the Hearst Television chain, as WISN has done in the past. The one hour program was called 105 Years in the Making, a program which was produced in conjunction with the Harley-Davidson
105th Anniversary celebration that weekend.
In late May 2010 the station became the fourth commercial operation in the market to be able to air their syndicated programming in high definition, which currently includes all syndicated programming on the weekdays and weekends except for acquired barter programming such as Cold Case Files
, Cold Squad
and repeats of E! True Hollywood Story
.
ing event which caused major damage in several parts of Milwaukee County. Although Weigel's studios in West Allis didn't suffer any damage at all, the Weigel transmitter in Lincoln Park, only a few hundred feet from Lincoln Creek suffered flooding damage within the transmission shed, forcing the station off the air for the majority of three days while the equipment was dried out and repaired. The analog transmitter for WMLW-CA was used to relay WDJT's signal in some form to viewers, along with WTMJ offering the use of their 4.3 subchannel to transmit WDJT programming to a majority of the Milwaukee market as a thanks for an incident in 2009 where WTMJ was taken off-air by a lightning strike and Weigel offered them the use of a WBME subchannel temporarily. This TV and Shorewest TV were also off-the air until July 25, when WDJT resumed full operations over the Weigel transmitter.
's Weigel Broadcasting. The company also owns full-power WBME (Channel 49) and two LPTV stations, Spanish-language
Telemundo
affiliate WYTU
(Channel 63) and independent WMLW-CA
(Channel 41), in the Milwaukee market.
58.4 & 58.5 were returned to the PSIP channel map in May 2009 to map them permanently into channel maps on digital converter boxes and television sets for the possibility of future use.
Dish Network
began carrying the station in high definition on October 28, 2010; the provider had not carried it until then due to Weigel's retransmission consent
pricing being higher than Dish would agree to (though what terms Dish came to Weigel are unknown).
called Me-TV Milwaukee, which features a lineup of classic sitcoms and dramas resembling that of sister station WWME-CA
(Channel 23) in Chicago. The station launched on March 1, 2008 on WDJT-DT3 until October 30, 2008. In mid-April 2008, Weigel acquired Racine
-licensed
home shopping station WJJA (Channel 49), and immediately began to move Me-TV to that station, changing the station's calls to WBME. The simulcast was maintained until a new digital transmitter for WBME on the Weigel tower was turned on in mid-October.
in Milwaukee on WDJT-DT3 in cooperation with MGM Television
, which provides the network with many programs from their archives, with its programming relying largely on movies. The introduction "man on the street" promotions for the network were recorded throughout Milwaukee, and This TV's imaging voice is that of Robb Edwards, formerly of WTMJ Radio
and WOKY
, and the public address announcer at Miller Park. Thus in technicality WDJT can be considered a This TV O&O.
-based Shorewest Realtors is one of the largest real estate
agencies in southeastern Wisconsin, and as an offshoot of earlier locally produced cable shopping channels which often featured their listings along with those of other agencies, created Shorewest TV in October 2005 as digital cable
and video on demand
became commonplace and allowed Shorewest the ability to buy their own channel slot on Time Warner Cable
.
In the form of the cable channel, basic pictorial tours of local homes and real estate classified by region or house types were presented using information compiled on a database used by both the channel and Shorewest's website, with narration given by agents encouraging viewers to call for more information on the property presented, along with limited advertising for partner contractors and programs from local homebuilders and mortgage providers. The VOD version of Shorewest TV (except for homes in Rock County
, which is outside the Milwaukee viewing area) was discontinued with the launch of 58.4 in order to encourage viewership of the terrestrial channel and a common schedule allowing easy DVR recording of a regional block. Independent agencies affiliated with Shorewest (such as Sheboygan's Shorewest-United Realtors) continue to maintain a presence on their local VOD systems.
On October 13, 2009, Shorewest and Weigel Broadcasting launched Shorewest TV over digital channel 58.4 under a time-lease arrangement in order to increase their Shorewest TV's audience to all possible households in southeastern Wisconsin. Charter Communications
, which already carried the video-on-demand version of the service, also added the subchannel in this form to their systems. As is the current case with many digital subchannels (including This TV and others in the Milwaukee area), the channel is not carried over Dish Network or DirecTV.
The format of Shorewest TV has remained the same over-the-air, although to address license concerns regular breaks featuring public service announcement
s are taken (which are intermixed with promos for Weigel's Milwaukee stations), while Shorewest TV carries the E/I
-compliant program Green Screen Adventures
, which was produced by WCIU, seven days a week at 7am. In the past Shorewest TV was moved to WBME-DT2 during NCAA multicasting periods to address multicasting bandwidth concerns and does see quality reductions at some times to allow WDJT to devote more bandwidth to certain CBS programming. Since July 2010, some paid programming slots have been offered throughout the day over 58.4, usually at times where main channels have more viewership, and not for more than a half-hour every few hours.
, digital television receivers displays WDJT's virtual channel
as 58.
On June 12, 2009, the station shut down its analog transmission over full-power channel 58 at 11:59pm exactly, as required by law. However, the station decided to convert their low power signal on WYTU-LP
(Channel 63) at 9am on the same day to carry WDJT's programming schedule; the Telemundo
schedule now transmits exclusively on digital television over WYTU-LD digital channel 17 and WBME 49.4. This was to provide some kind of 'lifeline' service under special dispensation by the CBS network to those who had not yet made the conversion. On December 31, 2009, the simulcast on Channel 63 was discontinued at the end of the dispensaton, and WYTU-LP was converted to an analog translator of WBME's main schedule.
Unlike most CBS affiliates in the Central Time Zone
, WDJT does not carry a weeknight 6 p.m. newscast; WDJT did carry a 6 p.m. newscast from the news department's creation in 1996 until the acquisition of the Sony-produced game shows Wheel of Fortune
and Jeopardy!
in the fall of 2005, when the station chose to air both shows during the 6 p.m. hour. Although this is unusual scheduling in the Central Time Zone due to the reduction of an hour out of early primetime, it is the common default scheduling for stations in the Eastern
and Pacific Time Zone
s and is also shared with WLUK-TV
in Green Bay, which also carries both shows at the same time. WDJT also does not carry a weekend morning newscast, and with Fox affiliate WITI-TV (channel 6) reinstating its weekend morning newscasts in April 2011, two years after their March 2009 suspension, WDJT is currently the market's only Big Four affiliate without a newscast in that daypart. For the Saturday Early Show and CBS Sunday Morning, forecast inserts are pre-recorded after the 10 p.m. news to air the next morning, except during ongoing severe weather events. Until the launch of a half-hour noon newscast on September 12, 2011, the station also did not air a weekday noon newscast also unlike most CBS affiliates, opting instead to fill the noon half-hour with a lower-profile syndicated show.
The station uses the Ten at Ten
format for its late newscast, emphasizing the top stories and weather in the first 10 minutes of the program. WDJT has won regional Emmy awards, along with honors from the Associated Press
for best newscast presentation. In 2009, the station began to carry the syndicated Mr. Food
cooking segments on their morning newscasts, bringing back the feature to the Milwaukee market after a three year hiatus when WITI dropped the segments.
WDJT, during the 2007 World Series
produced a 9 p.m. newscast for sister station WMLW-CA
, in an attempt to attract non-Baseball viewers who would normally watch news on WITI-TV (but due to pre-emptions were not able to during the World Series). The station then introduced a full-time 9 p.m. newscast on WMLW, beginning on January 1, 2008. WDJT also produces both a 10-minute Spanish language
newscast for co-owned Telemundo
affiliate WYTU-LP
; several of WDJT's reporters are bilingual.
Until April 2011, the station also produced an 11-minute late evening newscast for sister station and ABC
affiliate WBND-LP
(channel 57) in South Bend, Indiana
called "News at 11:00" featuring video shot locally in South Bend and then edited and written by anchor McCormack and executive producer Adam Wilhelm in Milwaukee. At that time WBND launched a full news operation from South Bend, though the imaging and format for that operation is very similar to WDJT's.
As of October 10, 2010, with WISN-TV's upgrade to 16:9
standard-definition
widescreen newscasts, WDJT is the last remaining major network-affiliated station in the Milwaukee area that has yet to upgrade to widescreen or high-definition newscasts, though the station's promotions have begun to air in the format, and the current graphics package is optimized for 16:9 display.
On July 25, 2011 (after a two-day test by WYTU's news segments the week before), the station's news operation moved to a newly built extension of the Weigel facility, including a new set optimized for HD broadcasting and a fully equipped weather center designed for display on television. The station is continuing the process of upgrading their master control and mobile cameras to HD by late 2011, which would make it the final station in the market to convert to the format after WISN's June 28 conversion. As of September 30, however, the newscasts remain in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition with high definition graphics.
First Alert Weather
In addition to providing forecasts for WDJT, the First Alert Weather team also provides weather forecasts for FM radio station WLDB (93.3 MHz.).
Sports team
Reporters
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
-affiliated
Network affiliate
In the broadcasting industry , a network affiliate is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the television program or radio program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
station located in Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
, Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
broadcasting on UHF digital channel 46, that displays WDJT's virtual channel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
as its former analog channel assignment of 58 via PSIP. Its transmitter is located within Milwaukee's Lincoln Park next to WISN
WISN-TV
WISN-TV, virtual channel 12.1 , is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin serving as an affiliate of the ABC television network. Its signal covers most of southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha...
(channel 12)'s tower, with the station's signal covering southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine
Racine, Wisconsin
Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city had a population of 82,196...
, Kenosha
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha is a city and the county seat of Kenosha County in the State of Wisconsin in United States. With a population of 99,218 as of May 2011, Kenosha is the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Kenosha is also the fourth-largest city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, following Chicago,...
, Sheboygan
Sheboygan, Wisconsin
-Airport:Sheboygan is served by the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport, which is located several miles from the city.-Roads:Interstate 43 is the primary north-south transportation route into Sheboygan, and forms the west boundary of the city. U.S...
and Waukesha
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Waukesha is a city in and the county seat of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. The population was 70,718 at the 2010 census, making it the largest community in the county and 7th largest in the state. The city is located adjacent to the Town of Waukesha...
.
WDJT was until the digital transition the only UHF affiliate of CBS in the state of Wisconsin, but retains the highest PSIP channel number in the digital age. The station also gathers news for CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
in Milwaukee due to the lack of any area radio station broadcasting the network's radio newscasts (WOKY
WOKY
WOKY is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, radio station. They broadcast a classic country radio format emphasizing country from the 50s-80s...
had broadcast the network's hourly newscasts until a September 2008 format change, but does not have a news division), and has a forecast and advertising agreement with the stations of the Milwaukee Radio Alliance, which includes WLDB, WLUM-FM
WLUM-FM
WLUM-FM 102.1 FM) is a commercial radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The station airs a Alternative rock music format branded as "FM 102.1"....
, and WMCS
WMCS
This article is about the radio station, for the school, see West Memphis Christian SchoolWMCS is an African-American-oriented talk and music radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
.
Launch and early struggles
Independent station
An independent station is in the category of television terminology used to describe a television station broadcasting in the United States or Canada that is not affiliated with any television network....
. Its call letters were selected in honor of its original owners, Debra Jackson and John Torres. Jackson died before the station took to the air, and Torres decided to sell controlling interest to Weigel in order to get more financing. (Weigel became the station's sole owner shortly after its sign-on.) At that time, its programming fare consisted of second-hand reruns of sitcoms, first-run syndicated shows, and a movie library. Locally based show The Bowling Game also moved to the station in 1989 after a two year hiatus from WVTV
WVTV
WVTV is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA and serves as Southeast Wisconsin's The CW Television Network affiliate. The station broadcasts from the Milwaukee Public Television tower on Milwaukee's northeast side with WMVS/WMVT, along with WCGV , WVTV's sister station...
, airing intermittently until 1991.
As an independent, WDJT found the going difficult against WVTV
WVTV
WVTV is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA and serves as Southeast Wisconsin's The CW Television Network affiliate. The station broadcasts from the Milwaukee Public Television tower on Milwaukee's northeast side with WMVS/WMVT, along with WCGV , WVTV's sister station...
and WCGV. Milwaukee, despite its relatively large size, wasn't big enough for what were essentially three independent stations (Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
affiliate WCGV was essentially programmed as an independent, as Fox wouldn't air a full week's worth of programming until 1994). It was also hampered by a weak signal transmitting from the tower atop of the then Marc Plaza Hotel (a tower originally utilized by WVTV and currently used by low-power WMKE-CA
WMKE-CA
WMKE-CA is the America One affiliate for Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the United States. It is owned by KM Communications, and broadcasts on VHF channel 7. The station's studios are located at 3974 South 27th St...
). This essentially limited channel 58's coverage area to Milwaukee itself and its close-in suburbs such as Cudahy
Cudahy, Wisconsin
Cudahy is a city in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 18,429 at the 2000 census.-History:Originally known as the Buckhorn Settlement, it was renamed in the late 1800s when Patrick Cudahy purchased 700 acres of land in the Town of Lake, two miles from the Milwaukee city...
, Waukesha
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Waukesha is a city in and the county seat of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. The population was 70,718 at the 2010 census, making it the largest community in the county and 7th largest in the state. The city is located adjacent to the Town of Waukesha...
and West Allis. The few syndicators who otherwise would have been willing to air their programming on channel 58 largely shied away due to its weak signal. The station also came to the air three years before must-carry
Must-carry
In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally-licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system.- Canada :...
rules were put into place, thus until 1993, area cable systems chose not to carry it due to a lack of compelling programming or viewership.
Joining CBS
The Milwaukee television market was in for a major shakeup in 1994 when New World CommunicationsNew World Communications
New World Pictures was an independent motion picture and television production company, and later television station owner in the United States from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s...
announced that most of its stations, including Milwaukee's WITI, would become Fox affiliates. CBS approached all four of Milwaukee's major stations--WTMJ-TV
WTMJ-TV
WTMJ-TV, digital channel 28 ; branded as "Today's TMJ4", is the NBC-affiliated television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the flagship station of the Journal Broadcast Group. Its signal covers most of southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha,...
, WISN-TV
WISN-TV
WISN-TV, virtual channel 12.1 , is a television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin serving as an affiliate of the ABC television network. Its signal covers most of southeastern Wisconsin and parts of northeastern Illinois, including Racine, Kenosha, Sheboygan and Waukesha...
(who was affiliated with CBS from 1961 to 1977), WVTV (which ironically was a CBS O&O in the 1950s) and WCGV. None of those stations were interested, however although Gaylord Broadcasting
Gaylord Entertainment Company
The Gaylord Entertainment Company operates a number of hotel, resort, and media companies that were built by Edward Gaylord. It was previously a subsidiary of the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Publishing Company, which is owned by the Gaylord family and publishes the Daily Oklahoman newspaper...
(the owner of WVTV's license who no longer controlled the station by that time) switched two of its other stations (KTVT
KTVT
KTVT, virtual channel 11, is a CBS owned-and-operated television station licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, and serving the Dallas-Fort Worth designated market area. The station is co-owned with independent station KTXA , and the two stations share facilities in Dallas and Fort Worth...
in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex
Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex
The Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington Metropolitan Statistical Area, a title designated by the U.S. Census as of 2003, encompasses 12 counties within the U.S. state of Texas. The area is divided into two metropolitan divisions: Dallas–Plano–Irving and Fort Worth–Arlington. Residents of the area...
and KSTW
KSTW
KSTW is a television station serving the Seattle, Washington media market. It is owned by CBS Corporation, and is a part of The CW Television Network. It broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 11...
in Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
) to CBS. This left CBS to negotiate with the city's lower-profile independents, WJJA (now WBME) and WDJT, as well as religious WVCY-TV
WVCY-TV
WVCY-TV is a conservative Christian television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It broadcasts digitally on Channel 22, but maps on a virtual channel via PSIP to their former analog channel position, Channel 30.-Sister Stations:...
. After negotiations with both WJJA and WDJT fell through, CBS made an abortive attempt to buy WVCY before its ownership group decided not to sell.
With days to go before WITI was to join Fox, and faced with having to pipe in WISC-TV
WISC-TV
WISC-TV is the CBS affiliate television station for Madison, Wisconsin. The station is the flagship of Madison-based Morgan Murphy Media, and has been affiliated with CBS since its launch on June 24, 1956...
in Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
, WFRV-TV
WFRV-TV
WFRV-TV is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and serving Green Bay, the Fox Valley, and Northeastern Wisconsin. The station broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 39 from a transmitter north of the Brown County town of Morrison...
in Green Bay
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Green Bay is a city in and the county seat of Brown County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, located at the head of Green Bay, a sub-basin of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Fox River. It has an elevation of above sea level and is located north of Milwaukee. As of the 2010 United States Census,...
or WBBM-TV
WBBM-TV
WBBM-TV, virtual channel 2 , is the CBS owned-and-operated television station in Chicago, Illinois. WBBM-TV's main studios and offices are located in The Loop section of Chicago, as part of the development at Block 37, and its transmitter is atop the Willis Tower.-History:WBBM-TV traces its history...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
for cable customers, the network finally affiliated with WDJT, even though it didn't even have a news department. CBS faced similar situations in Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
, Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
and Detroit
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
. In all these cases, the longtime CBS affiliates all switched to Fox. While CBS was able to land on higher-profile stations in Atlanta
WGCL-TV
WGCL-TV, virtual channel 46.1 is the CBS-affiliated television station serving the Atlanta, Georgia area. Its city of license is Atlanta, and the station is owned by Meredith Corporation, making it the largest-market CBS station not owned by the network...
, Austin
KEYE-TV
KEYE-TV, digital channel 43 , is the CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas. It is owned by the Four Points Media Group, LLC Sinclair Broadcasting Group has announced a purchase of the the Four Points stations, and has begun operating KEYE-TV through a local service agreement in anticipation of FCC...
and Cleveland
WOIO
WOIO, virtual channel 19 , is the CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. It is licensed to the nearby suburb of Shaker Heights. WOIO is owned by Raycom Media and its sister station to MyNetworkTV affiliate WUAB . The two stations share a studio facility in Cleveland and WOIO's transmitter is located in...
, it was unable to do so in Detroit or Milwaukee.
As WDJT had not expected to go to CBS, a hastily made logo with the CBS Eye to the left of WDJT's italic Times New Roman '58' of the time in red (and later yellow) was the station's logo for the next year and a half, along with a neutral image campaign using default CBS graphics while channel 58 built a news department and looked for upgraded studio facilities. The switch took place on the afternoon of December 11, 1994 (the same day CBS moved its Detroit affiliation to WGPR-TV, now WWJ-TV
WWJ-TV
WWJ-TV, virtual channel 62 , is the CBS-owned and operated television station in Detroit, Michigan. It is co-owned with Detroit's CW station, WKBD-TV , and the two stations share a studio in Southfield, Michigan, a Detroit suburb....
).
WDJT's CBS affiliation caused major shuffles among area cable systems as they worked to quickly add it to their systems; it took until March 1995 for some Marcus Cable
Marcus Cable
Marcus Cable Company was a cable television & high-speed internet access provider headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and founded by Jeffrey A. Marcus and the Marcus Corporation...
(the precursor to Charter Communications
Charter Communications
Charter Communications is an American company providing cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone services to more than 4.7 million customers in 25 states. By revenues, it is the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, behind Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cox Communications...
) cities to carry WDJT. As a result, many Milwaukee-area viewers without set-top or housetop antennas missed several major events, including the PGA Tour, Grammy Awards, Daytona 500, Big Ten Basketball, and the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments, all of which were CBS properties. The only major weekday effects of the move of CBS from WITI to WDJT were that The Young and the Restless
The Young and the Restless
The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional Wisconsin town called Genoa City, which is unlike and unrelated to the real life village of the same name, Genoa City, Wisconsin...
, which had been on a one-day delay at 9am weekdays since the early 1980s on Channel 6, moved to the network-mandated 11am time on WDJT, along with full clearance of CBS This Morning
The Early Show
The Early Show is an American television morning news talk show broadcast by CBS from New York City. The program airs live from 7 to 9 a.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday; most affiliates in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones air the show on tape-delay from 7 to 9 a.m. local time. ...
for the full two hours, of which WITI pre-empted the first hour. Donahue moved to the station in September 1995 from WITI as WDJT's first true high-profile syndication acquisition, though most of the station's product outside of network hours continued to be made up of low-profile sitcoms and syndicated programs rejected by all other Milwaukee stations.
In early 1996, WDJT moved to a new studio on 60th Street, right on the line between Milwaukee and West Allis, from its original studio facilities on the top floors of the Marc Plaza, which is now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center
Hilton Milwaukee City Center
The Hilton Milwaukee City Center hotel is located in the Westown neighborhood of downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was built in 1927, in a neo-classical style and was previously known as the Schroder Hotel, the Sheraton-Schroeder Hotel and the Marc Plaza Hotel. It has a height of 84 meters and has...
. It also launched a news department. In that year WDJT also began to carry Judge Judy
Judge Judy
Judge Judy is an American court show featuring former family court judge Judith Sheindlin arbitrating over small claims cases in small claims court...
in its first season which gave the station its first ratings traction outside of network hours, though it moved to WITI by September 2000 as that station decided to move away from an afternoon schedule dependent on "tabloid" talk shows.
Three years later in 1999, the station's current Lincoln Park transmitter was put into service, giving the station an over-the-air signal comparable to the city's five other major commercial stations. Weigel would use this tower to launch two additional low-powered sister stations to WDJT (see below).
In 2007, WDJT gained national attention after its live news truck
Electronic news gathering
ENG is a broadcasting industry acronym which stands for electronic news gathering. It can mean anything from a lone broadcast journalist reporter taking a single professional video camera out to shoot a story, to an entire television crew taking a production truck or satellite truck on location...
broke through ice on Big Muskego Lake in Muskego
Muskego, Wisconsin
Muskego is a city in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 21,397. Its 2006-2008 estimated population was 22,851. Muskego is the fifth largest community in Waukesha County. The name Muskego is derived from the Potawatomi Indian name for the...
while covering a story on ice safety. The estimated cost of repair was $250,000. A week after, the station would air a public service announcement
Public service announcement
A public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...
on ice safety which premiered during CBS' Super Bowl XLI
Super Bowl XLI
Super Bowl XLI was an American football game that featured the American Football Conference champion Indianapolis Colts and the National Football Conference champion Chicago Bears to decide the National Football League champion for the 2006 season...
coverage, making light of the situation by referring to their news department as providing "the most in-depth coverage in Milwaukee."
In 2010, WDJT once again made the news when one of the station's live trucks drove away from a scene with its telescoping mast raised and into high voltage electrical transmission lines. The two occupants of the vehicle were able to escape unharmed. This was the second time a WDJT truck hit electrical lines, the first time was in April 2005 when a truck hit wires in nearby Waukesha, causing the top of the mast to snap off.
In July 2011, WDJT relaunched its Web site through Broadcast Interactive Media.
2008 NFL season
The station asked CBS SportsCBS Sports
CBS Sports is a division of CBS Broadcasting which airs sporting events on the American television network. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on West 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.CBS...
to allow them to carry as many New York Jets
New York Jets
The New York Jets are a professional football team headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, representing the New York metropolitan area. The team is a member of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
games as were available for the 2008 season, since that team acquired former Packer quarterback Brett Favre
Brett Favre
Brett Lorenzo Favre is a former American football quarterback who spent the majority of his career with the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League . He was a 20-year veteran of the NFL, having played quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons , Green Bay Packers , New York Jets and Minnesota...
on August 7, 2008, and expected high viewer interest from Milwaukee viewers for Jets games. Since CBS holds the rights to the AFC
American Football Conference
The American Football Conference is one of the two conferences of the National Football League . This conference and its counterpart, the National Football Conference , currently contain 16 teams each, making up the 32 teams of the NFL....
contract, the majority of Jets games are carried on that network. Station general manager Jim Hall asserted that the Jets were the station's "adopted team".
High Definition programming
On August 29, 2008, WDJT became the first commercial Milwaukee television station to produce a local program in High DefinitionHigh-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
without the assistance of Milwaukee Public Television
Milwaukee Public Television
For information on Channels 10 and 36 individually, see WMVS and WMVTMilwaukee Public Television is the branding name for the alliance between two Milwaukee based Public Broadcasting Service public television affiliates: WMVS, Channel 10, and WMVT, Channel 36...
or other stations in the Hearst Television chain, as WISN has done in the past. The one hour program was called 105 Years in the Making, a program which was produced in conjunction with the Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...
105th Anniversary celebration that weekend.
In late May 2010 the station became the fourth commercial operation in the market to be able to air their syndicated programming in high definition, which currently includes all syndicated programming on the weekdays and weekends except for acquired barter programming such as Cold Case Files
Cold Case Files
Cold Case Files is documentary television series on the cable channel A&E Network hosted by Bill Kurtis that documents the investigation of various long-unsolved murders through the use of modern forensic science , and criminal psychology, in addition to recent breakthroughs in the...
, Cold Squad
Cold Squad
Cold Squad is a Canadian police procedural television series first broadcast in 1998 that followed the investigations of a part of the Vancouver Police Department Homicide Division tasked with solving cold cases, the titular Cold Squad, as led by Sergeant Ali McCormick .The cast of Cold Squad was...
and repeats of E! True Hollywood Story
E! True Hollywood Story
E! True Hollywood Story is an American documentary series on E! that deals with famous Hollywood celebrities, movies, TV shows and well-known public figures...
.
July 2010 flooding incident
On July 22, 2010 the Milwaukee area experienced a major flash floodFlash flood
A flash flood is a rapid flooding of geomorphic low-lying areas—washes, rivers, dry lakes and basins. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a storm, hurricane, or tropical storm or meltwater from ice or snow flowing over ice sheets or snowfields...
ing event which caused major damage in several parts of Milwaukee County. Although Weigel's studios in West Allis didn't suffer any damage at all, the Weigel transmitter in Lincoln Park, only a few hundred feet from Lincoln Creek suffered flooding damage within the transmission shed, forcing the station off the air for the majority of three days while the equipment was dried out and repaired. The analog transmitter for WMLW-CA was used to relay WDJT's signal in some form to viewers, along with WTMJ offering the use of their 4.3 subchannel to transmit WDJT programming to a majority of the Milwaukee market as a thanks for an incident in 2009 where WTMJ was taken off-air by a lightning strike and Weigel offered them the use of a WBME subchannel temporarily. This TV and Shorewest TV were also off-the air until July 25, when WDJT resumed full operations over the Weigel transmitter.
Ownership
WDJT-TV is owned by Chicago, IllinoisIllinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
's Weigel Broadcasting. The company also owns full-power WBME (Channel 49) and two LPTV stations, Spanish-language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....
affiliate WYTU
WYTU-LP
WYTU-LD is a digital television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin branded as Telemundo Wisconsin. The station airs on digital channel 17 via a low power digital television signal, along with a full-power simulcast on full power sister station WBME-TV via digital subchannel 49.4, and both...
(Channel 63) and independent WMLW-CA
WMLW-CA
WMLW-CA, channel 41 , is a LPTV independent television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its transmitter is located in Milwaukee's Lincoln Park...
(Channel 41), in the Milwaukee market.
Digital television
| Channel | Video | Aspect Aspect ratio The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,... |
Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 58.1 | 1080i 1080i 1080i is the shorthand name for a high-definition television mode. The i means interlaced video; 1080i differs from 1080p, in which the p stands for progressive scan. The term 1080i assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a frame size of 1920×1080 pixels... |
16:9 16:9 16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ... |
Main WDJT-TV programming / CBS |
| 58.2 | 480i 480i 480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC... |
4:3 | Simulcast of co-owned WMLW-CA WMLW-CA WMLW-CA, channel 41 , is a LPTV independent television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its transmitter is located in Milwaukee's Lincoln Park... |
| 58.3 | This TV This TV This TV is a United States general entertainment television network, with a large emphasis in its programming on movies.... |
||
| 58.4 | Shorewest TV |
- Additionally, a fourth and fifth digital subchannel have been added in the past for multicasting of games during the early rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball TournamentNCAA Men's Division I Basketball ChampionshipThe NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single-elimination tournament held each spring in the United States, featuring 68 college basketball teams, to determine the national championship in the top tier of college basketball...
in mid-March. From 2008-2010 when CBS restricted stations to only one multicast, the station aired the additional game over WDJT-DT3 (in 2008 as Me-TV and 2009 and 2010 as This TV Milwaukee), and removed 58.4 from service. NCAA multicasting has since been discontinued with the start of the CBS/Turner Networks coverage deal in 2011.
58.4 & 58.5 were returned to the PSIP channel map in May 2009 to map them permanently into channel maps on digital converter boxes and television sets for the possibility of future use.
Dish Network
Dish Network
Dish Network Corporation is the second largest pay TV provider in the United States, providing direct broadcast satellite service—including satellite television, audio programming, and interactive television services—to 14.337 million commercial and residential customers in the United States. Dish...
began carrying the station in high definition on October 28, 2010; the provider had not carried it until then due to Weigel's retransmission consent
Retransmission consent
Retransmission consent is an option granted to US television stations as part of the law that granted such stations the option to elect must-carry rights. Under retransmission consent, a full-power US television station may elect to negotiate with a cable system operator for carriage of its...
pricing being higher than Dish would agree to (though what terms Dish came to Weigel are unknown).
Me-TV
WDJT had carried a digital subchannelDigital subchannel
In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a means to transmit more than one independent program at the same time from the same digital radio or digital television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compression techniques to reduce the size of each individual...
called Me-TV Milwaukee, which features a lineup of classic sitcoms and dramas resembling that of sister station WWME-CA
WWME-CA
WWME-CA is a class A station in Chicago, Illinois. It is owned by Weigel Broadcasting, which also owns sister stations WCIU-TV and WMEU-CA. This station is the flagship of the Me-TV network. Me-TV is also broadcast on WCIU's digital subchannel 26.3....
(Channel 23) in Chicago. The station launched on March 1, 2008 on WDJT-DT3 until October 30, 2008. In mid-April 2008, Weigel acquired Racine
Racine, Wisconsin
Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city had a population of 82,196...
-licensed
City of license
A city of license or community of license, in American and Canadian broadcasting, is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator....
home shopping station WJJA (Channel 49), and immediately began to move Me-TV to that station, changing the station's calls to WBME. The simulcast was maintained until a new digital transmitter for WBME on the Weigel tower was turned on in mid-October.
This TV
On November 1, 2008 Weigel launched the digital subchannel network This TVThis TV
This TV is a United States general entertainment television network, with a large emphasis in its programming on movies....
in Milwaukee on WDJT-DT3 in cooperation with MGM Television
MGM Television
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television is an American television production/distribution launched in 1955 and a subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc....
, which provides the network with many programs from their archives, with its programming relying largely on movies. The introduction "man on the street" promotions for the network were recorded throughout Milwaukee, and This TV's imaging voice is that of Robb Edwards, formerly of WTMJ Radio
WTMJ (AM)
WTMJ is a radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin broadcasting at 620 AM. It is a 50,000-watt station airing a format of news, talk and sports. WTMJ is owned by Journal Broadcast Group, which also owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and sister station WLWK-FM....
and WOKY
WOKY
WOKY is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, radio station. They broadcast a classic country radio format emphasizing country from the 50s-80s...
, and the public address announcer at Miller Park. Thus in technicality WDJT can be considered a This TV O&O.
Shorewest TV
BrookfieldBrookfield, Wisconsin
Brookfield is a city located in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, United States. It had a population of 37,920 in the 2010 census. Brookfield is the second largest city in Waukesha County, and the leading commercial suburb of Milwaukee. The City of Brookfield was formed in 1954 from the Town of...
-based Shorewest Realtors is one of the largest real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
agencies in southeastern Wisconsin, and as an offshoot of earlier locally produced cable shopping channels which often featured their listings along with those of other agencies, created Shorewest TV in October 2005 as digital cable
Digital cable
Digital cable is a generic term for any type of cable television distribution using digital video compression or distribution. The technology was originally developed by Motorola.-Background:...
and video on demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
became commonplace and allowed Shorewest the ability to buy their own channel slot on Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
.
In the form of the cable channel, basic pictorial tours of local homes and real estate classified by region or house types were presented using information compiled on a database used by both the channel and Shorewest's website, with narration given by agents encouraging viewers to call for more information on the property presented, along with limited advertising for partner contractors and programs from local homebuilders and mortgage providers. The VOD version of Shorewest TV (except for homes in Rock County
Rock County, Wisconsin
-Unincorporated communities:-Further reading:* . Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1879.* Brown, William F. , Chicago: Cooper, 1908.* Brown, William F. , Chicago: Cooper, 1908....
, which is outside the Milwaukee viewing area) was discontinued with the launch of 58.4 in order to encourage viewership of the terrestrial channel and a common schedule allowing easy DVR recording of a regional block. Independent agencies affiliated with Shorewest (such as Sheboygan's Shorewest-United Realtors) continue to maintain a presence on their local VOD systems.
On October 13, 2009, Shorewest and Weigel Broadcasting launched Shorewest TV over digital channel 58.4 under a time-lease arrangement in order to increase their Shorewest TV's audience to all possible households in southeastern Wisconsin. Charter Communications
Charter Communications
Charter Communications is an American company providing cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone services to more than 4.7 million customers in 25 states. By revenues, it is the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, behind Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cox Communications...
, which already carried the video-on-demand version of the service, also added the subchannel in this form to their systems. As is the current case with many digital subchannels (including This TV and others in the Milwaukee area), the channel is not carried over Dish Network or DirecTV.
The format of Shorewest TV has remained the same over-the-air, although to address license concerns regular breaks featuring public service announcement
Public service announcement
A public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...
s are taken (which are intermixed with promos for Weigel's Milwaukee stations), while Shorewest TV carries the E/I
E/I
E/I, which stands for "educational and informative," refers to a type of children's television programming shown in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission requires that every full-service Terrestrial television station in the U.S. show at least three hours of these television...
-compliant program Green Screen Adventures
Green Screen Adventures
Green Screen Adventures is a children's television series which premiered in 2007. The series was originally produced for local broadcast on WCIU-TV in Chicago, which is the flagship station of Weigel Broadcasting, and is designed to fit the FCC's educational and information programming...
, which was produced by WCIU, seven days a week at 7am. In the past Shorewest TV was moved to WBME-DT2 during NCAA multicasting periods to address multicasting bandwidth concerns and does see quality reductions at some times to allow WDJT to devote more bandwidth to certain CBS programming. Since July 2010, some paid programming slots have been offered throughout the day over 58.4, usually at times where main channels have more viewership, and not for more than a half-hour every few hours.
Analog shutdown
WDJT-TV shut down its analog TV transmitter on June 12, 2009 as mandated by the FCC, and continued to broadcast on its pre-transition digital channel 46. However, through the use of PSIPProgram and System Information Protocol
The Program and System Information Protocol is the protocol used in the ATSC digital television system for carrying metadata about each channel in the broadcast MPEG transport stream of a TV station and for publishing information about television programs so that viewers can select what to watch...
, digital television receivers displays WDJT's virtual channel
Virtual channel
In telecommunications, a logical channel number , also known as virtual channel, is a channel designation which differs from that of the actual radio channel on which the signal travels....
as 58.
On June 12, 2009, the station shut down its analog transmission over full-power channel 58 at 11:59pm exactly, as required by law. However, the station decided to convert their low power signal on WYTU-LP
WYTU-LP
WYTU-LD is a digital television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin branded as Telemundo Wisconsin. The station airs on digital channel 17 via a low power digital television signal, along with a full-power simulcast on full power sister station WBME-TV via digital subchannel 49.4, and both...
(Channel 63) at 9am on the same day to carry WDJT's programming schedule; the Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....
schedule now transmits exclusively on digital television over WYTU-LD digital channel 17 and WBME 49.4. This was to provide some kind of 'lifeline' service under special dispensation by the CBS network to those who had not yet made the conversion. On December 31, 2009, the simulcast on Channel 63 was discontinued at the end of the dispensaton, and WYTU-LP was converted to an analog translator of WBME's main schedule.
News operation
Currently, WDJT produces a total of 19½ hours of local newscasts per week (with 3½ hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays), which by a large margin, is the lowest newscast output out of the Big Four network affiliates in the Milwaukee area (by contrast, WITI offers 54½ hours, WTMJ offers 40½ hours and WISN offers 26½ hours of news each week) and the second-lowest among the English-language stations in the market overall to sister station WMLW (which carries only 2½ hours of local news per week, all of which are produced by WDJT); WDJT is also the largest Big Three affiliate news operation in the United States (in terms of market size) to produce fewer than 20 hours of local newscasts per week.Unlike most CBS affiliates in the Central Time Zone
Central Time zone
In North America, the Central Time Zone refers to national time zones which observe standard time by subtracting six hours from UTC , and daylight saving, or summer time by subtracting five hours...
, WDJT does not carry a weeknight 6 p.m. newscast; WDJT did carry a 6 p.m. newscast from the news department's creation in 1996 until the acquisition of the Sony-produced game shows Wheel of Fortune
Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, which premiered in 1975. Contestants compete to solve word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a large wheel. The title refers to the show's giant carnival wheel that...
and Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
in the fall of 2005, when the station chose to air both shows during the 6 p.m. hour. Although this is unusual scheduling in the Central Time Zone due to the reduction of an hour out of early primetime, it is the common default scheduling for stations in the Eastern
Eastern Time Zone
The Eastern Time Zone of the United States and Canada is a time zone that falls mostly along the east coast of North America. Its UTC time offset is −5 hrs during standard time and −4 hrs during daylight saving time...
and Pacific Time Zone
Pacific Time Zone
The Pacific Time Zone observes standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time . The clock time in this zone is based on the mean solar time of the 120th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. During daylight saving time, its time offset is UTC-7.In the United States...
s and is also shared with WLUK-TV
WLUK-TV
WLUK-TV is the Fox-affiliated television station for the Fox River Valley area and Northeastern Wisconsin. Licensed to Green Bay, Wisconsin, the station broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11 from a transmitter on Scray's Hill in Ledgeview; the station also broadcasts in...
in Green Bay, which also carries both shows at the same time. WDJT also does not carry a weekend morning newscast, and with Fox affiliate WITI-TV (channel 6) reinstating its weekend morning newscasts in April 2011, two years after their March 2009 suspension, WDJT is currently the market's only Big Four affiliate without a newscast in that daypart. For the Saturday Early Show and CBS Sunday Morning, forecast inserts are pre-recorded after the 10 p.m. news to air the next morning, except during ongoing severe weather events. Until the launch of a half-hour noon newscast on September 12, 2011, the station also did not air a weekday noon newscast also unlike most CBS affiliates, opting instead to fill the noon half-hour with a lower-profile syndicated show.
The station uses the Ten at Ten
Eleven @ 11:00
Eleven @ 11:00 is the title of the 11:00 p.m. newscast on many local television stations in the United States. The name is based on the fact that the newscast will run for at least eleven minutes before the first commercial break, a summarized weather forecast segment will air during that time, or...
format for its late newscast, emphasizing the top stories and weather in the first 10 minutes of the program. WDJT has won regional Emmy awards, along with honors from the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
for best newscast presentation. In 2009, the station began to carry the syndicated Mr. Food
Mr. Food
Art Ginsburg, commonly known as Mr. Food, is a television chef and best selling author of cookbooks who emphasizes simple recipes. He is the originator of "quick & easy cooking" who, for the past 30+ years, has paved the way for TV food personalities who have followed. With his enthusiastic style,...
cooking segments on their morning newscasts, bringing back the feature to the Milwaukee market after a three year hiatus when WITI dropped the segments.
WDJT, during the 2007 World Series
2007 World Series
-Game 1:Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at Fenway Park in Boston, MassachusettsThe Red Sox cruised to a blowout win in Game 1 behind ALCS MVP Josh Beckett, who struck out nine batters, including the first four he faced, en route to his fourth win of the 2007 postseason...
produced a 9 p.m. newscast for sister station WMLW-CA
WMLW-CA
WMLW-CA, channel 41 , is a LPTV independent television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its transmitter is located in Milwaukee's Lincoln Park...
, in an attempt to attract non-Baseball viewers who would normally watch news on WITI-TV (but due to pre-emptions were not able to during the World Series). The station then introduced a full-time 9 p.m. newscast on WMLW, beginning on January 1, 2008. WDJT also produces both a 10-minute Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
newscast for co-owned Telemundo
Telemundo
Telemundo is an American television network that broadcasts in Spanish. The network is the second-largest Spanish-language content producer in the world, and the second-largest Spanish-language network in the United States, behind Univision....
affiliate WYTU-LP
WYTU-LP
WYTU-LD is a digital television station located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin branded as Telemundo Wisconsin. The station airs on digital channel 17 via a low power digital television signal, along with a full-power simulcast on full power sister station WBME-TV via digital subchannel 49.4, and both...
; several of WDJT's reporters are bilingual.
Until April 2011, the station also produced an 11-minute late evening newscast for sister station and ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
affiliate WBND-LP
WBND-LP
WBND-LP, channel 57, is the ABC-affiliated television station serving the South Bend, Indiana designated market area. The station is owned by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting. The station broadcasts a low-power digital signal on UHF channel 49, using its analog channel assignment of channel 57 as...
(channel 57) in South Bend, Indiana
South Bend, Indiana
The city of South Bend is the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total of 101,168 residents; its Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 316,663...
called "News at 11:00" featuring video shot locally in South Bend and then edited and written by anchor McCormack and executive producer Adam Wilhelm in Milwaukee. At that time WBND launched a full news operation from South Bend, though the imaging and format for that operation is very similar to WDJT's.
As of October 10, 2010, with WISN-TV's upgrade to 16:9
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
standard-definition
Standard-definition television
Sorete-definition television is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either enhanced-definition television or high-definition television . The term is usually used in reference to digital television, in particular when broadcasting at the same resolution as...
widescreen newscasts, WDJT is the last remaining major network-affiliated station in the Milwaukee area that has yet to upgrade to widescreen or high-definition newscasts, though the station's promotions have begun to air in the format, and the current graphics package is optimized for 16:9 display.
On July 25, 2011 (after a two-day test by WYTU's news segments the week before), the station's news operation moved to a newly built extension of the Weigel facility, including a new set optimized for HD broadcasting and a fully equipped weather center designed for display on television. The station is continuing the process of upgrading their master control and mobile cameras to HD by late 2011, which would make it the final station in the market to convert to the format after WISN's June 28 conversion. As of September 30, however, the newscasts remain in pillarboxed 4:3 standard definition with high definition graphics.
Newscast titles
- CBS 58 News (1996–present)
- CBS 58 Morning News Express (morning newscast; 1996–2008)
- Ten at 10Eleven @ 11:00Eleven @ 11:00 is the title of the 11:00 p.m. newscast on many local television stations in the United States. The name is based on the fact that the newscast will run for at least eleven minutes before the first commercial break, a summarized weather forecast segment will air during that time, or...
(10 p.m. newscast; 2005–present)
Station slogans
- More Stories. More Information. More News. (1998–2001)
- Your Stories. Your Station. (2001–2004)
- First. Fast. When Seconds Count. (2004–present; primary news slogan)
- Only CBS 58 Milwaukee (2009–present; localized version of CBS ad campaign)
- Just Ten Minutes of Your Day (10 p.m. newscast; 2009–present)
News team (as of September 2011)
Current anchors- Shari Dunn - Saturdays at 5, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10 p.m.; also weeknight reporter
- Tom Durian - weekday mornings and noon; also reporter
- Michele McCormack - weeknights at 5, 9 (on WMLW) and 10 p.m.
- Paul Piaskoski - weeknights at 5, 9 (on WMLW) and 10 p.m.; also host of the public affairs program Eye to Eye
- Mike Strehlow - Saturdays at 5, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10 p.m.; also weeknight reporter and fill-in weekday anchor
- Jenifer Tomazic - weekday mornings and noon; also reporter
- Carlos Vergara - weeknights at 10 p.m. (on WYTU-LD); also reporter
First Alert Weather
In addition to providing forecasts for WDJT, the First Alert Weather team also provides weather forecasts for FM radio station WLDB (93.3 MHz.).
- Mark McGinnis (AMSAmerican Meteorological SocietyThe American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership...
Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 5, 9 (on WMLW) and 10 p.m. - Lance Hill (AMS Certified Broadcast MeteorologistCertified Broadcast MeteorologistCertified Broadcast Meteorologist is a rating for meteorologists given by the American Meteorological Society.The Certified Broadcast Meteorologist program was established to raise the professional standard in broadcast meteorology and encourage a broader range of scientific understanding,...
Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekday mornings and noon - Mike Tamas - meteorologist; Saturdays at 5, Sundays at 5:30 and weekends at 10 p.m.
Sports team
- Evan Fitzgerald - sports anchor/sports reporter
- Kevin Holden - sports anchor/sports reporter
Reporters
- Stephanie Brown - general assignment reporter
- Rielle Creighton - general assignment reporter
- John Cuoco - general assignment reporter
- Britni McDonald - general assignment reporter
- Keith Meka - general assignment reporter
- Diane Moca - general assignment reporter
- Vanessa Murphy - general assignment reporter
- Tiffany Tarpley - general assignment reporter
Notable former on-air staff
- Dawn MitchellDawn MitchellDawn Mitchell is an Emmy Award–winning American sportscaster who has worked as a sports anchor and reporter for KMSP-TV in Minneapolis since 2004. She recently won an Emmy in 2010....
(now at KMSP-TVKMSP-TVKMSP-TV, channel 9, is the Fox-owned-and-operated television station serving the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota designated market area, owned in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WFTC...
in Minneapolis) - Tammie SouzaTammie SouzaTammara J. "Tammie" Souza is a multiple Chicago/Midwest Emmy winning meteorologist, working at WFLD in Chicago, Illinois.-Personal life:Souza was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in San Diego, California. She received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from San Diego State University, and...
- chief meteorologist (later at WTSP-TV in Tampa, now back at WFLD-TV in Chicago)