WTTO (channel 21), branded as The 205, is an independent television station licensed to Homewood, Alabama, United States, serving the Birmingham area. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside ABC affiliate WBMA-LD (channel 58, branded as ABC 33/40) and fellow independent WABM (channel 68). The stations share studios at the Riverchase office park on Concourse Parkway in Hoover (with a Birmingham mailing address); WTTO's transmitter is located atop Red Mountain in southwestern Birmingham.
In Tuscaloosa, west Alabama, and the western portions of the Birmingham area, WTTO's main channel and two subchannels of WBMA-LD are rebroadcast on WDBB (channel 17), which is licensed to Bessemer. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting and managed by Sinclair.
WTTO had a tortuous history prior to starting operations. It took nearly two decades for the station to be approved and built. Once on air, the station was a successful independent for the Birmingham area. It served as the Fox affiliate for the market from 1990 to 1996, when an affiliation shuffle resulted in the loss of the affiliation.
History A long way to air In December 1963, Chapman Radio and Television Company—then the owners of radio station WCRT (1260 AM, now WYDE and 96.5 FM, now WMJJ)—filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new television station in Homewood, using Birmingham's channel 54 allocation. (Guide to reading History Cards) This application was designated for hearing with one by Symphony Network Association, Inc., in 1964. In 1965, the UHF table of allocations was overhauled, and channel 21 was substituted for 54 on Chapman's application. The FCC granted the permit to Chapman in August 1965; however, the FCC chose to resume hearings on the matter after other applicants protested the granting of Chapman's petition. (In the meantime, the Chapmans built, and then sold, WCFT-TV in Tuscaloosa.)
One of the new bidders was a startup station—WBMG (channel 42), the first commercial UHF station in Birmingham—which hoped it could replace channel 42 with 21. When the contest resumed, there were five applicants. Besides Chapman and WBMG, there was Tele-Mac of Birmingham, owned by John McClendon, who also ran a chain of Black-oriented radio stations including WENN in Birmingham; Alabama Television Corporation, owned by John S. Jemison; and Birmingham Broadcasting Company, which was owned by Black businessman A. G. Gaston. Tele-Mac bowed out in late November, leaving four parties seeking the channel.
Hearing examiner James Kraushaar's initial decision, released in September 1968, awarded the channel to Alabama Television, based on its superior technical proposal. However, Chapman and WBMG contested the award, and the FCC agreed, finding that Alabama Television had failed to contact Black people in the process of ascertainment of community needs required of prospective licensees. WBMG's petition also raised a 1969 incident in which a cemetery owned by Jemison refused to bury the body of a Black soldier killed in Vietnam. In 1971, two other Alabama Television shareholders, George J. Mitnick and Joseph Engel, were sued by the United States Department of Justice for violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the FCC opened new hearings on the firm's qualifications in light of the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, another applicant, Birmingham Broadcasting—which pledged the first integrated TV station in the country—was facing trouble in its ownership group. One of its stakeholders was Oscar Hyde, who was convicted on extortion charges in 1968 but still owned a third of the firm, putting it at a serious disadvantage in comparative hearing until Hyde sold his stake in 1973. WBMG had dropped out by this point, leaving Chapman and Birmingham Broadcasting the lone contenders for the construction permit; the Hyde stake was still being contested, but the FCC found the programming proposals from Chapman inadequate. Furthermore, the two financial institutions that had promised Birmingham Broadcasting funding in 1964 no longer existed in 1976. Hearings were held by the FCC that fall, but one Birmingham Broadcasting stakeholder, Jesse L. Lewis, refused to come; he was serving as the State Highway and Traffic Safety Director, making him the only Black leader of a state agency, and he feared that if he left town, his department would be abolished by the state legislature.
The question of financial backing turned out to be the deciding factor when an administrative law judge found in favor of Chapman's bid in 1977. The decision was appealed to the full FCC, which upheld the ruling in March 1979. An attempted appeal in federal court turned out to have been filed one day late, while a petition for reconsideration made to the FCC was also dismissed.
Early years With the permit in hand, construction—and new shareholders—entered the picture. The Chapman brothers sold half of the unbuilt station in 1980 to Byron Lasky, who owned Satellite Television & Associated Resources, a company providing microwave-based subscription television service in Birmingham. The tower was erected alongside studios in the city's Goldencrest neighborhood in early 1982, and on April 21, after more than 18 years, WTTO debuted as Birmingham's fourth commercial TV station, with the first program being Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
WTTO gave Birmingham its first independent station and Alabama its second, debuting a few weeks after WPMI-TV in Mobile. In 1983, Lasky acquired the remaining half of WTTO from the Chapmans. During this time, the station extended its cable reach, appearing on the system in Anniston in 1985.
Channel 21 was programmed as a typical UHF independent, maintaining a schedule reliant mainly on cartoons, sitcoms and movies. From its sign-on in 1982 until 1985, WTTO also carried programming from the Financial News Network. WTTO quickly became known in the market for airing a broad mix of cult films as part of its film lineup (the station also hosted film festivals at parks throughout central Alabama, featuring public screenings of the movies that it broadcast), as well as spoof promotional campaigns for its programs. WTTO quickly became the strongest independent station in Alabama, and one of the highest-rated independents in the United States. WTTO remained the only independent station in central Alabama for its first two years of operation; however, it would eventually gain a competitor in the west-central part of the state. In 1984, WDBB began broadcasting from Tuscaloosa, and it activated a new transmission facility in 1986 that extended its signal to Birmingham. It was WDBB (and WNAL-TV, a station in Gadsden that primarily rebroadcast it) that served as the market's first Fox affiliate.
In September 1986, HR Broadcasting Company, a unit of HAR Communications, purchased the station along with WCGV-TV in Milwaukee from Byron Lasky's companies. HAR Communications was 20% owned by Hal Roach Studios.
In June 1990, Qintex Entertainment sold its stake in HR Broadcasting Co., which owned WTTO and WCGV, to ABRY Communications for over $40 million. ABRY was successful in winning the Fox affiliation from WDBB, which moved to WTTO on September 1, 1990. As a result of their financial difficulties, WDBB and WNAL began simulcasting WTTO on January 30, 1991. Several stronger WDBB syndicated programs were added to WTTO's schedule as a result. In addition to programming contracts, WTTO also purchased WDBB's Birmingham business offices and W62BG, a translator improving service in parts of the city. The structure of WTTO's relationship with WDBB and WNAL changed to one of an affiliation; the stations also had the ability to air some of their own programming. The three stations functioned as a regional network of their own, providing coverage comparable to WBRC and WVTM-TV.
By 1993, Abry had purchased WDBB and WNAL outright and converted both stations into full-time satellites of WTTO. WDBB then relocated its transmitter facilities to a tower in Moundville and reduced its transmitter power to reduce overlap with WTTO, but continued to maintain Bessemer as its city of license. That same year, WTTO entered into a local marketing agreement with WABM, which had been sold a few months earlier to a locally based group. By 1994, WTTO had become one of the highest-rated Fox affiliates in the country, and managed to overtake CBS affiliate WBMG as the third-highest-rated television station in central Alabama. Late that year, both WDBB and WNAL began airing separate programming during the daytime and late evening hours, consisting of syndicated sitcoms, drama and animated series that WTTO did not hold the rights to broadcast as well as local newscasts.
In 1994, Abry Communications merged with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which—in addition to acquiring WTTO and WDBB—also assumed the rights to the local marketing agreement with WABM. At that time, the station moved its operations into WABM's facilities on Beacon Parkway West. In 1995, WNAL was purchased by Fant Broadcasting, but it continued to simulcast WTTO's programming through a time brokerage agreement.
Disaffiliation from Fox and eventual switch to The WB On May 5, 1994, Great American Communications (which would be renamed Citicasters following the completion of its debt restructuring later that year) agreed to sell WBRC and three of its sister stations—fellow ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina, NBC affiliate WDAF-TV in Kansas City and CBS affiliate KSAZ-TV in Phoenix—to New World Communications for $350 million in cash and $10 million in share warrants. As part of a broader deal between New World and Fox signed on May 23 of that year, New World agreed to affiliate five of its eight existing television stations and the four it had acquired from Great American with Fox, in a series of affiliation transactions that would take two years to complete due to the varying conclusion dates of their ongoing contracts with either ABC, NBC or CBS. WBRC was one of the stations involved in this agreement. Although WTTO had established itself as one of the network's strongest affiliates, Fox jumped at the chance to align with WBRC, which had been the dominant station in central Alabama for over three decades.
Three weeks later, New World agreed to buy WVTM-TV and three other stations—CBS affiliates KDFW in Dallas–Fort Worth and KTBC in Austin, and ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis—from Argyle Television Holdings, in a purchase option-structured deal worth $717 million. The two purchases created a problem for New World due to conflicts caused by restrictions on television station ownership imposed by the FCC at the time; New World was not permitted to retain both WBRC and WVTM in any event as the ownership of two television stations in the same market by a single company was prohibited, and the concurrent acquisitions would give New World ownership of a combined fifteen stations, three more than the FCC allowed. The group's affiliation deal with Fox allowed New World to solve its ownership conflicts in Birmingham, as it chose to establish and transfer the license of WBRC into a trust company with the intent to sell the station to the network's broadcasting subsidiary, Fox Television Stations; the trust transfer was completed on July 24, 1995.