WWLP (channel 22) is a television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with NBC. Its second digital subchannel serves as an owned-and-operated station of The CW (via The CW Plus). Owned by Nexstar Media Group (majority owner of The CW), the station has studios at Broadcast Center in the Sandy Hill section of Chicopee at the northwest corner of the I-391/MA 116/Chicopee Street interchange, and its transmitter is located on Provin Mountain in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam.
WWLP operates a full-time low-power digital repeater, WFXQ-CD (channel 28), whose transmitter is located at the top of the old Mount Tom Ski Area in Holyoke. WFXQ-CD primarily serves as a way for the few viewers in the core of the Springfield market without cable or satellite to have UHF access to WWLP's signal, as VHF antennas have some issues with reception in the digital age. As with all other Springfield stations carried on UHF channels, it allows those viewers to use one type of antenna rather than two.
Due to the close proximity of the Springfield–Holyoke and Hartford–New Haven, Connecticut markets, many stations in Connecticut can be viewed in the Southern Pioneer Valley. Since WWLP's transmitter on Provin Mountain is not far from the state line, its signal can be picked up in northern areas of the state. WVIT (channel 30), which serves as the NBC station for all of Connecticut except Fairfield County (which is served by network flagship WNBC in New York City), is currently the only Hartford–New Haven big three station offered on Comcast Xfinity's basic tier. Charter Spectrum customers in the Pioneer Valley have access to WVIT, but only with a digital set top box.
WWLP's facility additionally serves as Nexstar's Northeast master control hub.https://buffalonews.com/2019/01/22/buffalo-is-top-rated-nfl-market-outside-of-cities-with-teams-trying-to-make-super-bowl/ "Dominic Mancuso, the Channel 4 general manager, explained the provider of the fiber for the master control hub in Springfield, Mass., is trying to fix the problem."
History
WWLP began broadcasting on March 17, 1953, one month before rival WHYN-TV (now WGGB-TV). The station aired an analog signal on UHF channel 61 and was an NBC affiliate from the start. At its sign-on, WWLP had the distinction of being one of the first UHF television stations in the United States after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened the UHF band as well as Massachusetts' oldest station outside of Boston. It was founded by William L. Putnam and his company, Springfield Television. WWLP's original studios were at the transmitter site on Provin Mountain in Feeding Hills.
It switched frequencies to UHF channel 22 on July 2, 1955. The previous analog allotment would remain unused until the second WTIC-TV signed on from Hartford in 1984. From its beginnings, the Springfield–Holyoke market was designated as a "UHF island" where no analog VHF stations could be allocated. Springfield was sandwiched between Boston to the east, Hartford–New Haven to the south, and the Capital District of New York State to the west, and all available VHF channels were tied up between them. As a result of technical limitations UHF stations faced in the 1950s, as well as the market's rugged terrain, WWLP's signal was not viewable in much of the northern portion of the market (which at the time included Brattleboro, Vermont, and Keene, New Hampshire). The station would sign on two full-time satellites to solve that problem and extend its broadcasting radius (see below). WWLP was also at a disadvantage in its early years, as UHF stations could not be viewed without the use of an expensive external converter that received UHF signals (it wasn't until the passing of the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1962 that all TVs were required to have them built in). From 1975 until 1979, the station aired nationally syndicated National Hockey League games from The NHL Network (not to be confused with the present-day cable channel of the same name).
After three decades, Putnam retired from broadcasting in 1984 and sold his company and its three stations (WWLP, KSTU-TV, and WKEF) to Adams Communications. Adams ran into financial trouble and began breaking up the Springfield Television group in 1987 with the sale of KSTU to MWT Ltd. Adams sold WKEF to KT Communications in 1989 before selling WWLP to Brisette Broadcasting in 1991. However, Brisette himself ran into trouble and merged his group with Benedek Broadcasting at the end of 1995. LIN TV Corporation acquired WWLP in 2000 by swapping KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas, and WOWT-TV in Omaha, Nebraska, to Benedek. This was a result of Chronicle Broadcasting, which owned the latter two, being liquidated. The sale could be seen as the ultimate undoing for Benedek which in 2002 declared bankruptcy and sold most of their stations (including WOWT and KAKE) to Gray Television (who now owns rival station WGGB-TV).
In early 2000, the station's studios and offices moved to their current home in the Sandy Hill area of Chicopee. However, its transmitter remained in Feeding Hills. Shortly after the change, then-pending owner LIN TV constructed an addition at WWLP's new facilities which would serve as a master control hub for company-owned stations in the Northeast. At this location, room for future expansion was made in the event LIN TV expanded their Northeast properties. That eventually became the case with sister stations WTNH, WCTX, WPRI-TV (LIN TV flagship), and WNAC-TV having master control and some internal operations currently located at the Chicopee studios.
WWLP was well known for producing As Schools Match Wits, one of American television's earliest and longest-running high school quiz programs. The program first aired in October 1961. In September 2006, the show was canceled by the station because of the costs associated with new FCC regulations requiring all over-the-air television programming in the United States to be closed-captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. The show returned to the air in January 2007, airing now on the area's PBS member station WGBY-TV (channel 57) and co-produced with Westfield State College.
On May 18, 2007, LIN TV announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives including the sale of the company. On March 21, 2014, Media General announced that it would purchase LIN Media and its stations, including WWLP and WFXQ-CD, in a $1.6 billion merger. The merger was completed on December 19.Media General Completes Merger With LIN Media , Press Release, Media General, Retrieved December 19, 2014
On September 8, 2015, Media General announced that it would acquire the Meredith Corporation for $2.4 billion, with the combined group to be renamed Meredith Media General once the sale was finalized. Because Meredith already owned WGGB-TV, and the Springfield–Holyoke market does not have enough full-power television stations to legally allow a duopoly in any event (the Pioneer Valley has only three full-power TV stations), the companies would have been required to sell either WGGB-TV or WWLP to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as recent changes to those rules regarding same-market television stations that restrict sharing agreements had the sale gone through. Meredith-owned CBS affiliate WSHM-LD (channel 3) was the only one of the three stations affected by the merger that could legally be acquired by Meredith Media General, as FCC rules permit common ownership of full-power and low-power stations regardless of the number of stations within a single market. On January 27, 2016, however, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Media General, who subsequently abandoned its plans to purchase Meredith.
Former satellites In 1957, WRLP in Greenfield signed on as a full-time satellite of WWLP. WRLP served the northern portion of the Pioneer Valley market, where WWLP's signal was marginal at best due to the area's rugged and mountainous terrain. From a transmitter on Gunn Mountain in Winchester, New Hampshire (one of the highest points in the region), WRLP could also be seen in Springfield as well, creating a strong combined signal with over 50 percent overlap.
In 1958, Putnam purchased a defunct station in Worcester, WWOR-TV (no relation to the current Secaucus, New Jersey/Tri-State station with the same callsign), and returned it to the air as a second full-time satellite of WWLP. However, Worcester is part of the Boston market, and WWLP was forced to limit WWOR's broadcast day to only six hours in order to protect the interests of WBZ-TV, then Boston's NBC affiliate. In 1964, WWOR changed its calls to WJZB-TV and became an independent station while continuing to simulcast some programming from WWLP.
WRLP and WJZB eventually went off the air due to financial difficulties, with WJZB going dark in 1969 followed by WRLP in 1978. Almost immediately after WRLP left the air, its transmitter was shipped to Salt Lake City, Utah, in order to launch KSTU, an independent sister station on UHF channel 20. That station eventually became a Fox affiliate on analog VHF channel 13 operating under a different owner.
Subchannels WWLP-DT2 (The CW) WWLP-DT2, branded The CW Springfield, is the CW+-affiliated second digital subchannel of WWLP, broadcasting in 720p high definition on channel 22.2. On cable, the subchannel is available on Xfinity channel 5 and Spectrum channel 13 to viewers in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties.
History As cable-only WBQT
What is now WWLP-DT2 began its life in September 1998 as WBQT, a cable-only affiliate of The WB through the national WB 100+ service. Since it was only available on cable, the call sign was fictional in nature solely for the purposes of electronic program guide and rating diary identification, and thus not officially recognized by the FCC. As a WB 100+ station, it was one of the few in the group that was not aligned with an established over-the-air station in the market. WBQT did not initially replace out-of-market WB affiliates (such as WPIX from New York City, WBNE from Hartford, which was later replaced with WTXX, and WLVI from Boston) on local cable systems.
In 1999, WBQT was taken off of AT&T Broadband systems serving the majority of the Springfield–Holyoke market. When Comcast took over AT&T's cable system in 2001, the company began a push to expand WBQT's reach. In late 2001, it replaced out-of-market WB affiliates on most systems with near total replacement taking place by 2003 (mainly taking the cable channel positions formerly held by WTXX, following a pattern where WSHM-LP replaced Hartford CBS affiliate WFSB on channel 3 and new Fox affiliate WGGB-DT2 replaced WTIC-TV on channel 6 in the Springfield market upon their launches). Throughout the station's affiliation with The WB, it was known on-air as Pioneer Valley's WB 16 (named after its channel location) and had its own logo.
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced the two networks would shut down and merge into a new network, The CW. The next few months saw uncertainty about The CW's place in Springfield due to a lack of broadcast stations in the market and The CW's preference for over-the-air affiliates, along with cable providers then not being receptive to picking up digital subchannels. UPN service was provided by New Haven's WCTX via cable in the Springfield market, but WTXX, being Tribune-owned, was named a charter affiliate in The CW's launch announcement, shutting out WCTX from the CW affiliation entirely. As WBQT had no web presence or communications department as a WB 100+ affiliate, there was no word about it becoming the Springfield affiliate for The CW, nor of a return of WTXX to market cable systems.