WNBI-FTV

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WNBI
WNBI18.png
United States
City of license Indianapolis
Branding NBC 18 (newscasts)
NBC 18 News(newscasts)
Slogan NBC 18 is Everywhere (newscasts)
NBC 18 News(newscasts)
Channels Digital: 18 (UHF)
Virtual: 18 (PSIP)
Subchannels 18.1 NBC
18.2 COZI TV
18.3 Telemundo
Affiliations NBC (O&O)
Owner NBC Fantasy TV Stations
(NBC Telemundo License LLC)
First air date August 14, 1987 (1987-08-14)
Call letters' meaning NBC
Indiana
Former callsigns WAAK (1987–2011)
Former channel number(s) Analog:
18 (UHF, 1987–2009)
Digital:
2 (VHF, 2004–2009)
Former affiliations independent (1987–1995 and 2006-2011)
UPN (1995-2006)
Transmitter power 800 kW
Height 293 m
Licensing authority FCC
Public license information: Template:FCC-TV-Station-profile
Template:TVQ

WNBI, channel 18, is the NBC owned-and-operated fantasy television station serving Indianapolis. The station is owned and operated by the NBC Fantasy Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal. WNBI maintains studio facilities located Indianapolis, and its transmitter is located in the Castleton neighborhood.

History[edit]

The station first signed on the air August 14, 1987 as WAAK, an independent station owned by AK18 Corporation.[1] Neal Akins, who owned 50 percent of WAAK,[1] had also owned ABC affiliates WQLI (channel 35, now an NBC affiliate) in Lafayette and WATW (channel 28, now a Fox O&O) in Terre Haute.

UPN affiliation[edit]

Paramount TV purchased WAAK from Neal Akins for $3.05 million on May 17, 1993,[2] and switched the station to UPN. Paramount referred to WAAK as UPN's Indianapolis affiliate; however, the channel 18 signal did not reach the city.[3] To solve this, Paramount bought WNBI-FLP (channel 38) in Bloomington from Rickton Communications on October 31, 1994, moved the station to channel 59 in Boston under the call letters W59JO,[4] and brought it to the air that November as a translator of WAAK.[3]

WAAK became a charter owned-and-operated station of UPN when it launched on January 16, 1995


Back to independence[edit]

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down UPN and The WB and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.[5][6] WBIN (channel 69, now Me TV affiliate, later O&O WICW), which had been the market's WB affiliate since the network's January 1995 launch, became The CW's Indianapolis affiliate as part of a 10-year affiliation deal between the new network and WBIN's owner, ATE Media Corporation.

The CW's initial affiliate list did not include any of Fox's UPN stations,

Even without the ATE Media affiliation deal, it would not have been an upset if WAAK would have been picked over WBIN as The CW's management was on record as preferring The WB and UPN's "strongest" affiliates – WBIN had led WAAK in the ratings dating back to when they were both independent stations. The day after the announcement of The CW's pending launch, on January 25, 2006, the station dropped all network references from its station on-air branding, and stopped promoting UPN's programs altogether. Accordingly, WAAK changed its branding from "UPN 18" to "Channel 18", and amended the station's 2002 logo to omit the UPN logo and just feature the boxed "18". On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV.

UPN continued to broadcast on stations across the country until September 15, 2006. While some of the network's affiliates that switched to MyNetworkTV (which commenced operations on September 5, 2006) aired the final two weeks of UPN programs outside of its recommended primetime slot. In September 2006, the station began identifying itself as "Channel 18".

In September 2010, NBC agreed to acquire WAAK from Paramount for $26 million, with the intention of making channel 18 an owned-and-operated station of its Telemundo network.[7] Parmount, which was in the process of selling some of its stations in order to raise $100 million, had originally planned to sell WAAK to another company (Indianapolis-based Clogg Media, which already owned then-ABC affiliate WEVI), but NBC jumped into the bidding war for WAAK. Clogg Media was seen as the frontrunner to buy the station, until it was outbid at the last second by NBC on September 16, 2010.[8] NBC's purchase price for the station (US$75 million at the outset, rising to $82 million by closing) was a record price for a single station in Indianapolis that stands to this day.


NBC completed its purchase of WAAK on October 29, 2010 two days later, the call letters were changed to WNBI.Translator station W59JO was not included in the sale; Paxson eventually made channel 59 a translator of WNBI.

Switch to NBC[edit]

It was reported in August 2011 that NBC was considering the possibility of purchasing then current NBC affiliate WHOO (channel 24), whose affiliation expired at the end of June 2011. NBC, WHOO owner ATE Media Corporation, and Patrice Rafferty have denied these rumors. ATE Media's President and former WHOO reporter Patrice Rafferty, stated that the company "has no intention" of renewing WHOO's affiliation.

In October 2011, the Indy Star reported, citing internal sources, that NBC had declined to renew its affiliation with WHOO and was in the process of preparing WNBI to become an NBC O&O. The paper reported two days later that the station would prospectively be known as "NBC Indiana", and that WNBI's existing independent programming could be moved to a different subchannel. Following the reports, Paula Ingalls, WHOO's vice president and general manager and Patrice Rafferty, told the Star that the station has a group deal to convert all ATE Media stations to ABC affiliates, with Rafferty ending the rumors about NBC renewing the affiliation with WHOO.


On January 7, 2012, Val Steele, president of NBC Owned Fantasy Television Stations, confirmed that NBC had declined to renew its affiliation with WHOO, and would launch NBC Indiana on July 1, 2012; Steele explained that with NBC's recent investments into the studio facilities of cable channel INCN and WNBI, "we have built a very strong news organization in the Indianapolis market—both from a personnel and facilities perspective—which puts us in a great position to launch an NBC-owned station locally." Steele did outright confirm WNBI will carry NBC programming, but iterated that the network will remain avaliable over-the-air following the transition, and that NBC was "committed to expanding our over-the-air coverage of the market and are currently looking at a variety of options to accomplish that".


WNBI officially joined NBC at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Time on June 30, 2012.[9] Jay Leno officially welcomed NBC's newest station in a ceremony on The Tonight Show, followed later that morning by a segment on the Today show in which Al Roker|Al Roker introduced WNBI's anchors. With NBC's move to channel 18, it became the fourth station in Indianapolis to affiliate with NBC, as the network originally aligned with WEVI from its sign-on in 1949 until moving to WIND in 1999.

Digital television[edit]

Digital channels[edit]

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel Video Aspect PSIP Short Name Programming[10]
18.1 1080i 16:9 WNBI-HD Main WNBI programming / NBC
18.2 480i COZI Indiana's 18.2 / Cozi TV
18.2 WNBI-D3 Telemundo

Analog-to-digital conversion[edit]

WNBI (as WAAK) shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 18, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition VHF channel 2 to its former UHF analog channel 18.[11]

Newscasts[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Template:Indy FTV Template:NBC Universal Template:Major U.S. TV O-O Stations