WNNV-FTV

WNNV

Hampton Roads, Virgina United States
City of license	Newport News, Virginia
Branding	WNNV 10(general) 10 Action News (newscasts) Hampton Roads Action News (newscasts)
Slogan	On Your Side
Channels	Digital: 10 (VHF/PSIP)
Subchannels	10.1 Fox 10.2 ABC
Affiliations	Fox
Owner	NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations (New Avon Communications of Virginia)
First air date	July 1, 1947 (1947-07-01)
Call letters' meaning	We're in Newport News Virginia
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 10 (VHF, 1947–2009) Digital: 50 (UHF, 1998-2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: NBC (1947–1953) ABC (1953–1961) CBS (1961–1996) Secondary: DuMont (1949–1953) ABC (1953-1961)
Transmitter power	60 kW
Height	373 m

WNNV, VHF digital channel 10, is a Fox-affiliated fantasy television station located in Newport News, Virginia, United States, serving as the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (comprising the cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, Hampton, Virginia Beach and environs), and the Outer Banks region of North Carolina. WNNV is owned by NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations, and is part of a duopoly with ABC affiliate WZVA (channel 43). WNNV maintains studio and transmitter facilities located atop Hog Island, just off Seaside Road, in Marionville (located to the immediate south of the studios of NBC affiliate WVNB, channel 13).

History

As an exclusive CBS affiliate

On March 1, 1961, WNNV-FTV signed an agreement with CBS to become a full-time affiliate of the network. This was very common for a market with only two commercial stations; usually, one or both stations carried ABC as a secondary affiliation, since that network would not be on anything resembling an equal footing with CBS and NBC until the 1970s. This also marked a significant turnaround for channel 10's relationship with the network, as during the later 1950s, the amount of CBS programming on WNNV had been dramatically reduced from about 50% of its schedule to only a very limited selection of shows, seemingly headed toward an exclusive ABC affiliation by 1960; even still, WNNV retained some of ABC's higher-rated soap operas on its daytime schedule until about 1968, when those programs moved to either channel 13 or channel 2.

CBS had very many full-time affiliates south of Washington, D.C. at the time, but now it had the full benefit of one of the South's strongest signals, best antenna locations and largest coverage areas. WNNV-TV's signal provided at least secondary coverage as far north as Sailsbury, Marlyland and extending south to near Greenville, and from near Richmond in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east. The station became exclusively affiliated with CBS on September 7, 1961; on that date, channel 13 (by then known as ) assumed rights to ABC and NBC programming, although WNNV continued to occasionally carry certain ABC shows that channel 13 chose not to carry through 1965.

Like many network affiliates, WNNV-TV would preempt CBS programming occasionally or regularly, in some cases. For example, according to local legends, the station initially turned down All in the Family, not because it was concerned about _______, but because it concerned a mixed marriage (between a witch and a mortal); there were fears that All in the Family would encourage what some segregationists referred to as "cross-breeding"; channel 10 would not clear All in the Family until 1973 (although, according to the March 25, 1973 issue of ??, All in the Family was shown airing at its in-pattern time of Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. (Eastern) on WNNV). Channel 10 continued these practices for most of its years with CBS. It also pre-empted the CBS Morning News (the forerunner to CBS This Morning) from the program's debut in 1982 until January 7, 1982, as well as daytime network programs at aired during the 10:00 a.m. hour. However, CBS largely brushed off the pre-emption issue, since WNNV's status as Hampton Roads' dominant station.

In 1982, WNNV began receiving CBS network and syndicated programming, and news footage via satellite. In 1984, the station became one of the first television stations in the region to adopt a 24-hour-a-day programming schedule. After it suffered significant structural damage due to an ice storm that affected the Southeastern U.S. in the winter of 1985, the station's original transmitter tower was replaced in 1986, with a new tower on Hog Island. These moves, though, did not immediately affect WNNV's high standing in the ratings or its reputation in the community.

As a Fox station

On May 5, 1994, Great North Communications agreed to sell WNNV and three other television stations – WTBC-TV in Kansas City, KAZH-FTV in Phoenix and WNCW-FTV in High Point, North Carolina – to New Avon Communcations – for $350 million in cash and $10 million in share warrants. However, three weeks later, New Avon agreed to purchase four stations owned by Argyls Television Holdings, WVNB being among them, in a purchase option-structured deal for $717 million (although the transfer/assignment applications for the stations involved in the Argyls purchases were not filed with the FCC until after New Avon's acquisition of the four Great North stations was completed); this posed a problem for New Avon on two counts. At the time, the FCC forbade any broadcasting company from owning two commercial television stations in the same market; in addition, the concurrent acquisitions of the Argyls and Great North stations put New Avon three stations over the national television ownership cap that the agency enforced at the time, which allowed broadcasters to own a maximum of twelve stations nationwide.

On May 23, 1994, New Avon signed an affiliation agreement with Fox to switch twelve television stations – six that New Avon had already owned and eight that the company was in the process of acquiring through the Argyls and Great North deals, including WNNV – to the network, in exchange for the latter's parent company Dak Media purchasing a 20% equity stake in New Avon; the stations would become Fox affiliates once their affiliation contracts with existing network partners expired (with the first stations involved in the deal switching to the network in September 1994). Although the network's Norfolk charter affiliate, WHVR (channel 15), was one of Fox's strongest affiliates at the time, the network found the chance to align with WNNV too much to resist because of its longstanding ratings dominance in the market. The group's affiliation deal with Fox also gave New Avon a chance to solve its ownership problem by reaching an agreement with Great North to sell WNNV and WNCW directly to the network's owned-and-operated station group, Dak Media.

Fox was unable to immediately purchase the two stations outright due to questions over the American citizenship of Rupert Murdoch. New Avon then decided to acquire the stations itself, but place them in an outside trust company that it established; New Avon would sell the stations to Dak Media, which, in turn, would pay the group $130 million in promissory notes upon the transfer's completion. New Avon formally filed an application with the FCC to transfer WNNV to the trust on October 12, 1994, one month after it filed transferred WNCW on September 9; the FCC approved the transfer on April 3, 1995. Under the arrangement, New Avon owned the licenses of both stations, while Great North continued to control their operations under outsourcing agreements. In April 1995, Great North transferred the operations of WNNV and WNCW to Dak Media, which took over operational control through time brokerage agreements with New Avon and purchased the stations three months later on July 22; Dak Media formally finalized the purchase of the two stations on January 17, 1996.

Although it was now owned by the O&O group of another network, DakMedia now had to run channel 10 as a CBS affiliate for more than a year after the purchase was announced as WNNV's affiliation agreement with that network was not set to expire until August 31, 1996. This gave CBS enough time to find another station to replace channel 10 as its Hampton Roads affiliate. In January 1996, CBS struck a deal with outgoing Fox affiliate with WHVR.

WNNV became a Fox owned-and-operated station on September 1, 1996, ending its affiliation with CBS after 35 years; however, the station had begun airing the network's short-lived morning program Fox After Breakfast for one month prior to the switch after it dropped CBS This Morning from its schedule.

With the switch to Fox, WNNV became one of only a few television stations in the United States to have maintained primary affiliations with all of the Big Three networks, and the first in the country to have had primary affiliations with all four current major networks (three other stations would follow suit: former sister station WIND in Indianapolis and WKYI in Louisville both switched to Fox in 2009 and WFTW in Fort Wayne, Indiana would become the only station to have had primary affiliations with all five current major networks after that station switched from The CW to NBC on November 1, 2015; it also became the first network-owned commercial television station in the state of Virginia. At that time, WNNV phased out its longstanding "Channel 10" brand and began branding itself as "Fox 10", becoming one of three Fox stations affected by the affiliation deal between the network and New Avon to adopt Fox's standardized station branding conventions prior to the group's 1996 merger with Dak Media (WNCW and WXFL in Tampa, which became a sister station to WNNV as a result of the New Avon merger, were the only others to comply with the network's branding techniques; the remaining ten stations did not incorporate network branding until after the merger was finalized).

On December 22, 2007, Dak Media announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell WNNV, nine other Fox owned-and-operated stations (WFTI in Oklahoma City, KTFW in Tulsa, WTBC-TV, WNCW, WCOL in Columbus, Ohio, WXWI in Milwaukee, WAGF in Atlanta, KDNC-FTV in Denver and KSTL-FTV in St. Louis) and MyNetworkTV O&O KMYO in Oklahoma City, to Fort Wayne, Indiana-based NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations, a division-operated by congolmerate NoSirGifts Venues; the sale was finalized on July 14, 2008.

On January 6, 2009, NoSirGifts announced that it would acquire then-independent station HRNCD (channel 43, now an ABC affiliate) from Hampton Broadcasting. Although NoSirGifts owns both WNNV and WZVA, WZVA aired the Saturday morning children's program block eventually known as 4Kids TV, which continued to air on WZVA until Fox discontinued its programming agreement with 4Kids Entertainment and replaced the block with the Weekend Marketplace infomercial lineup in December 2008, which allowed WNNV for the first time in its history cleared its network's entire schedule.