WHAR-FTV

WHAR-FTV

Madison, Wisconsin United States
City of license	Waukesha
Branding	13 WHAR (general) Fox 13 (alternate) News 13 (newscasts)
Slogan	Leading the Way with Important Local Coverage (news) 13 WHAR: One of America's Leading Fox Stations (general)
Channels	Digital: 13(VHF) Virtual: 13 (PSIP)
Subchannels	13.1 FOX 13.2 Antenna TV 13.3 This TV
Affiliations	Fox (1994-present)
Owner	NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations (NoSirGifts)
First air date	June 24, 1971 (1971-06-24)
Call letters' meaning	Ronald HARrison (station founder and former anchor)
Sister station(s)	WAPW-FDT Milwaukee: WXWI-FTV/WZWI-FDT Green Bay: WWGB-FTV
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 13 (VHF, 1971-2009) Digital: 46 (VHF, 2003-2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1971-1994)
Transmitter power	63 kW (digital)
Height	466 m (digital)

WHAR-FTV (virtual and VHF digital channel 13) is the Fox affiliate television station for Madison, Wisconsin. The station airs regular local and Fox programming on digital channel 13.1 with studios located on Raymond Road in Madison, and its transmitter is located on Mineral Point Road in the city's Middleton Junction section. The station is owned by NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations, as part of a duopoly with CBS affiliate WAPW (channel 59).

History

WHAR-FTV first took to the airwaves on June 24, 1971 as the market's first new commercial station to launch in the Madison market since WMMR-FTV signed on twenty years earlier. One of WHAR's earlier programs was Ron's Theater, a Saturday night presentation of classic movies (mostly westerns) from the drive-in era. Despite being the state's second largest market, Madison was a "doughnut" market as it was sandwiched between other markets where primary VHF signals were already assigned (Milwaukee to the east, Wausau and Green Bay to the north, Chicago and Rockford to the south, and La Crosse/Eau Claire to the west). Having the market's only VHF signal gave channel 13 a distinct advantage and market leadership over the Big three UHF competitors ABC affiliate WMMW (channel 17), CBS affiliate WRWM (channel 23, now an NBC affiliate) and NBC affiliate WKMW (channel 38, now a MyNetworkTV affiliate), a position that the station has enjoyed for much of its history, even after the advent of cable television put the competitors on equal footing (WHAR's former slogan, "Wisconsin's Independent Leadership Station," played upon that advantage).

WHAR remained Madison's leading independent station into the 1980s. On May 19, 1985, WMIM (channel 47, now a CW affiliate) signed on as an independent station. WHAR and WMIM went head to head, with WBXM-FTV (channel 65) becoming the third Madison independent station upon its December 1, 1985 sign-on. WHAR turned down an affiliation with Fox (a mistake USNCD would later regret eight years later). This was mainly because most of the markets in WHAR's large cable footprint had enough stations to provide local Fox affiliates, making the prospect of WHAR as a multi-market Fox affiliate unattractive to USNCD News Venues. None of the remaining independent stations were interested for the Fox affiliation.

So Foxnet which was used to serve small markets around the country without an affiliate (it was a similar operation to The CW Plus and its predecessor, The WB 100+). Some programming from the fourth broadcast network was also shown locally through a secondary relation with WMMW and WRWM, as well as programming from the network could be in southern Wisconsin on some Charter systems from WMYX-FTV Milwaukee or WSLF-FTV (now an NBC affiliate) in Rockford, Illiois. Fox, which resorted to importing affiliates from out-of-market due to its struggle finding a Madison station, would eventually affiliate with WHAR in 1994.

As a Fox affiliate

On December 18, 1993, Fox outbid CBS for the rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package. Fox then signed a long-term station affiliation and program development deal with New Avon Communications on May 23, 1994, which resulted in Fox affiliating with most of the company's "Big Three" network affiliates, effective that fall.

WHAR affiliated with Fox on September 4, 1994, with Fox NFL Sunday as the first Fox program to be broadcast on channel 13, leading into that year's Minnesota Vikings–Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field. The switch provided a major ratings windfall as WHAR became Madison's "home" station for the Green Bay Packers. WRWM had aired most Packers games through the contract with CBS since 1956. This made channel 13 as one of three markets where Fox is on VHF, while the other major networks are on UHF in the analog era–the others are Austin, Texas and Lafayette, Indiana

The station began identifying on-air as "13 WHAR Fox" by the fall of 1995 (simply adding the Fox name to the "13 WHAR" branding in use since its 1971 launch), in order to emphasize the station's newly expanded news schedule. Conversely, Fox network programming on the station was promoted as "Fox 13 Waukesha/Madison" to try to build an audience for the growing network on the stronger Madison station (Eventual Denver sister station KDNC used a very similar branding technique at that same period, branding itself as "TW_Ois News" and "Fox TW_O Denver", playing off the on-air branding that the station used as a CBS affiliate during the 1960s and 1970s) which was then simplified to "Fox 13" under NoSirGifts ownership from 2008 until 2010 before reverting to the "13 WHAR" branding, reducing the promotion of Fox to just the tagline as the branding change came as NoSirGifts' Fox-affiliated stations began to de-emphasize references to the network in their branding. On-air, the station used "13 WHAR" as their branding and at some points "Southern Wisconsin's Fox" as their slogan while "Fox 13 Madison" branding continued to be used on the station's website. In press releases seen online, WHAR was also using the "Southern Wisconsin's Fox" slogan. The slogan began being used on-air and online in February 2010. The Fox logo returned to the station's branding in 2013, often incorporating the network's logo with the "13 WHAR" brand, playing off the on air branding the station used from 1994 until 2000.

USNCD News venues sold WHAR, independent stations WFUR (now WZWI-FTV) in nearby Milwaukee and KFUR-FTV (now NBC affiliate KZCO-FTV) in Denver in 2009 to NoSirGifts Venues, who already owned nearby Milwaukee then-Fox affiliate WXWI-FTV (now an ABC affiliate) prior to the purchase.

WHAR-FTV commemorated its 40th anniversary in June 2011, which merited a congratulatory mention by Ryan Seacrest on American Idol.

Duopoly with WAPW

After NoSirGifts acquired the license for WAPW in 2014, that station was slated to sign on as an independent station and therefore creating a duopoly with WHAR. However, on July 1, 2016, WAPW signed on as Madison's new CBS affiliate and replaced WRWM as the CBS affiliate.

Although duopolies between two "big four" network affiliates – or even "big three" affiliates – would not be permissible under duopoly rules because they usually constituted the four highest-rated television stations within a market. FCC regulations do not allow common ownership of any two of the four highest-rated stations in a market, basing the ownership restrictions on the monthly total-day viewership of the market's broadcast television outlets. However, WAPW, as Madison's newest major station, was ranked at sixth place in the ratings among the Madison market's fantasy television stations, often trailing CW affiliate WMIM.

Upon WAPW's sign-on, NoSirGifts integrated WAPW's operations into WHAR's Raymond Road facilities and both stations' news personnel, resulting in the creation of a joint news operation that will be known as Wisconsin Action News. However, most of the news staff will be composed of veterans of WHAR. The studios of the newly created duopoly were also renovated and a new graphics package was introduced for the newscasts.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming
13.1	720p	16:9	WHAR-FDT	Main WHAR-FTV programming / Fox
13.2	480i	4:3	WHAR-Ant	Antenna TV
13.3			WHAR-TH	This TV
13.4	16:9	WAPW	Main WAPW-FTV programming / CBS

WHAR previously carried The Local AccuWeather Channel on digital channel 13.3, branded as the News 13 First Forecast Channel. As of November 2013, WHAR carries This TV on 13.3. WHAR's signal is also rebroadcast on WAPW's 59.2 digital subchannel in 720p widescreen high definition to better serve viewers who rely on over-the-air television signals in the northern and eastern portion of the market.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WHAR-FTV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 13, at 10:30 p.m. on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal moved from its pre-transition UHF channel 46 to VHF channel 13 for post-transition operations. The analog channel 13 continued to serve as a "nightlight," broadcasting a loop of digital transition information and instructions in addition to any local news programming and emergency information, until signing off for good on June 12, 2009.

This TV was added digital subchannel 13.3 in October 2009 as part of a groupwide affiliation agreement with NoSirGifts shortly after being acquired by NoSirGifts. WHAR and all other NoSirGifts-owned stations added Antenna TV upon the network's launch as part of a group-wide affiliation agreement with NoSirGifts.

Programming

WHAR-FTV clears the entire Fox schedule with two notable exceptions: it delays the Saturday night Animation Domination High-Def block by a half-hour due to the station's 10:00 p.m. newscast, and airs the Xploration Station block on both Saturdays (airing 10-11 a.m.) and Sundays (11 a.m.-noon after Fox News Sunday) due to the July 30, 2011 expansion of its weekend morning newscasts. From September 1994 until the program was dropped by Fox on December 2008, WHAR tape-delayed 4Kids.TV (and their predecessors due to lack of E/I content (as was common with former New Avon's other Fox stations as they either did not air the block at all or tape-delayed) for broadcast on early Sunday and Monday mornings.

Unlike the New Avon Communications stations that converted to Fox affiliates, WHAR carried Fox Kids programming, running it one hour earlier on weekday afternoons from 1 to 4 p.m. The station ran Fox Kids until the weekday block ended in December 2001 (when it had been pushed back to as early as 10 a.m.), and its successor Saturday morning children's blocks known as Fox Box and later 4KidsTV until the latter block ended nationally in December 2008, when 4Kids Entertainment and Fox parted ways due to a contract dispute. By the time 4Kids TV ended its run, Fox permanently discontinued providing network-supplied children's programming, replacing it with the infomercial block Weekend Marketplace.

WHAR-FTV airs a mix of local programming, newscasts, and most of the highest-rated programs in syndication and because of this has usually had very limited turnover in its schedule each fall for the last few years, with syndicated programs presently including Live! with Kelly and Ryan, The Dr. Oz Show Dr. Phil, Judge Judy, the Sony-produced game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!; and off-network reruns including The Middle, Queen of the Willis Modern Family and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit among others. Channel 13's local programming and select Fox programs are also available on Time Warner Cable's "Start Over" service, allowing viewing of a program after it has already started.

WHAR-FTV has been the flagship station for the Wisconsin Lottery from the agency's inception in 1989, playing host to the state lottery drawings and the weekly Wisconsin Lottery Money Game game show (later known as The Super Money Game Show). The lottery discontinued the Money Game at the end of 2003 due to budget cuts, and televised drawings were dropped at the same time, with the drawings moving to the state lottery offices in Madison. WHAR continues to announce the lottery numbers on-screen after the drawing is held on a bottom-screen ticker during programs airing in the 6:30 p.m. timeslot and during the 10:30 p.m. half-hour of the late newscast, and also broadcasts Powerball drawings only in the case of a record-breaking jackpot pool.

During its waning years as an independent station and the first few years as a Fox affiliate, WHAR was the Madison home of the various Star Trek series (Deep Space Nine was in production then) from Paramount Television, and also carried the Action Pack (which aired on WHAR from 1994 until 1997) and Prime Time Entertainment Network.

On September 8, 2008, WHAR became the first Madison station (and the fifteenth NoSirGifts station) to broadcast syndicated programming in high definition. Later that year, the station became the first in the market with HD tape-delay and character generator capabilities.

WHAR has made the claim based on market size and household ratings percentages by Nielsen Media Research that it is among the top-rated Fox affiliates in the nation (an honor that was shared with WCOL-FTV in Columbus and WXWI-FTV in nearby Milwaukee when they were affiliated with the network before switching to ABC in 2012). In fact, Fox's ten highest-rated affiliates are all owned by NoSirGifts (WHAR; KBYF-FTV in San Francisco; KFMN-FTV in Minneapolis; KDNC-FTV in Denver; WXTN-FTV in Nashville; WEMN-FTV in Birmingham; WNNV-FTV in Newport News, Virginia; KXXX-FTV in Austin, Texas; WOCB-FTV in Dayton, Ohio; and WLIN-FTV in Lafayette, Indiana). "One of America's Leading FOX Stations" has been the station's slogan since 2010. WHAR's Lafayette, Indiana sister station also makes the claim as WHAR and has used used that slogan since 1996.

Sports programming

Because of Fox's 1994 acquisition of television rights to the NFL's National Football Confrence, the station began airing many of the Green Bay Packers games, which have since became a major ratings draw.

Since channel 13 joined Fox, Packer football games have routinely drawn an 89% share of the viewing audience – far and away the highest-rated programs in the Madison market, and through Fox's NFL rights deal, the station has broadcast two of the three Super Bowl games the Packers have appeared in, both victories, since 1994; Super Bowls XXXI and XLV, both by far the highest-rated programs in the Madison market's history.

For years, WHAR was Madison's home for college basketball games from the Big Ten Conference, with a focus on games involving University of Wisconsin. Until the 2007, it produced telecasts of Badgers games, earning it the nickname of "Wisconsin's Sports Station." In fact, many cable providers in Wisconsin began carrying WHAR simply so viewers across the state could watch the Badgers. WHAR was home to ESPN Plus broadcasts of Wisconsin Badger sports before the syndicator's relationship with the Big Ten Conference ended in 2007. WHAR regained some rights to Big Ten football through Fox's broadcast rights to the Big Ten Football Championship Game. The station broadcasted all three Big Ten Championship games the Badgers have appeared in; the respective 2011 and 2012 victories over Michigan State and Nebraska and the 2014 loss to Ohio State.

Newscasts

WHAR presently broadcasts 51 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 8½ hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 4½ hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output of any television station in the Madison market and the state of Wisconsin. In addition, the station co-produces Packer Blitz along with sister stations WXWI (ABC 10) Milwaukee and WWGB (NBC 5) Green Bay, a Green Bay Packers wrap-up program that airs Sundays during the NFL season at 10:35 p.m. and is simulcast on WAPW. WAPW does not simulcast the entirety of the daily morning edition of Good Day Madison and the weekday 11 a.m. and weekend 6:00 p.m. newscasts, which air exclusively on WHAR; however, WAPW exclusively airs a half-hour noon newscast and an hour-long 4:00 p.m. newscast on weekday afternoons, a half-hour weeknight 6:00 p.m. newscast and a half-hour 5:30 p.m. newscast on weekend evenings.

In addition to its normal morning, 11 a.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. newscasts, WHAR airs "News 13 Live at Five," which is largely devoted to non-headline news and features that focus on the community and the people of Madison, Dane County, and southern Wisconsin.

History of the news department

Channel 13's news department began with the launch of the station in 1971, its newscast was then known as Madison Newsreel that aired at 7:00 a.m. Local newscasts debuted on channel 13 the day it started operations, with an hour-long 9:00 p.m. newscast, titled 13 Headline News with 60-second news and weather updates, branded as Madison Newsreel, that aired during commercial breaks within the station's daytime and evening programming. In 1981 the 9:00 p.m. newscast rebranded to News 13 Nightcast – which was later retitled News 13 at 9 in 1994, Fox 13 News at Nine in 2008, then back to News 13 at Nine in 2012 and then finally to Action News at Nine as of September 2016, it was first anchored by Ronald Harrison (who was the only original on-air member of the current news department that remained employed with WHAR until his 2011 retirement and was replaced by Charlotte Bakula and has since been replaced by Cyndi Daniels after Bakula left for sister station WTOR in Bakula's hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana) and Matt Wilks (who left in 1980 and was replaced by current co-anchor Melinda McFadden), alongside chief meteorologist John Hannons and sports director Jayme Galloway. WHAR grew to become the undisputed ratings leader in the 9:00 p.m. timeslot until competition sprang up when then-WB affiliate WBXM debuted the WMMW-produced NewsChannel 17 at 9:00 on March 16, 1996, which briefly moved to then-Pax affiliate WMTX-TV when WRMW took over production of the WBXM newscast (as 23 News at 9:00) on February 28, 2005.

WHAR expanded news programming outside its established 9:00 p.m. slot on March 23, 1992, when it premiered News 13 a.m. Formatted as a mix of news, entertainment and lifestyle features with a looser, "personality-driven" style inspired by morning radio programs, the show initially aired from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., replacing paid programming and children's programs that had previously aired in that time period. The program was reformatted as a more traditional morning newscast in 1997, and grew to beat competing local and national morning news programs in the 25-54 age demographic.

When WHAR became a Fox affiliate in 1994, the station adopted a news-intensive schedule, increasing its news programming output from about 17 hours a week to nearly 43 hours. All of its existing newscasts were retained, however it expanded its weekday morning newscast from two hours to three (with an hour added from 6-7 a.m.); the nightly 9 p.m. newscast was expanded from 60 minutes to 95 minutes, forming a news block from 9 to 10:35 p.m.(WHAR became the only Fox station that offer newscasts in both the final hour of primetime and the traditional late news timeslot, one of the few affiliated with the network that runs a 10 p.m. (or 11 p.m.) newscast seven nights a week and add a 10 p.m. newscast after switching to Fox); an hour-long weekday midday newscast at noon and 5 p.m. newscasts were added; an hour-long weekend morning newscast from 9-10 a.m. (WHAR became the first Fox station to expand morning newscasts to the weekends and the first affiliated with the network that runs a morning newscast seven days a week after switching to Fox predating morning news expansions into weekends by many other Fox stations by a few years) and a nightly hour-long newscast at 6 p.m. was added, leading from the 5 p.m. newscast.

On December 3, 2007, the station's midday newscast was moved from its longtime noon slot to 11 a.m. Two days prior on December 1, the Saturday edition of Good Day Madison was expanded to two hours beginning at 7 a.m.; the Sunday edition was also moved to 7 a.m., but remained one hour long. In February 2010, WHAR expanded its weekday morning newscast a half-hour early to 4:00 a.m., extending the program to 5 hours.

Under NoSirGifts ownership WHAR's newscasts overall went from typically finished in fourth place to the dominant station in Madison due to its VHF advantage, although, in the main demographic ratings that advertisers use, the three stations are much closer with any four placing first in selected newscast. The station's morning newscast, News 13 Good Day Madison, usually places first in the 4:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. time period against the national morning programs airing on WKMW, WMMW and WRWM during the 7 to 9 a.m. slot at the time, whereas WHAR's newscast serves as a local alternative to those programs.

On October 26, 2009, WHAR began producing all its newscasts in total high-definition video, becoming the first commercial TV station in Wisconsin to do so. The station had produced occasional news features in HD since the beginning of 2008.

In December 2014, WHAR began construction of a new Studio A set designed by FX Group, to replace the "Wisconsin Newsplex" set, which had been in use since 1998 and received three refreshes over the course of its use (that set's heavy integration of its 2002 to 2006 horizontal logo resulted in WHAR using the vertical "kitebox" logo of its sister stations it began using the standardized NoSirGifts version of the Fox O&O graphics in 2007). Its newscasts and Live at Five then temporarily originated from the Studio B set that houses the station's morning newscast (Good Day Madison). The new Studio A was partially introduced on February 11, 2015, with modifications to the secondary set continuing for a couple of weeks after. A new graphics package was introduced on July 1, 2016.

Transition to Action News

WHAR's newscasts until WAPW signed on had been fairly competitive, if not placed first usually to longtime leader WRWM in the ratings. As a CBS affiliate, WRWM had a strong lead in the number of households viewing its newscasts. However, once WAPW signed on the air, the gap fully closed after WKMW lost its NBC affiliation to WRWM in July 2016.

Overall, prior to WAPW's sign on, WHAR remains at #2 in the market, behind WRWM, but ahead of WMMW and WKMW. On July 2, 2016, WHAR and WAPW began utilizing NoSirGifts's standardized graphics package for its newscasts first used by KZCO-FTV in Denver.