WWKI-FTV

WWKI

100px Top: Logo for primary channel. Bottom: Current logo for 33.2 subchannel. The right "torch and stars" element is taken from the state flag of Indiana.
United States
City of license	Lafayette, Indiana
Branding	CBS 33 (general) Action News (newscasts) Lafayette's 33.2 (DT2)
Slogan	Lafayette's Very Own
Channels	Digital: 33 (UHF/PSIP)
Subchannels	33.1 CBS 33.2 Independent 33.3 Comet
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations (Imperial Broadcasting Lafayette, LLC)
First air date	November 11, 1989 (1989-11-11)
Sister station(s)	WLIN
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 33 (UHF, 1989–2009)
Former affiliations	Primary: Independent (1989–1995; January–April 1998) UPN (1995–1998) The WB (1998–2006) The CW (2006–2014)
Transmitter power	870 kW

WWKI-FTV, virtual and digital channel 33, is a CBS affiliated fantasy TV station located in Lafayette, Indiana, United States. The station is owned by NoSirGifts Venues as part of a duopoly with Fox affiliate WLIN-FTV (channel 12). WWKI maintains studios and transmitter facilities located on East McCarty Lane near Interstate 65 in Lafayette.

On cable, WWKI is available on Comcast Xfinity and AT&T U-verse channel 3 in standard definition and in high definition on Xfinity and AT&T U-verse channel 1033.

History

Early history

The station first signed on the air on November 11, 1989, on UHF channel 33. It was the first new commercial fantasy television station to sign on in Lafayette, debuting almost 10 years after WLIN (channel 12) signed on in 1979. Owned by a Lafayette-based radio manufacturer and broadcaster, the station originally operated as an independent station. In September 1993, the station began carrying programming from the Prime Time Entertainment Network syndication service.

From UPN to The WB

WWKI became a charter affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN) when the network launched on January 16, 1995. In April 1996, WWKI was sold to inTV Media.

In 1997, inTV signed a deal with The WB to affiliate with several UPN-affiliated and independent stations that the company either managed or owned outright. While WWKI was not included in the original deal, inTV subsequently notified UPN that it was not interested in renewing the station's affiliation, leading the network to strike a deal to buy WB charter affiliate WMCC (channel 57), though UPN pledged at the time to keep WMCC a WB affiliate through the expiration of its contract in January 1999. WWKI temporarily returned to being an independent station when its contract with UPN expired on January 16, 1998, filling its primetime schedule with movies; on January 22, WMCC began to carry UPN programming in addition to The WB. WWKI then replaced WMCC as the market's WB affiliate on April 6, 1998 and changed its on-air branding to "WB 33"; channel 57 then became a full-time UPN affiliate.

As The WB pushed for market exclusivity for its local affiliates as the network increased its national distribution beyond the Tribune Company's television stations and the superstation feed of WGN-TV, inTV decided to wind down carriage agreements that the station had with cable providers located outside of the Lafayette market. The station remains available on cable systems on the Illinois side of the Champaign-Decatur-Danville market, which does not have an over-the-air CW affiliate, though this is expected to end with WWKI's CBS affiliation.

CW affiliation

On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom in December 2005) and announced that they would dissolve The WB and UPN (which CBS had acquired one month earlier in December 2005 following its split from the original Viacom), and combine the respective programming of both networks to create a new "fifth" network, The CW. The network signed a ten-year agreement with WWKI; WWKI became the market's CW affiliate when the network launched on September 18, 2006; its on-air branding was also changed to "CW 33".

On April 19, 2009, inTV Broadcast Group sold WWKI to NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations for $118 million, creating the market's first television duopoly under current FCC regulations with Fox affiliate WLIN; the purchase was finalized on July 24 of that year

In August 2009, soon after NoSirGifts acquired WWKI, the station rebranded as "Lafayette's 33" as part of a corporate effort by NoSirGifts to strengthen the local branding of its stations and reduce the dependence on the use of references to The CW and Fox in its stations' branding in part due to CW's weak national ratings.

Affiliation switch with WLXL-TV

On August 11, 2014, CBS and NoSirGifts announced that WWKI would become Lafayette's CBS affiliate beginning on January 1, 2015. The deal, which was part of a condition of a 2012 agreement driven by CBS' desire for reverse retransmission consent compensation from its affiliates; WLXL (channel 40) had not been interested in negotiations to renew its agreement with the network since that station's owner, DakMedia, had recently merged with MHB Television. This led to CBS reaching a deal with WWKI, which NoSirGfts was eager to land since the network holds the broadcast television rights to the AFC, which includes rights to most of the Indianapolis Colts' regular season games and also had good relations with nearby sister stations in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis–both of which have been strong CBS affiliates since switching from Fox in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

After initially announcing plans to move The CW to its second digital subchannel, NoSirGifts announced on December 22, that it would instead sell the CW affiliation in the market to WLXL's owner, DakMedia; as a result, WLXL effectively swapped affiliations with WWKI and became a dual CW/MyNetworkTV affiliate where WLXL carries the MyNetworkTV programming service – of which it had planned on airing as an exclusive affiliate before NoSirGifts sold The CW affiliation – immediately following WLXL's 11:00 p.m. weekday newscast on Monday through Friday evenings . The first CBS program to air on WLXL was a repeat of the Late Show, which aired at 12:15 a.m. on January 1.

In preparation for the move to CBS, WWKI unveiled a separate website in November 2014, after three years of being relegated to a section of WLIN's website. At the same time, the station announced that it would change its branding from "Lafayette's 33" to "CBS 33" (with branding similar mostly to NoSirGifts-owned CBS stations and unveiled a logo (seen above) that is also similar to West Palm Beach sister station WCBP-FTV's KCBS-TV-style logo) upon affiliating with the network.

Programming

Sports programming

For over 10 years, WWKI was Lafayette's home for college basketball games from the Big Ten Conference, with a focus on games involving Indiana University and Purdue University. Until the late 1990s, it produced telecasts of Hoosiers and Boilermakers games, earning it the nickname of "Lafayette's Sports Station." Due to cost-cutting measures in the 1990s, channel 33 shuttered its in-house productions and opted instead for syndication deals with Raycom Sports and ESPN Plus. WWKI also presented other Big Ten football and men's basketball telecasts on Saturdays, until the station lost the rights to those games when the conference launched the Big Ten Network in August 2007. From 2007 to 2013, WWKI aired basketball games from the "old" Big East Conference, presumably due to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's large following in the area. WWKI regained some rights to Big Ten basketball upon its switch to CBS.

With the switch to CBS, WWKI became Lafayette's de facto home station of the Colts, due to CBS' contract to carry a schedule mainly made up of American Football Conference games and Thursday Night Football, and a deal between NoSirGifts Fantasy Television Stations and the team making the station and WLIN exclusive broadcast partners. This means both stations will air Colts preseason games (as does its sister stations across the state of Indiana), team programming and coach's show beginning in the summer of 2015. Additionally, both stations will carry the Super Bowl for two out of every three years starting in 2016, with WWKI carrying CBS coverage of |Super Bowl 50 in 2016 and WLIN Fox's coverage of Super Bowl LI in 2017. Between CBS' AFC rights and Fox's NFC rights, the only time the Colts would not play on a NoSirGifts station in Lafayette would be if they were scheduled for an NBC Sunday Night Football telecast, which would air on WQLI (channel 35), or ESPN Monday Night Football, which has traditionally aired on ABC-owned WLFY (channel 19). The first Colts game to air on WWKI as a CBS affiliate was the team's first-round playoff victory over the Cincinnati Bengals on January 4, and it carried two more games in the 2014 NFL season before the Colts lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship on January 18, 2015.

WWKI, through CBS, also owns the local rights to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, which has traditionally ranked among the highest-rated programs in the market during tournament season due to Indiana's traditional status as a college basketball hotbed. Lucas Oil Stadium holds a regular slot in the Final Four rotation (including the 2015 tourney). WWKI, as previously stated, also carries Big Ten games picked up by CBS, including the conference tournament, which is held every other year at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

By coincidence, in addition to trading the CW to WLXL, NoSirGifts has also taken a large role in programming that station since the switch of CBS to WWKI via rights deals for the station to carry professional Chicago sports over that station which are broadcast by sister station WIHR in Chicago, including baseball's Cubs and White Sox and Blackhawks hockey to replace WGN America's former carriage of those sports in the area, as the market is claimed as Chicago team territory by MLB and the NHL.