WDTN — BrandWiki

WDTN

callsign	WDTN
branding	2 News
digital	31 (UHF), shared with WBDT and WKOI-TV
virtual	2
affiliations	2.1: NBC 2.2: Ion Mystery
owner	Nexstar Media Group
licensee	Nexstar Media Inc.
location	Dayton, Ohio
country	United States
founded	April 4, 1947‡R1R‡
airdate	March 15, 1949
callsign meaning	Dayton
sister stations	WBDT
former callsigns	WLWD (1949–1976)
former channel numbers	Analog: 5 (VHF, 1949–1953), 2 (VHF, 1953–2009) Digital: 50 (UHF, 2000–2019)
former affiliations	NBC (1949–1980) DuMont (secondary, 1949–1955) ABC (secondary 1949–1971, primary 1980–2004)
erp	1,000 kW
haat	330 m
facility id	65690
coordinates	39.71889°N, -84.25586°W‡R2R‡
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.wdtn.com/

WDTN (channel 2) is a television station in Dayton, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which provides certain services to Springfield, Ohio–licensed WBDT (channel 26), a de facto owned-and-operated station of The CW, under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Vaughan Media. The two stations share studios on South Dixie Drive in Moraine, Ohio.

WDTN's transmitter facility is located off Frytown Road in an exclave of Jefferson Township surrounded by the southwest Dayton neighborhoods of Germantown Meadow, Highview Hills and Stoney Ridge; through a channel sharing agreement, it shares its digital channel with WBDT, along with unrelated Richmond, Indiana–licensed Ion Television O&O WKOI-TV (channel 43).

History

Early years

Switch to ABC

By the mid to late-1970s, ABC was searching for stronger affiliates in order to cement its status as the leading network in the United States. Its existing Dayton affiliate, WKEF, was a distant third in the ratings, and only ran ABC's prime time and sports programming, plus whatever daytime programming was preempted by two Taft Broadcasting–owned ABC affiliates in adjacent markets, WKRC-TV in Cincinnati (now with CBS) and WTVN-TV (now WSYX) in Columbus. WKEF also did not have a functioning news department until 1979. Meanwhile, WKRC-TV and WTVN-TV were not only preempting ABC's daytime programs, but also its late night shows and some of its Saturday morning cartoons. ABC also wanted a station in Dayton with both stronger ratings and signal, and one which could reach portions of the Cincinnati and Columbus markets. In summer 1979, ABC approached WDTN and reached an affiliation deal.[16] Almost by default, NBC was then left to go with WKEF. On January 1, 1980, WDTN and WKEF swapped network affiliations. Five months after joining ABC, in May 1980, Grinnell College announced it would sell WDTN to the broadcasting division of the Hearst Corporation.[17] The sale was finalized over a year later, in September 1981 for a price of over $47 million.[18]

In August 1997, Hearst's television group merged with Argyle Television Holdings II to form what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television. Argyle had purchased WDTN's former sister station, WLWT, that January, as part of a trade deal between Argyle II and Gannett Broadcasting which caused WLWT and its Oklahoma City sister station, KOCO-TV, to swap ownership with WZZM in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York. For the same reason that forced the breakup of Avco's television group 20 years earlier, Hearst-Argyle could not keep both stations (common ownership of stations with overlapping city-grade signals would not be allowed until 2000). It opted to keep the larger WLWT and trade WDTN, together with WNAC-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, to Sunrise Television for WPTZ in Plattsburgh, New York, WNNE in Hartford, Vermont, and KSBW in Salinas, California. The sale was finalized on July 2, 1998.

In May 2002, Sunrise merged with LIN TV; both television companies were owned by private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst.[19]

Return to NBC

In early 2004, NBC landed a new affiliation agreement with LIN TV; in response to this agreement, ABC signed an affiliation deal with Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which renewed the network's affiliations with the group's existing ABC affiliates and caused WKEF and its sister stations in Springfield/Decatur, Illinois (WICS and WICD), to switch to that network. On August 30, 2004, in a reversal of the 1980 switch, WDTN returned to NBC after 24 years away to take advantage of the network's then-stronger programming.[20] Ironically, several months after the affiliation shift, ABC's ratings overtook those of NBC and the network wouldn't rebound for nearly a decade; in 2014, NBC had regained the lead over ABC.

On May 18, 2007, LIN TV announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company. In early June, WDTN's website (along with those of several other LIN TV-owned stations not affiliated with Fox such as WNDY-TV, WWHO, WAND, WWLP, and WLFI-TV) underwent a redesign. The web addresses were then operated by the Local Media Network division of World Now for a little over a year until October 2008, when LIN TV relaunched most of its station websites through Fox Interactive Media (later spun off as the independent company known today as EndPlay). Prior to the World Now contract, the web addresses were powered by Web Pros.

On October 3, 2008, LIN TV pulled WDTN (and its other stations) from Time Warner Cable, due to a dispute over "retransmission fees".[21][22][23] Time Warner replaced WDTN with a free preview of HBO Family.

On October 29, LIN TV and Time Warner Cable reached an agreement, restoring WDTN, as well as offering it in high definition on the cable system for the first time.[24][25][26]

On June 4, 2010, it was announced LIN TV would begin operating CW affiliate WBDT (then owned by ACME Communications) through shared service and joint sales agreements.[27][28] Three months later, LIN TV exercised an option to purchase that channel along with another LIN-operated ACME station, fellow CW affiliate WCWF in Green Bay, Wisconsin.[29] LIN TV requested WBDT's license be assigned to a subsidiary of Vaughan Media (owner of CW affiliate KNVA in Austin, Texas, which was also operated by LIN TV). The company holds a 4.5% equity stake in Vaughan Media, but controls most of that company's voting stock, effectively making it a shell corporation for LIN TV.[30] WBDT was integrated into WDTN's facilities and the merger between the two stations occurred sometime around October 2010. WBDT originally had studios at Corporate Place in Miamisburg, along Byers Road.

On March 4, 2011, LIN TV's contract with DISH Network expired, and all TV stations owned or operated by LIN, including WDTN and WBDT, were pulled from DISH.[31][32][33][34][35] On March 13, LIN and DISH entered into a retransmission consent agreement, and all affected channels were restored.[36][37][38][39]

On March 21, 2014, Media General announced that it would buy LIN.[40] The FCC approved the merger on December 12, 2014, but a condition of the deal requires Media General to end the JSA between WBDT and WDTN due to tighter scrutiny such deals are getting by the FCC. Media General received a two-year waiver to end the JSA between WDTN and WBDT.[41] The merger was completed on December 19, reuniting WDTN with WCMH-TV (the former WLWC).[42]

On January 27, 2016, it was announced that Nexstar Broadcasting Group would buy Media General for $4.6 billion, and WDTN became part of "Nexstar Media Group".[43] The deal was approved by the FCC on January 11, 2017, and it was completed on January 17.[44]

A carriage dispute with AT&T, lasting from 11:59 p.m. on July 3 to August 29, 2019, resulted in the removal of WDTN, along with more than 120 other Nexstar stations across 97 markets, from AT&T's DirecTV, DirecTV Now and U-verse platforms.[45][46]

A carriage dispute with Dish Network, beginning at 7 p.m. on December 2, 2020, resulted in the removal of WDTN and sister station WBDT from the platform, along with 164 Nexstar stations in 115 markets.[47]

A carriage dispute with DirecTV from July 2 to September 17, 2023, resulted in the removal of WDTN, along with 158 other Nexstar stations, from DirecTV, U-verse and DirecTV Stream.[48][49]

Programming

Game show host and announcer Johnny Gilbert hosted his own local daytime variety/talk show on WLWD immediately after the local airing of WLW television's Paul Dixon Show in the mid-1960s.[50][51]

Phil Donahue (former news anchor and radio talk show host at WHIO radio) began hosting a talk show on WLWD in 1967,[52] called The Phil Donahue Show, that was then more issue-oriented (greatly reducing the station's program budget). Donahue's show went national in 1970. Since most programs on the WLW television regional network originated from WLWT in Cincinnati, it was the first time WLWD was the originator of a program.

Aside from Paul Dixon's weekday morning show, other Cincinnati-based programming that aired on WLWD included: The 50-50 Club, hosted by Ruth Lyons (succeeded by Bob Braun after Lyons' 1967 retirement), and the Saturday evening country music program Midwestern Hayride.

Due to WLWD's heavy local and regional programming schedule, many network programs from NBC and ABC were recorded on film as a kinescope for later airing. On rare occasions when a program was unavailable (sometimes due to network technical difficulties or if fill time was available before or after a network sportscast), a half-hour series entitled Star Performance, consisting mostly of drama pilots from the 1950s, would air. Fifteen-minute mini-documentaries or newsreels would also air as a time filler under the title Miniature Theater.

During the summer of 1983, WDTN was exempted from running ABC's soap operas after 2 p.m., since WKRC-TV's signal easily covered Dayton. As a result, the station ran cartoons and off-network sitcoms in place of One Life to Live and General Hospital. By the late 1980s, these were replaced with first run talk shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show (at 4 p.m.), The Montel Williams Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. WDTN would begin its talk block at 2 p.m. during the week. In 2000, Time Warner Cable (Dayton's largest cable system) dropped the Cincinnati network affiliates to make room for new cable channels. The Cincinnati stations had been available on cable in the Dayton area ever since cable arrived there in the mid-1960s. As a result, ABC soap viewers could no longer see One Life to Live or General Hospital, while over-the-air viewers could still pick them up on WCPO-TV (which had become Cincinnati's ABC affiliate in 1996). In the fall of 2000, General Hospital returned to WDTN's schedule; after the station came under the control of LIN TV in May 2002, One Life to Live was added to the schedule as well. From this point on, WDTN aired the entire ABC schedule in pattern until the station returned to NBC in 2004.

News operation

In the 1970s and 1980s, WDTN used the Eyewitness News branding. For most of its history, its newscasts have been a runner-up to market leader WHIO-TV. On April 11, 2012, the station announced that it was in the process of reconstructing its studios in preparation for the production of high definition content.[53][54] After June 8, 2012, newscasts were moved to the station's newsroom as the new news set was being built in the same location as the old one.[55] The first high definition newscast was at 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 21, 2012.[56] WDTN was the second station in Dayton to have made the upgrade to HD newscasts; the shows on WBDT were included in the upgrade.

On August 20, 2007, the station began to produce a nightly prime time newscast for WBDT, known as 2 News at 10 on Dayton's CW.[57] This show achieved higher ratings than