History
The station began operating on August 31, 1987, as an independent station using the call letters WWAT, named after its owner, Wendell A. Triplett. It filled in a void created when future sister station WTTE joined Fox in 1986. The station originally operated from studios located on River Road (US 23) in Chillicothe. It operated a Columbus translator on W17AI channel 17 (now WDEM, which is still owned by Triplett) until 1992, when WWAT was added to many cable providers in the Columbus market due to cable must-carry legislation. It quickly established itself as a solid competitor to WTTE, despite its signal limitations.
Triplett sold the station to Fant Broadcasting for $2 million in 1994 and changed its calls to WWHO on April 15, when the on-air name "Who-53" was adopted. At the same time, the station entered a local marketing agreement with NBC affiliate WCMH-TV (channel 4, then owned by The Outlet Company). Until 1998, WWHO also served as an alternate NBC affiliate, airing the network's programming when WCMH was unable, due to its annual broadcast of Columbus' July 4 fireworks display Red, White & BOOM! or long-form breaking news coverage; an arrangement which began in 1996 concurrent with NBC's purchase of WCMH.[2]
WWHO remained an independent station until January 11, 1995, when it became a charter affiliate of The WB Television Network. WWHO (then branded on-air as "WB 53") retained this affiliation until the Paramount Stations Group (a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, whose parent company was Viacom) agreed to acquire the station in 1997, along with sister station WLWC in Providence, Rhode Island, and sell WVIT in New Britain, Connecticut, to NBC in return; WCMH-TV ended the LMA at this time and WWHO was operated independently afterwards. At that time the station became a secondary UPN affiliate, as UPN programming was moved from WTTE, primarily a Fox affiliate, to WWHO; while channel 53 retained a primary WB affiliation through the duration of its contract, the station nonetheless soon began calling itself "UPN 53".[3] In the fall of 1998, WWHO began to carry programming in the overnight hours from the upstart Pax TV network (now Ion Television), as Pax struggled to find a full-power affiliate in the Columbus market. This arrangement ended in February 1999, when Pax affiliated with WSFJ-TV (channel 51) in Newark, Ohio. In 2000, WWHO switched its primary affiliation to UPN, but signed a deal with The WB to retain its prime time programming on a secondary basis through what a Paramount Stations Group executive described as a "program license agreement".[4] The station dropped the channel number from its branding in 2002, becoming "UPN Columbus". On February 10, 2005, it was announced that the Viacom Television Stations Group (the successor to the Paramount Stations Group as a result of Viacom merging with CBS in 1999) was selling WWHO and WNDY-TV (in the Indianapolis market) to LIN Television for $85 million, concurrent with a rebranding of the station as "UPN 53 WWHO".
The rebrand proved to be short-lived, as UPN and The WB merged to form The CW in 2006. WWHO was the obvious choice as Columbus' CW affiliate since it already carried both UPN and WB programming. However, when the first list of affiliates outside the core group of CBS-owned UPN affiliates and Tribune-owned WB affiliates was announced, WWHO was not on the list. After some delay, LIN eventually agreed to affiliate four of its WB and UPN affiliates, including WWHO, with The CW,[5] making WWHO the largest The CW affiliate owned by LIN. (WSYX, the area's ABC affiliate (and sister station to WTTE), launched a new digital subchannel featuring programming from MyNetworkTV in September of that year.)
On July 31, approximately one month before The CW officially debuted, WWHO rebranded with a new logo and slogan, "The CW on WWHO-TV". Once more, the station's channel number was de-emphasized. The station today currently goes by "The CW Columbus". Kids' WB and The CW Daytime returned to WWHO after being absent from Columbus for five years.
In November 2011, it was reported that the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the owner of WSYX and who also effectively owns WTTE, was in talks to purchase WWHO from LIN for an estimated $7 million.[6] This deal, if it were approved, would have given Sinclair control of four of the six largest network affiliations in the Ohio capital. This deal never materialized, however, and LIN filed instead to sell the station to Manhan Media. The sale was granted on December 20, 2011. In February 2012, after consummating the sale, Manhan Media entered into a shared services agreement (SSA) with Sinclair, making WWHO a sister station to WSYX and WTTE.[7][8] (Manhan Media's owner, Stephen P. Mumblow, subsequently started Deerfield Media to acquire the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assets, including the licenses, of several stations that are being divested by Sinclair in the wake of its purchase of stations from Newport Television. However, Sinclair would retain control of those stations through a local marketing agreement.) In a way, the LMA also reunited WWHO with WLWC, which Sinclair owned outright until April 2013 when that station was sold to OTA Broadcasting, LLC. Although Sinclair now controls WWHO, it initially continued to operate from separate studios several blocks east of the WSYX/WTTE studios; by October 2013, WWHO had moved in with WSYX/WTTE.[9]
Due to a conflict on Bally Sports Ohio, WWHO aired a Reds game on April 4, 2023.[10]
On August 18, 2025, Sinclair announced that it would acquire WWHO outright, creating a legal duopoly with WSYX.[11] The sale was completed on October 7.[12]
