History
The station has mostly been a feeder of the entire schedule of Univision and Telemundo through most of its history, with new local programming being added to the schedule as the station (and Telemundo's schedule) has gained strength. In 1999, Weigel dropped Univision in a compensation dispute and affiliated with Telemundo, and within the year, the station moved to UHF channel 63 from channel 46 as W63CU, in order to accommodate WDJT's channel 46 digital signal and the company's move to one tower in Lincoln Park for all its operations. In mid-December 2003, the station took the lettered call sign WYTU-LP as it began to solicit local advertising from the growing Latino population in the Milwaukee area and Weigel began to push for extended cable coverage by including it in retransmission consent negotiations for WDJT.
The station signed on its digital signal on UHF channel 17 on December 10, 2007.[2] Unlike the channel 13 digital signal of WMLW (which receives interference from WZZM in Grand Rapids), WYTU-LD's digital signal reaches the southern portion of the adjacent Green Bay–Appleton market, and is somewhat unrestricted as WXMI, the former occupant of channel 17 in the Grand Rapids market, now broadcasts on digital channel 20, although that station's Muskegon translator W17DF-D also broadcasts on channel 17. As a result of carriage agreements by Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications for access to the WDJT signal and to provide network service to areas without a Telemundo affiliate, WYTU is carried through the entirety of the state, especially after Time Warner and Charter's merger into Spectrum in 2017. Currently, due to different lineups and carriage contracts among the providers which will eventually be united in Spectrum's next agreement with Weigel, the availability of the station's high definition feed depends on the individual system.
In January 2009, WYTU was added to sister station WBME's digital signal on digital subchannel 49.4, calls which changed on August 16, 2012, as part of the channel swap between WBME and WMLW to allow WMLW to launch full-power, high-definition operations.[3]
The station's analog signal on channel 63 did not broadcast the Telemundo Wisconsin schedule from June 12, 2009, onward, when Weigel decided to convert that signal to an enhanced nightlight service instead, carrying WDJT's CBS schedule for the benefit of those viewers who were not yet prepared for the digital transition for full-power stations. The special agreement to carry CBS in an analog form ended on January 1, 2010, and from then until 2011, WYTU-LP carried the MeTV lineup, while Telemundo Wisconsin remained a digital-only offering via WYTU's digital signal and WMLW-DT4.[4] On February 11, 2013, the Federal Communications Commission canceled WYTU's analog license.[5]
The station converted their low-power channel 17 digital signal into a 720p high-definition signal on July 25, 2012, in time for Telemundo's Spanish-language coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Following the Games, the station carried, for the first time in team history, Green Bay Packers preseason football with Spanish language play-by-play in full high definition on its designated digital signal. These broadcasts are simulcast in the Green Bay market over English-language MyNetworkTV affiliate WACY-TV (channel 32). In summer 2014, the standard definition simulcast on WMLW-DT4 began to scale network content to standard-definition widescreen depending on Active Format Description codes sent out over the Telemundo network feed.
On January 8, 2018, the full-power market-wide simulcast of WYTU moved to WDJT-DT4 due to WMLW's merge of their spectrum to the low-power WBME-CD.[6] In addition, This TV (a network formerly owned by Weigel and now owned by Tribune Broadcasting), was moved to WYTU's second subchannel as part of the move and to manage bandwidth.[7]
On September 3, 2018, Weigel launched the new female-focused Start TV network, replacing This after nearly ten years on Weigel channel spaces. The same day saw Weigel's Movies! network move to the newly-launched 63.3 subchannel, moving over from WISN-TV's second subchannel (which was replaced by Justice Network two days earlier).[8] WFBN-LD3 additionally launched a third subchannel for Start TV in Rockford.
Sinclair, Weigel Broadcasting, and Milwaukee PBS decided on a switch date of January 8, 2018, for their various local spectrum moves, which included the market-wide simulcast of WYTU-LD, which moved from WMLW-DT4 to WDJT-DT4.[9]
