City LaSalle, Illinois | Affiliations TBN | |
Channels Digital: 10 (VHF)
Virtual: 35 (PSIP) Subchannels 35.1 - TBN
35.2 - Hillsong Channel
35.3 - JUCE TV/Smile
35.4 - Enlace
35.5 - TBN Salsa Owner Trinity Broadcasting Network, Inc.
(TCCSA, Inc., d/b/a Trinity Broadcasting Network) First air date December 1986; 30 years ago (1986-12) | ||
WWTO-TV, virtual channel 35 (VHF digital channel 10), is a TBN owned-and-operated television station serving Chicago, Illinois, United States that is licensed to LaSalle. The station is owned by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. WWTO-TV maintains studios and offices located on East Stevenson Road in Ottawa, and its transmitter is located in Deer Park Township, LaSalle County, Illinois (near Starved Rock State Park). Though nominally within the Chicago television market, LaSalle is geographically at the far edges of several television markets.
Contents
History
The first station to broadcast on UHF channel 35 from LaSalle went on the air on November 7, 1957 as WEEQ, a satellite station of WEEK-TV in Peoria. WEEK and WEEQ were acquired by a company related to Kerr-McGee, but sold off after Senator Robert S. Kerr's death. The sale, approved by the Federal Communications Commission on July 13, 1966, was for $3,088,650 ($22,799,000 adjusted for inflation) and transferred the stations to Mid-America Television Co., owned by Kansas City Southern Industries. The station still appeared in the 1973 Broadcasting Yearbook but not the 1974 edition.
WWTO-TV began broadcasting operations in early December 1986.
Digital channels
This station's digital signal, like most other full-service TBN owned-and-operated stations, carries five different TBN-run networks.
TBN-owned full-power stations permanently ceased analog transmissions on April 16, 2009.
WWTO shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 35, on that date. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition VHF channel 10. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 35.
Cable carriage
LaSalle lies at the far western end of its nominal Chicago media market. The Federal Communications Commission has declared many communities in Chicago area cable systems to be outside of WWTO-TV's designated market, and denied must-carry status. In 1997 ruling in favor of Time Warner Cable, the FCC noted that "WWTO-TV has at best a minimal viewing presence in the Chicago, ADI as a whole, and the communities are located approximately 65 to 70 miles from WWTO-TV. Furthermore, the station has never been carried on the cable system in question, offers no programming specifically for the relevant communities, and provides no over-the air signal coverage of the Communities." The FCC made a similar ruling in 1999 concerning dozens of cable services in McHenry, DuPage, Lake, Cook, Kane and Will Counties in Illinois and Lake, Porter, LaPorte and Jasper Counties in Indiana. In that order, the FCC noted that "out of the 10 counties herein, the A.C. Nielsen 1997 County/Coverage Survey does not even list WWTO-TV and for the one where it is listed, Will County, only minimal viewership is recorded."
With the switch of many of Comcast's Chicago systems to analog to digital-exclusive service, that provider has added WWTO and its subchannel services to the provider. WWTO and its subchannel services are currently carried digital only on channels 380-384 (380 TBN, 381 TBN Salsa, 382 Smile of a Child/Juce, 383 Hillsong, 384 & 633 Enlace), though areas where WWTO has not acquired must-carry instead carry only the national TBN feed in standard definition on channel 380.
Translators
Until 2010, WWTO rebroadcast its signal on translators throughout Northern and Central Illinois; however, due to financial strains endured by TBN, these translators closed down in early 2010.
W19CX would later be sold to Luken Communications, the parent company of Retro Television Network, under the licensee name "Digital Networks - Midwest".
W22AJ would later be sold to one of the owners of KAXT-CD in San Jose, California, under the licensee name of "Chicago 22, LLC". The callsign was changed to WRJK-LP on January 18, 2013.
W34DL, W51CT and W51DT would later be donated to the Minority Media and Television Council (MMTC); however W34DL and W51CT would later be cancelled, due to inactivity for over one year. The current occupant of channel 34 in Champaign, W34EH-D, is on a new license under a different owner. Only W51DT would remain active under MMTC's ownership.
W40BY would be purchased by Spanish-language broadcaster Liberman Broadcasting, the parent of Estrella TV in February 2010, giving that network a station in Chicago. The sale was completed on December 6, 2010, with the call letters changed to WESV-LD.
To date, TBN still holds the licenses for W25CL, W29BG and W50DD; however, these translators are among the 36 TBN has sold to Regal Media, a broadcasting group headed by George Cooney, the CEO of the EUE/Screen Gems studios, on April 13, 2012.