WMYT-TV

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WMYT-TV, virtual channel 55 (UHF digital channel 39), is a MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated television station serving Charlotte, North Carolina. It is licensed to Rock Hill, South Carolina, and is the only major commercial station licensed on the South Carolina side of the market. The station is owned by Fox Television Stations division of 21st Century Fox, as part of a duopoly with Fox station WJZY (channel 46). Both stations share studios on Performance Road (along I-85) in unincorporated northwestern Mecklenburg County, and WMYT's transmitter is located in Dallas, North Carolina. It is known on-air as My 12, since it is carried on channel 12 on most Charlotte-area cable systems.

History

Early history

Prior to WMYT's sign-on, the UHF channel 55 allocation had previously belonged to a Rock Hill-based low-powered repeater of PBS member network South Carolina Educational Television from 1974 to 1978, when SCETV programming moved to a full-powered satellite station, WNSC-TV on channel 30.

The station's present incarnation began on October 21, 1994 as independent station WFVT, owned by an Indiana-based group called Family 55. It was operated under a local marketing agreement with WJZY through its owner Capitol Broadcasting Company. Under this agreement, WJZY bought WFVT's entire broadcast day, and filled the schedule mostly with syndicated programming that WJZY didn't have time to air.

It became a charter affiliate of The WB Television Network when it debuted on January 11, 1995, and changed its on-air branding from "TV55" to "WB55" shortly afterward. WJZY joined UPN at the same time. In February of that year, it was added to most Charlotte cable systems. In Charlotte itself, it was placed on Time Warner Cable channel 17, which had long been the home of The Disney Channel. The station ran ads showing Bugs Bunny pulling off a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and suggesting that viewers should reprogram their VCRs lest they think "some rodent still lives there."

On August 5, 1999, the Federal Communications Commission reversed its longstanding regulations against permitting duopoly ownership of two full-power stations in the same television market; Capitol Broadcasting bought channel 55 outright the following year, creating a duopoly with WJZY (one of two duopolies formed in Charlotte during the 2000 calendar year, the other involving the purchase of WAXN-TV by WSOC-TV's owner Cox Enterprises). The station subsequently changed the station's callsign to WWWB in 2001, to correspond with its network affiliation. For most of The WB's run, channel 55 was one of the network's strongest affiliates.

MyNetworkTV affiliation

Shortly after Fox Entertainment Group's February 22, 2006 announcement of the formation of MyNetworkTV, WWWB was announced as the network's Charlotte affiliate. Sister station WJZY had already decided to join The CW, a network created out of CBS Corporation and Time Warner's decision to shut down UPN and The WB, effective in September of that year. This made Charlotte the first city in the nation with a duopoly involving affiliates of both The CW and MyNetworkTV. It would not have been an upset had WWWB joined The CW, however. That network's officials were on record as wanting the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates, and Charlotte had been one of the few markets where the WB and UPN affiliates were both relatively strong.

On April 28, 2006, WWWB changed its call letters to WMYT-TV, in anticipation of its new affiliation. [1] WMYT officially affiliated with MyNetworkTV upon the network's September 5, 2006 debut, branding on-air as MyTV12. For a time in 2006 and 2007, WMYT erected several advertising signs around the Charlotte area describing several Charlotte landmarks as "my ___."

WMYT was the over-the-air home for the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats from 2006 until the team moved all of its broadcasts to cable after the 2007-08 season.

Sale to Fox Television Stations

On January 14, 2013, Fox Television Stations entered into an agreement to acquire WMYT and WJZY from Capitol Broadcasting Company for $18 million (the sale was formally announced on January 28). This marked a re-entry into North Carolina for Fox, who owned High Point's WGHP from 1996 to 2008. The deal included a time brokerage agreement clause that would have had Fox take over the operations of WJZY and WMYT, and acquire the duopoly's non-license assets for $8.24 million, if the deal was not closed by June 1. The FCC granted its approval on the sale on March 11, and the deal was consummated on April 17. As MyNetworkTV is owned by Fox parent 21st Century Fox, the acquisition made WMYT the first owned-and-operated commercial station in the Charlotte market. On May 9, WMYT changed its branding to just "My 12," which resembles the branding used by other MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated stations. It also adopted a new mascot, "C. More", an anthropomorphized version of the station's logo used by all MyNetworkTV O&Os for programming promotions. However, WMYT is currently the only MyNetworkTV O&O that uses its cable channel position in its branding instead of its virtual channel number. Sister station WJZY acquired the Fox affiliation from WCCB on July 1, which made WJZY the first station in Charlotte to be an owned-and-operated station of one of the "Big Four" networks.

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming
55.1	720p	16:9	WMYT-HD	Main WMYT-TV programming / MyNetworkTV
55.2	480i	4:3	MOVIES	Movies!
55.3			BOUNCE	Bounce TV

Prior to April 2011, the second digital subchannel was a standard-definition simulcast of the main channel, but has since gone dark. There were plans to add the Retro Television Network to the subchannel in 2008, but it never happened, and it ended up on WHKY-DT2 in early 2010. In May 2007, it leased its third subchannel to WGTB-LP, a low-powered religious station. On December 5, 2011, WMYT replaced WGTB-LP with SonLife Broadcasting Network. On September 10, 2012, it changed the PSIP name of 55.2 from WMYT-SD to SOUL. The following day, a slate was added stating that the Soul of the South Network was launching soon, and was later modified to show a launch date of May 1, 2013. However, on that date, the channel went dark and the PSIP name was changed to "55.2." On June 23, 2013, Movies! was added to the second subchannel after being dropped from WJZY's third subchannel.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WMYT-TV ended analog operations on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition in the United States. The station continues broadcasting on UHF channel 39, as channel 55 has been re-allocated nationwide for Qualcomm's MediaFLO system. However, digital television receivers display its virtual channels as "55". In August 2011, the station downgraded its HD signal from 1080i to 720p.

Out-of-market cable carriage

In recent years, WMYT has been carried on cable in multiple areas outside of the Charlotte media market. That includes cable systems within the Columbia and Myrtle Beach markets in South Carolina, the Greensboro market in North Carolina, and the Tri-Cities market in Tennessee.

Newscasts

In 2000, NBC affiliate WCNC-TV entered into a news share agreement with WMYT-TV to produce a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast for the station; the program was cancelled in 2002, due to low ratings.

On April 9, 2012, WMYT-TV began broadcasting a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast produced by CBS affiliate WBTV. This program originally ran on sister station WJZY from September 2003 to April 8, 2012 (with a simulcast on both stations from April 9 to 15), although low ratings for the newscast on that station – which placed a distant third in that timeslot behind the WSOC-produced primetime newscast on WAXN-TV and WCCB's in-house 10 p.m. newscast – prompted its move to WMYT, citing a more suitable audience on channel 55. With the switch, the program was renamed slightly from WBTV News at 10 on CW46 to WBTV News at 10 on MyTV12. The WBTV newscast moved back to WJZY on July 1 when it acquired the Fox affiliation.

See also

• List of television stations in South Carolina

External links

• WMYT12.com - Official Website
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