WCWW

Not to be confused with , the real life CW affiliated station serving South Bend, Indiana.
WCWW is a television station serving Eastern North Carolina and licensed to New Bern, North Carolina as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by BIG Media, the station has Its studios in New Bern along Trent Road and has its transmitter located in Township 9 of Craven County, about 10 miles from the city limits of New Bern.
WCWW has the dubious distinction of being a UHF affiliate of a big 3 station, which led to problems earlier in its existence. 
==History==
Channel 24 was first the home of WCLO, an independent station who only signed on for three weeks in September 1954. It never got any financial footing and went dark, only for the license to be surrendered to the FCC five months later.
A decade later, businessman Greg DiMaggio acquired the rights to a station on channel 24. His intentions were to sign on an independent station under the callsign WIGN. This was later changed to WCWW, which was sequentially assigned. It launched on December 2, 1965 airing a locally produced newscast. The station was plagued with issues from the start, as it launched with a painfully underpowered black and white transmitter when color broadcasting was becoming the norm. Its schedule was also very small, offering two western shows and a rerun of the animated show King Leonardo and His Short Subjects.
WCWW was still struggling to pull in viewers and expanding its schedule to four hours when WGNJ channel 7 dropped its secondary ABC affiliation. ABC, with almost no choice, chose WCWW as its affiliation for the market. However, at first the station did not brand themselves as an ABC affiliate, only doing so a few years afterwards in 1971. WCWW still broadcasted in black and white until April 9, 1973, when its transmitter smoked out and caused a fire in the building. The station had to pay hundreds of thousands to repair the building and buy a new color transmitter. As a result, the station went dark for 7 months until the new transmitter could come online. This transmitter allowed the station to be carried across the entire market.
Greg Dimaggio could not afford any of these and as a result he was forced to sell the station to the City of New Bern in early 1974, who looked for a buyer. Meanwhile, the station chugged along, adding a brief newscast (its previous one was cancelled a few months after they signed on), and officially extending its schedule from 5 am to 12 am. 
===Peter Dantzler ownership===
In January 1975, the city found a buyer in Peter Dantzler, a used car salesman. He kept the station along its track; however, one massive road bump showed its head. Dantzler became a born-again Christian a few months after he bought WCWW and he wanted to convert the station into a religious independent, much to the chagrin of ABC. Also, station employees complained about the poor leadership of Dantzer and having not being paid in months, with one outraged employee taking to the local paper to write a visceral opinion piece on Dantzler. One story highlighted in the paper involved Dantzler writing a, later-rejected, letter to ABC asking to refuse to air the sitcom Happy Days, claiming it to be "satanic", and another instance of him refusing to let employees use the bathroom. 
"I don't think he found Jesus; I think he found Satan." - Anonymous station employee on Peter Dantzler
Dantzler began skipping payments of the AP wire service the newscast used also, claiming "financial setbacks". When WCWW's license came up for renewal in December 1975, Dantzler declined to pay claiming "financial setbacks" again. This all culminated in the FCC threatening to take the station's license away and ABC demanding payment for its affiliation. Dantzler, who did not have the money, instead fled to his home country of Germany, leaving behind a television station in turmoil. Once again, the ownership was ceded to the city of New Bern again. Later in 1976, they found a more permanent buyer in Cullman Broadcasting, who would be the owner for the next 22 years. 
===Strain of relations with ABC and loss of affiliation===
In 1982, they moved into a brand-new studio building outside of New Bern's city limits, which is still in use by them as of 2023. 
In June 1991, Cullman Broadcasting owner and CEO Eric Cullman retired. He would give the station to his nephew Johnathan C. Cullman. 
Cullman and ABC had a very strenuous relationship, as Cullman would constantly refuse to air certain programs due to their Penecostal faith. WCWW refused to air the police procedural NYPD Blue at all, citing "nudity and profanity", even after the show began to skyrocket in ratings. They were also the only ABC affiliate that refused to air the show Ellen after the titular character came out as lesbian in the episode "The Puppy Episode", citing "moral issues". The station also had a very weak signal for a geographically large market, relying on translators to reach the entire DMA. 
After Capital Cities was bought by Disney, Cullman would switch to signing year-long renewals to affiliate with ABC instead of a more typical multi-year contract. The station would receive a fine from the FCC in September of 2001 for airing an editorial promoting "the obliteration of all Muslims" in the wake of 9/11. They recieved another fine from the FCC in January of 2002 for the vague reason of "refusing to follow vulgarity rules". 
On March 3rd, 2002, Cullman Broadcasting filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and WCWW would go dark. That same day, ABC would pull their affiliation with the station. ABC would temporarily replace the feed of WCWW with that of WDUR on cable before announcing an affiliation agreement with WBLU in effect on October 1st, leaving the NBC affiliation up for grabs. WCWW would be sold to Attleboro Communications in May. NBC, who were desperate for an affiliation in the market, agreed on affiliating with WCWW after they would come back online on the same day WBLU would affiliate with ABC. 
On October 1st, WCWW would come back on the air as an NBC affiliate. 
===Sale to BIG Media===
Attleboro Communications sold WCWW, along with WUNK-CA, to BIG Media on September 8, 2008. In 2009, the station became the second news department to broadcast in High Definition, doing so for the first time on June 13, 2009.
On June 1, 2019, lead anchor Wilson T. Davis came out as gay.
==Programming==
WCWW airs the entire NBC schedule save for preempting the Saturday morning block The More You Know with infomercials. The station also preempts the 2:00 timeslot to air a tape delayed version of Holo Sports Live, a sports-focused newsmagazine.
=== News Operation ===
As of August 2024, WCWW currently airs 39 1/2 hours of news programming a day. Despite Eastern North Carolina not being very competitive during sweeps periods, their newscasts have historically been very low rated.
From 1990 to 2006, WCWW's news operation was considered to be one of the lowest rated in the country.
By 2002, the news department had been stripped down to five employees, including two reporters, a cameraman and two grips. The main anchor was Lauren Saunters, an inexperienced 23 year old whose previous job was at Kmart. She was an alcoholic would often show up to morning newscasts hungover. 
==Technical Information==
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
Channel	Video	Aspect	Short Name	Programming
24.1 	1080i	16:9 	WCWW 	NBC/Main WCWW programming
24.2 	480i 	16:9 	MOVIES! 	Movies!
24.3 	480i 	16:9 	MALL 	Infomercials
24.4 	480i 	16:9 	FANDUEL 	Fanduel TV
24.5 	480i 	16:9 	NHK 	NHK World
24.6 	480i 	16:9 	BEIN 	BeIN Sports Xtra
===Analog Sign-off===
WCWW stopped transmitting on its analog signal, over UHF channel 24, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 50 to channel 15, using PSIP to map the signal to the virtual channel 24.
Category:BIG Media
Category:Channel 24
Category:Former ABC affiliates
Category:NBC network affiliates
Category:Former independent stations
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1965
Category:Washington, NC
Category:New Bern, NC
Category:Jacksonville, NC
Category:Greenville, NC
Category:North Carolina
Category:Movies! subchannel-only affiliated stations
Category:NHK Affiliated Stations