WFCV

WFCV is an ABC affiliate licensed to Fort Wayne, IN. Broadcasting on channel 21, WFCV is owned and operated by Gray Television.

## History

The station first signed on the air on September 28, 1957 and was founded by Sarkes Tarzian, an Indianapolis engineer whose company owned Bloomington's WTTS and several other stations in Indiana. The WFCV call letters come from the long tradition of other Tarzian stations, including once former sister station WFCH, that base the call letters upon the initials of family members of company management. Upon its launch, channel 21 took all ABC programming from NBC affiliate WKJG-TV (channel 33) and CBS affiliate WMRI (channel 15).

Under Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules at that time, the market was deemed too small to support three full-power stations, so Tarzian's application listed WFCV's city of license as the small town of Roanoke, located just across the Allen/Huntington county line approximately 14 miles (23 km) to the southwest of its studios and transmitter in Fort Wayne. It was possible because the FCC had by this time allowed a station to have its main studio in a different location from its city of license. WFCV identified itself as "Roanoke/Fort Wayne" on-air until the license was officially transferred to Fort Wayne sometime in the 1970s.

In addition to ABC programming, it also originally aired seven and a half hours of live local programming each week. In 1957, the station aired a spin-off of American Bandstand called Teen Dance and the afternoon kids show Popeye and the Rascals. In 1964, a 2,226-square-foot (206.8 m2) addition to its studios was added to accommodate an expanding sales staff. On April 4, 1973, Tarzian sold the station to Combined Communications for $3.6 million. Under new management, WFCV purchased new cameras and a more modern switcher. On June 7, 1979, Combined merged with the Gannett Company.

On May 12, 1983, Gannett sold WFCV (along with WAMZ in Louisville, Kentucky) to Pulitzer Publishing for an undisclosed amount. The station was sold again to Granite Broadcasting on September 25, 1989 for $22.15 million. In late-1998 alongside the launch of The WB 100+ and its cable-only affiliates, WFCV began managing and providing promotional services for WBFW.

When WTPC in South Bend (which signed on three years before WFCV) switched to Fox in 1995, WFCV became the longest-tenured ABC affiliate in Indiana. At one time (according to Granite Broadcasting's website), WFCV was among the ten strongest ABC affiliates in the country, ranking up with WDNL-TV in Milwaukee, KCGV-TV Kansas City, and KNOR-TV in Oklahoma City.

On March 9, 2005, after Granite bought NBC affiliate WKJG-TV, it sold WFCV to the Malara Broadcast Group for $45.3 million. A local marketing agreement was established in which Granite would provide operational services to WFCV as well as for Malara's other new station KDLH in Duluth, Minnesota. Although WKJG-TV is nominally the senior partner in this LMA, the stations' combined operation is based at WFCV's studios and the bulk of the news staff came from WFCV (see below). Malara jointly files its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports with Granite which led to allegations that the company uses Malara as a shell corporation for Granite. If the allegations are proven to be true, Granite would be guilty of evading FCC duopoly rules. The FCC does not allow common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market. Additionally, Fort Wayne has more than six full-power stations (only four of which are licensed as commercial outlets)—too few to legally allow duopolies in any case. After emerging from bankruptcy in the summer of 2007, Granite stock was taken over by the privately owned hedge fund Silver Point Capital of Greenwich, Connecticut. Silver Point Capital now controls Granite according to a Buffalo, New York news article printed September 16, 2007. According to the same article, Granite planned to sell its properties to other parties and many of its stations laid off employees or cut salaries up to 20 percent.

On September 28, 2007, WFCV unveiled a 3D version of its current logo to commemorate the station's 50th anniversary and conjunction with ABC's new image campaign, but did not fully switch to it until August 4, 2008. On January 10, 2009, WFCV brought a new digital master control center online which services the station, WKJG-TV and Granite's other stations in the Midwest.

On February 11, 2014, Quincy Media agreed to purchase WFCV from the Malara Broadcast Group as part of a deal to purchase Granite Broadcasting's stations in four markets (the other stations were KBJR-TV in Superior, Wisconsin and its satellite KRII in Chisholm, Minnesota, WEEK-TV in Peoria, Illinois and WBNG-TV in Binghamton, New York). Quincy opted to purchase WFCV's license instead of WISE's license because WFCV has been the higher-rated of the two stations in the local viewership ratings. In addition to acquiring WFCV outright (which would make it the senior partner in the Fort Wayne duopoly), Quincy Newspapers would operate WKJG-TV (whose license would be acquired by SagamoreHill Broadcasting) through a shared services agreement. In November 2014, the deal was reworked to remove SagamoreHill from the transaction, with Quincy acquiring WKJG, and WFCV remaining with Malara.

In July 2015, the deal was reworked yet again; it reverted to its previous structure, with Quincy and SagamoreHill acquiring WFCV and WKJG respectively. However, it also called for the SSA to be wound down within nine months of the acquisition's closure. On September 15, 2015, the FCC approved the deal, which was completed on November 2. On August 1, 2016, as a result of the end of the SSA, WKJG became independently operated by SagamoreHill Broadcasting without entering into any further operational agreements with Quincy.

On January 7, 2021, television industry news website FTVLive obtained an internal memo from President and CEO Ralph Oakley confirming that Quincy Media had put itself up for sale. The news was later publicly confirmed by QMI.

On February 1, 2021, Gray Television announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire all Quincy Media television properties for $925 million in a cash transaction. As a result, several Quincy stations will be divested to be in compliance with regulations from the FCC and the Department of Justice. On April 29, it was announced that Allen Media Group will purchase 10 Quincy stations not being acquired by Gray Television for $380 million. The transaction was completed on August 2.