WQHT

**WQHT** (channel 22), is a television station in Liberty City, Liberty State, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by the Dorado Media Group alongside Fox affiliate WLBD (channel 2). Both stations share studios along the Northern Expressway in Bohan, while WQHT’s transmitter facilities are located atop Outlook Park, near the Broker neighborhood.

## History

### **As an independent station**

A group led by Donald Chase and his company, Chase Communications, was granted a construction permit for channel 22 in September 1982. The station signed on the air on October 1, 1983, as the third independent station in Liberty City under the callsign **WLI-TV**. The station’s call letters were derived from former radio station WLI-FM.

WLI-TV originally operated from studios within the Cerveza Heights district of the Dukes’ neighborhood. Channel 22 would move into a different facility adjacent to the Paint One Building. Starting in 1987, WLI-TV staff would work behind the scenes by producing sports programming and developing the station’s first brief but regular local newscast at the top of the hour. WLI-TV operated as a traditional independent station featuring cartoons, sitcoms, westerns, movies, and locally produced newscasts. The station became available on cable stations in Liberty State, and Alderney State as a regional superstation until the late 1990s.

Fox originally approached the station to negotiate an affiliation agreement with the network in the fall of 1986. The station was among the television stations already owned or in the process of being acquired by New World Communications that were slated to switch to Fox under a long-term affiliation agreement announced between New World and then-Fox network parent News Corporation. Channel 22 station management would later turn the offer down; Fox instead reached an agreement with Francis Broadcasting to launch the affiliation on WLBD (channel 2).

### **WB affiliation**

Upon that network's launch, on January 11, 1995, WLI-TV became a charter affiliate of The WB (a venture between Time Warner and Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting), marking the first time it maintained an affiliation with a broadcast television network. Eight months later, on September 7, 1995, WLI-TV’s call letters were changed to **WLWB** to match the station’s new affiliation. Chase had reached a deal to affiliate with The WB in November 1993, more than a year before the network's launch. The WB offered primetime programs only on Wednesday evenings during its first half-season of operation, but would gradually evolve into offering a six-night-a-week schedule by September 1999; as such, for its first few years as a WB affiliate, WLWB continued to fill the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot with feature films and some first-run syndicated programs on nights when the network did not offer programming. During this period, alongside WB prime time programming and eventually animated series from the Kids' WB children's program block, WLWB carried recently, and older off-network sitcoms and drama series, movies on weekends as well as in primetime on weekdays, some first-run syndicated shows, and a blend of animated and live-action children's shows. For many years, even after joining The WB, WLWB was branded on-air as "TV 22", often using a logo converted into its "circle 22" numeric logo.

On September 26, 1997, Chase Communications announced it would sell WLWB to ACME Communications (owned by Jamie Kellner, who then also served as the chief executive officer of The WB) for $146 million. Five days later, on October 1, ACME assumed operational responsibilities for the station under a local marketing agreement with Koplar. The sale was finalized on March 1, 1998. As part of the sale agreement, Donald Chase signed a three-year contract to remain with WLWB as the station's CEO, along with serving as a consultant to ACME, for an annual salary of $1 million.

In September 1998, WLWB changed its branding to "WB22". In 2000, WLWB began encoring WB programming in off-hours, running select primetime shows and cartoons from the network's children's program block during overnight and weekend evening timeslots.

On December 30, 2000, the Dorado Media Group announced it would purchase WLWB for $275 million; the sale was finalized on March 21, 2000. Also in 2001, the station moved its studios from the Dukes’ neighborhood to a new purpose-built studio facility in Bohan.

### **CW affiliation**

On January 24, 2006, UPN parent company CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom in December 2005) and WB network parent Time Warner (through its Warner Bros. Entertainment division) announced that they would dissolve the two networks to create The CW, a joint network venture that initially featured a mix of original first-run series and programs that originated on The WB and UPN. The network signed a ten-year affiliation agreement with Dorado for 16 of the 19 WB affiliates that the company owned at the time, including WLWB.

Nearly one month after the CW launch announcement, on February 22, 2006, News Corporation subsidiaries Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television announced the launch of MyNetworkTV, a network created primarily to serve as a network programming option for UPN and WB stations that were left out of The CW's affiliation deals. Three weeks later, on March 9, WLUP (now WMYL) was confirmed to be the Liberty City market's MyNetworkTV affiliate. The station remained a WB affiliate until the network ceased operations on September 17, 2006; when the station changed its call letters to **WLCW** and affiliated with The CW upon that network's debut on September 18. The station began branding as “Liberty’s WLCW” as the station already had the "CW" initialism in its call letters, management stated that it would take advantage of this fact for branding purposes and adopted a new wordmark logo based around and inspired by the network's logo design.

On September 17, 2008, Dorado announced that it would enter WLWB into a local marketing agreement with Fox affiliate WLBD effective October 1, as a result of the formation of a "broadcast management company" that was created to provide management services to stations owned by both Dorado and WLBD owner Provincial Media. Although WLBD was the senior partner in the deal, it vacated its longtime studios in the Rotterdam Hill neighborhood on Broker’s north side and moved its operations to WLWB’s Bohan facility. The LMA resulted in both stations combining their news departments and sharing certain syndicated programs. On November 1, 2008, the station changed its on-air branding from "Liberty’s WLCW" to "TV 22," reviving the branding it used from 1983 to 2000 as few Dorado-owned CW affiliates began shifting away from using references to the network within their station branding.

Dorado bought WLBD outright on July 1, 2013, as part of its $2.75 billion acquisition of Provincial Media; the sale received FCC approval on December 20 and was completed on December 27, creating the first legal station duopoly in the Liberty City market between WLBD and WLCW. Despite its broadcasting history, WLCW has been one of The CW's weaker affiliates in terms of viewership. In recent past years, Dorado put more promotional effort into WLBD. By the 2016–17 season, Dorado had settled on having WLCW’s daytime schedule dependent on talk show programming, while WLBD features a mixed schedule of court shows, sitcoms, and lifestyle programming, with WLCW’s ratings eventually stabilizing as the CW has found better success in subsequent seasons. WLCW reinstated the "CW 22" branding in September 2018, mainly in order to streamline its promotions with those of Dorado’s other CW affiliates.

As of 2019, the station has seen major improvements in its rating performance following Dorado’s promotional efforts in the station’s programming following its transition of the EyeOpener morning show from WLBD and expanded syndicated programming produced by the company.

On July 30, 2021, WLCW changed its call letters to **WQHT,** with the station announcing it intends to focus more on local programming, particularly sports programming.

## Programming

Syndicated programming on WQHT as of October 2021 includes *The Big Bang Theory*, *Two and a Half Men,* *The Steve Wilkos Show*, *The Jerry Springer Show*, and *The Wendy Williams Show*. WQHT also airs Fox programs that are preempted for other broadcasts by WLBD, such as local newscasts.

### **News operation**

WLBD/WQHT presently broadcasts a combined 80 hours of locally produced newscasts each week; including a public affairs program on Saturday evenings called Liberty’s Pulse, which airs over the final 45 minutes of the 7 p.m. newscast, and a weekly sports highlight program on Sunday evenings called Sunday Sports Extra, which also airs during that newscast.

On January 28, 2019, WLBD/WQHT introduced a new revamped version of EyeOpener, following WLBD’s announcement of expanding its morning newscast. Both stations now share the main set but WQHT has a separate weather center. They also introduced new graphics and music package for both stations on the same day.

## Logos

Former logo (2015-2017)Former logo (2017-2019)Former logo (2018-2019)Logo (2019-2020; 2022-present)Former logo (2020-2022)
## Technical information

### **Subchannels**

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 22.2
 22.3
 22.4

### **Analog-to-digital conversion**

WQHT (as WLCW) discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 22, on February 17, 2009, four months ahead of the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.