WRVQ-TV

**WRVQ-TV**, virtual channel 48, branded on-air as **Q48**, is an ACME-affiliated television station licensed to Richmond, Virginia, United States. The station is owned by the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group. WRVQ-TV's studios are located on Westmoreland Street in the North Side area of Richmond, and its transmitter is located northeast of Richmond in King William County.

## History

### **Early history**

WRVQ commenced its operations on February 20, 1982, becoming one of Richmond’s first general entertainment independent stations. It was the second station owned by the original TVX Broadcast Group at the time, who had launched WJRX in Hampton Roads three years earlier. Like most independents, it initially offered a format consisting of cartoons, sitcoms, movies, drama shows, and religious programming in mid-mornings after the cartoons. WRVQ also carried business news programming from the Financial News Network in the evenings until sign-off.

Around 1984, WUMM signed on channel 63 with a religious format, and WRVQ’s religious programming moved there. Some of those shows returned to WRVQ when WUMM took on a general entertainment format in the summer of 1985 under a new call sign, WWSO-TV, and the two stations were now competing under the same format. The competition took a toll financially, and as a result, TVX sold WRVQ to the W.W. Hunter Company of Baltimore in 1985.

### **As a proposed Fox affiliate**

On October 9, 1986, discussions had been in action for WRVQ to become a charter Fox affiliate, with the affiliation agreement having been inherited from the previous TVX ownership. The station was the only major station in Richmond to have never changed its independent status, especially after Fox decided to launch its affiliation with WVRN.

WUMM was put up for sale after its parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 1986. At that point, the Sinclair Broadcast Group purchased WUMM. However, not much had changed as both stations continued to suffer financially. Part of the problem was that Fox only offered eight hours of programming a week at the time, meaning WVRN was still programmed largely as an independent, while WRVQ was beginning to rely more on classic off-network sitcoms, or burned-off programming. At the time, Richmond was not big enough to support what were essentially two independent stations. Soon after Sinclair bought WUMM, it offered to buy WRVQ’s programming on the condition that channel 48 itself be sold to a different group that would run it as a non-commercial or home shopping type station. Instead, it was chosen to sell WRVQ outright to Sinclair in 1988, which then put WUMM back on the market. There were no takers for channel 63, however, and Sinclar merged WUMM’s programming onto WRVQ’s schedule, took WUMM off the air, and returned the channel 63 licenses to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for deletion.

The station began carrying a secondary UPN affiliation at the network's inception on January 16, 1995. This moved WZXK-TV in 1997. Also that year, WRVQ began to carry programming from Kids' WB with NBC affiliate WRVA carrying The WB programming out of rotation in late-night since there was no full-time affiliate with the network in Richmond. Sinclair sold the station to the reincarnated TVX Broadcast Group in 1998. Gradually, the station began emphasizing its call letters except in legal IDs, referring to itself on-air as "TV 48." In 2001, it was rebranded as "Q48 Richmond."

### **ACME affiliation**

On July 9, 2016, it was announced that WRVQ would become the new ACME affiliate for the Richmond market beginning September 20. The station decided to retain its legacy “Q48” branding in order to strengthen its local identity and reduce the dependence on the use of network branding.

## Technical information

### **Subchannels**

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

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

WRVQ-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 48, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 49, using PSIP to display WRVQ's virtual channel as 48 on digital television receivers.