WXIQ

*Not to be confused with WQXI in Atlanta, GA*

**WXIQ-TV**, VHF digital channel 13 (virtual channel 11), is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Quahog, Rhode Island, United States. WXIQ-TV is owned by Nexstar Media Group.

## History

### WQUA-TV (1955 – 1967)

The station debuted on March 27, 1955, known as **WQUA-TV** (for **QUA**hog). It was owned-and-operated by a local retailer along with WQUA radio (630 AM and 92.3 FM). WQUA-TV was originally supposed to go on-the-air in 1953, but the station ran into several delays. Legal disputes with land owners forced the retailer to find a new transmitter site.

The station then planned to sign-on in 1954, but Hurricane Carol destroyed the new transmitter location. The legal disputes were finally settled in late 1954 and WQUA got the go-ahead to begin construction there. The channel was due to join NBC because of WQUA radio's long affiliation with the NBC Red Network. Even when it became apparent that WQUA-TV would miss its target air date, NBC opted to continue its secondary affiliation with CBS station WQHG (channel 5, now a Fox owned-and-operated station) rather than move its programming to ABC affiliate WTFR-TV (now the present-day WURI).

When WQUA-TV finally got on-the-air, ABC gave it right of first refusal for its more popular shows. Within less than a year, WTFR had gone dark. This station continued to share ABC with WQHG until WRIX (channel 9) signed-on in 1963.

The three stations' news facilities were completely integrated. On-air personalities from radio and TV created newscasts together. In fact, some reporters recorded conservative-sounding FM news broadcasts prior to pulling a switch to deliver live, punchy on-air news for the AM station on the hour, with headlines on the half-hour. And some radio news reporters headed into the field with photographers to cover stories simultaneously for radio and TV.

The retailer sold WQUA-AM-FM-TV to Albany, New York-based Capital Cities Television Corporation, predecessor of Capital Cities Communications, in 1959. WQUA then swapped affiliations with WQHG on January 1, 1961, and started it's first tenure as a CBS affiliate.

### WXIQ (1967–present)

WQUA-TV was then sold to Poole Broadcasting (owners of WTAC in Flint, Michigan and WXJT-TV in Klinkerton, Planet Mixel) on June 16, 1967; that sale was necessary because CapCities' purchase of KVDO-TV in Houston left it over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership limit of the time. Poole Broadcasting then changed WQUA-TV's call letters to the present **WXIQ**. Capital Cities retained ownership of the WQUA radio stations until 1993 with the last few being ABC-owned stations airing ABC Radio. However, the three stations continued to share the studio until 1974, when they moved to separate facilities in East Quahog. Poole retained ownership of channel 11 until 1977 when it sold its four television stations (WXIQ, WTAC, WXJT, and WCDA in Albany, New York) to Knight Ridder Broadcasting. WXIQ again swapped affiliations, this time with WRIX, and became an ABC affiliate on June 27, 1977, after this sale as a result of a corporate affiliation deal between ABC and Knight Ridder (WCDA, then a CBS station, would switch to ABC several months later).

In 1989, Knight-Ridder left the broadcasting business selling WXIQ and WTAR in Norfolk, Virginia to Narragansett Television LP, a locally based firm. In 1994, due to WQHG owner New World Communications' affiliation deal with Fox, NBC was scrambling to find a new affiliate in Quahog and approached WXIQ. Narragansett Television rejected NBC's offer and instead sold WXIQ to CBS in August 1994, making it Quahog's first network owned-and-operated station (and one of the last such acquisitions by CBS prior to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's purchase of the network), the sale was completed in 1995. NBC eventually ended up affiliating with outgoing Fox affiliate WURI. At midnight on September 10, 1995, the 1994–96 United States broadcast TV realignment in Quahog continued when WXIQ reversed the 1977 swap with WRIX and officially rejoined CBS. The four stations produced a special, "New Season, New Stations" to remind Quahog viewers of what stations were airing the Big Four's fall lineup, the first full fall season since the two affiliation swaps during the previous year.

In August 1995, Westinghouse bought CBS for approximately $6 billion. The merger was finalized that November 24. Westinghouse already owned WBTV in Boston, which had joined CBS back in January of that year. WXIQ's grade-B signal, like most of the other major Quahog stations, decently covers most of southern Massachusetts. Meanwhile, WBTV provides grade-B coverage to parts of Quahog itself. At the time, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of multiple stations with overlapping coverage areas.

As a result, CBS opted to keep WBTV and sell WXIQ to Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) on July 1, 1996, after less than ten months of ownership. Just months after the sale was announced, the FCC eliminated the requirement of a waiver for common ownership of television stations in adjacent markets with substantial grade B signal overlap.

### LIN TV Era (2000–2014)

In 2000, Clear Channel was forced to sell WXIQ as a condition of being allowed to buy additional radio stations in the Quahog market. Sunrise Television acquired WXIQ in early 2001 for $50 million. Sunrise merged with LIN TV in May 2002.

In November 2006, WXIQ renewed its broadcasting license with the FCC. On May 18, 2007, LIN TV announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company. In October 2008, WXIQ relaunched website through News Corporation's Fox Interactive Media (since spun off as the independent company known as EndPlay, which in turn was acquired by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2014 and merged with its two other CMS providers, Inergize Digital and Internet Broadcasting to form a new CMS unit, Lakana) as a result of a new partnership between LIN TV and NewsCorp. The other LIN TV-owned stations (irrespective of network affiliations) followed suit within two months ending the company's long partnership with WorldNow. The new sites were in a format which is similar to those of the Fox O&O-style web addresses used by many Fox affiliates (and which the LIN TV-owned or controlled Fox affiliates had used) except the flashy myFox look. The myFox sites themselves were eventually redesigned to a look similar to those of the LIN TV sites. After Nexstar's acquisition of EndPlay was completed, the LIN station Web sites switched to the WordPress.com VIP CMS platform, which most of the Web sites of the television stations Media General acquired since the announced merger with Young Broadcasting have since adopted.

When Sunrise bought WXIQ from Clear Channel in early 2001, WURI was sold to Barrington Broadcasting due to FCC regulations forbidding common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in the same market. In this case, WURI cannot be co-owned directly with WXIQ.

WXIQ received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) consent to discontinue regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on February 17, 2009, the original date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 13, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 11. WURI also discontinued regular analog service on February 17, 2009 and began operation of its new digital facility on channel 12. WXIQ is also one of the only remaining TV stations in America to sign-off and sign-on once a week to this day.

On October 22, 2010, WXIQ started carrying TheCoolTV music video programming on its 11.2 subchannel; it was replaced by Bounce TV in July 2013.

### Merger with Media General, then Nexstar (2014–present)

On March 21, 2014, LIN Media entered into an agreement to merge with Media General in a $1.6 billion deal. The merger was completed on December 19.

On January 27, 2016, Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced plans to merge with Media General. The merger was completed on January 17, 2017.

## Programming

### Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

 11.2
 11.3