WHOI (TV)

WHOI is a television station licensed for Peoria, Illinois. It broadcasts a digital signal on UHF channel 19 from a transmitter on North Stewart Street in Creve Coeur, a village in Groveland Township, Tazewell County. The station was the ABC-affiliated television station for North-Central Illinois until 2016. As of October 2016, WHOI only carries the Comet network owned by their parent company, Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Digital channels

History

WHOI's most recent logo as an ABC affiliate, used until 2016.

WHOI was Peoria's second television station, signing-on as WTVH on October 20, 1953. The station was founded by Hugh Norman and Edward Schoede. Hilltop Broadcasting, which co-owned the Peoria Journal Star bought the station in 1954.^[3] Its first studios were on Main Street in Peoria. Originally broadcasting an analog signal on VHF channel 8,^[4] it was a primary CBS affiliate but also carried shows from ABC and DuMont. WTVH lost DuMont when the network ceased operations in 1955, and lost CBS when WMBD-TV began broadcasting.

The Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation, later known as Metromedia, purchased the station in 1959. In 1963, WTVH was bumped down to UHF channel 19 so that a third commercial VHF station could sign-on in the Quad Cities using that channel (the new station, WQAD-TV, is also an ABC affiliate). In 1965, Metromedia sold the station to Mid-America Media, owners of WIRL radio (1290 AM) who, on September 12 of that year, changed the call sign to WIRL-TV. It became WRAU-TV in 1971 and adopted its present calls of WHOI in 1985. The WTVH call sign was picked up by a station in Syracuse, New York in 1976.

In 1987, WHOI came under the ownership of Adams Communications following a merger with its previous owner, Forward Communications. The station was sold to Brissette Broadcasting in 1991, then to Benedek Broadcasting in 1996. When Benedek declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2002, WHOI was sold to Chelsey Broadcasting instead of Gray Television. In April 2004, WHOI and KHQA-TV in the Hannibal, Missouri/Quincy, Illinois media market became two of the founding stations of Barrington Broadcasting.

WHOI carried some programming from UPN, including Star Trek: Voyager, from the network's launch in January 1995^[5] until WAOE (channel 59) went on the air in 1999. Starting in 1998, WHOI began to run a cable-only WB affiliate. Known by the fictional call sign "WBPE", it was on channel 4 on most cable systems in the area. On September 18, 2006, when The WB and UPN merged to create The CW, "WBPE" became part of The CW Plus which is a similar operation to The WB 100+. WHOI added a new second digital subchannel to simulcast this programming to offer non-cable subscribers access to The CW. The channel then began to use WHOI-DT2 as its official calls.^[6]

WHOI has been digital-only since February 17, 2009 ^[7] with the "WHOI" calls being transferred from the now-defunct analog channel 19 to the new digital channel 19 and the "WHOI-DT" call sign from the pre-transition digital channel 40 being permanently discontinued. However, the PSIP identifier still identifies the station's main channel on 19.1 as "WHOI-DT".

From 2009 to 2016, WHOI was operated through joint sales and shared services agreements by the owners of WEEK-TV 25. The two outlets shared studios together on Springfield Road, along I-474, in East Peoria. Although WHOI became a sister station to Fox affiliate WYZZ-TV (owned by Sinclair's partner company, Cunningham Broadcasting), that outlet is operated separately by the Nexstar Broadcasting Group at the facility of CBS outlet WMBD-TV.

On March 2, 2009, it was made public that rival WEEK-TV (channel 25) would take over the operations of WHOI through joint sales and shared services agreements. It resulted in this station closing its longtime studios near its transmitter in Creve Coeur and moving into WEEK-TV's East Peoria facility. Sixteen employees were transferred to WEEK-TV but as many as thirty were laid-off immediately.^[3] This left the five full-power commercial stations in the market operated by two entities; WEEK-TV already controlled the market's MyNetworkTV outlet, WAOE (owned by Four Seasons Broadcasting), under a separate joint sales agreement (JSA). The WHOI and CW subchannel websites were immediately changed to redirects to WEEK-TV's web address. As part of the agreement, Granite-owned CBS affiliate WTVH merged its operations with Barrington's NBC affiliate WSTM-TV and low-powered CW affiliate WSTQ-LP in a similar arrangement on the same day.^[8]

On February 28, 2013, Barrington Broadcasting announced the sale of its entire group, including WHOI, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group.^[9] Sinclair already owned the license of WYZZ-TV (channel 43), which was sold to Cunningham Broadcasting to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on duopoly ownership. The sale was completed on November 25.^[10] On February 11, 2014, it was announced that Quincy-based Quincy Newspapers would acquire WEEK-TV from Granite Broadcasting. Originally, Quincy intended to continue providing services to WHOI but Sinclair gave notice that the JSA/SSA between WHOI and WEEK-TV (which was originally set to expire in March 2017) would be terminated within nine months of Quincy closing on its purchase of WEEK-TV.^[11] The Quincy/Granite sale was completed on November 2, 2015.^[12]

On July 26, 2016, Quincy Media announced that it had acquired WHOI's ABC and CW affiliations, and would consolidate them onto subchannels of WEEK beginning August 1, 2016.^[13] As an aspect of this deal, Quincy-owned WSJV in South Bend similarly relinquished its Fox affiliation to Sinclair-owned WSBT-TV.^[14] The ABC and CW subchannels were simulcast on WHOI for 60 days following the consolidation.^[15] After the end of the transition period, the Comet TV affiliation moved to WHOI's main 19.1 channel.^[1]

News operation

Throughout the 1980s and early-1990s, WHOI aired a nightly newscast at 5:30. This resulted in a delay of ABC World News Tonight until 6 on weeknights unlike other ABC affiliates in the Central Time Zone. On weekends, the network broadcast would be seen it its normal time slot at 5 followed by WHOI's newscast. This unique practice offered viewers with local news seven nights a week at a consistent time while other stations aired national news or other programming.

In 1996, WHOI added a midday show that was seen during the week at 11:30 a.m., a half-hour 5 o'clock weeknight show targeting female demographics (eventually changed to a traditional newscast), and expanded the weekday morning news to run for a full two hours (from 5 until 7 a.m.). WHOI management would cancel the midday show in 1997 citing low ratings and lack of advertising sales for the time slot. At its height while operating a separate news department, WHOI offered local news that was seen weekday mornings for two hours, weeknights (at 5, 6, and 10), as well as weekends (Saturdays at 6, Sundays at 5:30, and both nights at 10). Throughout this period, the station traditionally remained in third place for local viewership ratings during important sweeps periods.

In March 2009 after becoming operated by WEEK-TV, WHOI shut down its separate news department and merged it with the NBC outlet. This station let go most of its production and newscast personnel but added four on-air personalities to WEEK-TV's news team (three of them are still employed by WEEK-TV today). A new secondary set was built at the Springfield Road studios for use by WHOI in order to produce separate newscasts in a new, modified schedule. More specifically, WHOI dropped its own weeknight newscasts at 5 and 6 for a new show seen at 5:30 so it would not directly compete with WEEK-TV's own programs in those time slots.

WHOI continued to produce a separate weekday morning show from 5 until 7 (the two anchors for that program did not appear on WEEK-TV) and weeknight newscast at 10. On weekends, WHOI and WEEK-TV had simulcast local news but there could be a delay or pre-emption on one station because of network obligations (most notably sports programming). At some point in time after combining operations, the two outlets became the first news department in the market to upgrade local newscast production to 16:9 enhanced definition widescreen. Although not truly high definition, the shows did match the aspect ratio of HD television screens.

See also

• Channel 4 branded TV stations in the United States
• Channel 19 digital TV stations in the United States
• Channel 19 virtual TV stations in the United States

References

External links

• Query the FCC's TV station database for WHOI
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WHOI-TV