WBKB-TV
WBKB-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 11, is a CBS/Fox/MyNetworkTV/ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Alpena, Michigan, United States and serving the northeastern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The station is owned by the Marks Radio Group. WBKB-TV's studios are located on North Bagley Street in Alpena, and its transmitter is located in unincorporated Alcona County south of Hubbard Lake. On cable, the station can be seen on Charter Spectrum channel 10 in standard definition and digital channel 781 in high definition.
WBKB is the only commercial over-the-air television station in one of the smallest media markets in the United States; the Alpena market consists of Alpena and Alcona counties, and is the third smallest media market in the United States. The station shares the market with the cable-only CW+ affiliate Alpena CW, which is controlled by Spectrum and offers limited local advertising, along with WCML, a PBS member station which is a satellite of Mount Pleasant-based WCMU-TV.
History
Thunder Bay Broadcasting Corporation was formed in the State of Michigan in September 1971 by Thomas Scanlan, a U.S. Air Force Captain stationed in Indianapolis, for the express purpose of establishing a commercial television station in Alpena, Michigan. At the time Alpena and its surrounding area was one of the last places in the Eastern United States without any over-the-air television service, as defined by the FCC. Such areas were called 'white areas'. Scanlan had just completed a tour of duty in Germany, where he and three other active duty airmen, Thomas Disinger, S. Peter Neumann and Curtis Smith had been engaged in creating the first use of live satellite feeds to Europe of events specifically targeted to military personnel stationed in Europe. This first use was the live Apollo XI moon walk and events surrounding it from blast off to touchdown.Beside his stock and stock reserved for Disinger, Neumann and Smith, Scanlan sold off stock to 43 other stockholders, mostly residents of Alpena. The construction permit application was filed on September 22, 1971 and specified using the tower of WHSB/107.7 FM at Manning Hill, near Lachine, Michigan, some west of Alpena. Expectations were that the permit would be granted and the station could be on the air by the summer of 1972, most likely as an ABC affiliate. On November 22, 1971, a competing application was filed for Channel 11 by a group headed by cable operator Bruce Freel. Freel's North American Broadcasting Company specified a much larger coverage area than that applied for by Scanlan, with a tower near Millersburg, and coverage extending well to the west of Interstate 75. To maximize its opportunity to receive a grant in the event the FCC designated the two applications for a hearing, Scanlan amended the Thunder Bay application in 1972 to specify a shared tower with Alpena's non-commercial WCML-TV channel 6. With both Freel's and Scanlan's group applying for facilities that would duplicate, to a small degree, that of Traverse City's WGTU, Channel 29, the President of WGTU, Thomas Kiple, urged his group, Northern Entertainment, to ask the FCC to invoke their "UHF Impact Policy" on the applications. The UHF Impact Policy is no longer active, but at the time, 1972, the FCC would entertain applications to limit, or deny applications from proposed VHF facilities seeking new or improved facilities that would duplicate existing or planned UHF coverage.
At this same time Freel's group was facing mounting expenses in his cable and real estate businesses, and Freel offered to sell out to Scanlan's group for its out of pocket expenses, which the FCC approved almost immediately. This would allow Thunder Bay to proceed with its construction. Within a matter of weeks Northern Entertainment filed its UHF Impact Request with the FCC.
This action set in motion a competitive posture between Thunder Bay and Northern Entertainment. To break the logjam of inactivity, Thunder Bay voluntarily again modified its application to specify a smaller, peanut-shaped coverage area from a tower at Barton City, about south of Alpena. This reduced the percentage of overlap with WGTU's signal to 4.7%. On July 19, 1974 the FCC set aside Northern's objections and granted Thunder Bay its permit. The station with facilities basically unchanged to date since originally built, beginning in September 1974, signed on September 22, 1975. In 1982 Scanlan's group sold controlling interest in Thunder Bay to Stephen Marks of Maryland.
The station first went on-the-air September 22, 1975 as the first of two stations in Alpena to sign-on that year. The station originally aired an analog signal on VHF channel 13 from a transmitter at the station's studios.
After the switch to digital-only broadcasting on June 12, 2009, it moved its digital signal to channel 11. WBKB signed-on a new second digital subchannel to serve as the area's primary Fox and secondary MyNetworkTV affiliate in November 2009. Until this point, Cadillac's WFQX-TV had been serving as the default Fox affiliate, operating a translator in Alpena, W31BO, Channel 31, between 1996 and 2005. In addition, WFQX's full-powered satellite WFUP in Vanderbilt served areas around greater Alpena although not in the city proper.
Despite the existence of WBKB-DT2, Charter systems still carry WFQX in standard and high definition to this day. MyNetworkTV can also still be seen in the market on Spectrum through Bay City's WNEM-DT2. That outlet served as the area's default MyNetworkTV outlet since the service signed-on back in September 2006.
On January 14, 2013, WBKB added a new third digital subchannel to be the area's ABC affiliate—the first over-the-air ABC service to Alpena since WGTU translator K55AW, Channel 55, went off the air in the mid-1970s. Until the launch of ABC on 11.3, WJRT-TV in Flint had been serving as the market's default affiliate on Charter with standard and high definition feeds.
Legacy of WBKB callsign
The WBKB call letters originally belonged to channel 4 in Chicago. That station was owned by the Balaban and Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of Paramount Pictures and is now CBS owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV. WBKB then transferred to Chicago's ABC owned-and-operated station on channel 7 from 1953 to 1968 until it was renamed WLS-TV.Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:| Channel | Video | Aspect | PSIP Short Name | Programming |
| 11.1 | 1080i | WBKB-HD | Main WBKB-TV programming / CBS | |
| 11.2 | 480i | WBKB-FX | WBKB 11.2 Fox & MyNetworkTV | |
| 11.3 | 480i | WBKB-AB | WBKB 11.3 ABC |
11.1 is presented fully in 1080i high-definition over-the-air and over Dish and DirecTV, while 11.2 and 11.3 are in a standard definition widescreen format for local news, network and syndicated programming meant for high definition broadcast. Spectrum provides the 11.2 and 11.3 subchannels in the 720p formats preferred by Fox and ABC, on channels 786 and 782, respectively.