WOIO


WOIO, virtual channel 19, is a CBS-affiliated television station serving Cleveland, Ohio, United States that is licensed to Shaker Heights. The station is owned by Gray Television, as part of a duopoly with Lorain-licensed CW affiliate WUAB. The two stations share studios on the ground floor of the Reserve Square building in Downtown Cleveland, and transmitter facilities in the West Creek Reservation in Parma.

History

Early history of UHF channel 19 in Cleveland

The UHF channel 19 allocation in the Cleveland television market dates back to the 1950s, when The Plain Dealer was granted a construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on UHF channel 19 for a television sister to local radio station WHK was issued to. When WHK was sold to Metropolitan Broadcasting in 1958, the construction permit for what was to have been WHK-TV was surrendered to the FCC. However, the channel 19 allocation remained.
On May 22, 1968, a new construction permit was issued to Community Telecasters of Cleveland Inc. for a new station with the call letters WCTF-TV. The limited programming available and the rising cost of building WCTF kept delaying plans and the sign on date for the station. In August 1972, an agreement was made to sell the construction permit to Joseph T. Zingale. Zingale backed out of the agreement in February 1974 due to a price dispute. On January 1975, United Artists Broadcasting tried to buy the permit and move WUAB to channel 19, but Zingale filed a protest claiming that Community Telecasters still held the construction permit. In May 1976, the FCC took the WCTF-TV permit away from Community Telecasters during a review board. Zingale then tried to acquire the license for WCTF, but the dispute eventually caused the construction permit to be deleted by the FCC.

As an independent station

The history of WOIO traces to two groups that competed for approval by the Federal Communications Commission for a construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on UHF channel 19. Cleveland Television Corp. filed the initial application on November 18, 1977. Later, in 1978, Diamond Broadcasting Inc., and Metroplex Communications filed competing applications. In early 1980, Cleveland-based Malrite Broadcasting Co. approached the Payne group about an offer in which Malrite would own non-controlling, non-voting preferred stock, under an FCC waiver for broadcasters that provider substantial financing for a minority-controlled station; Malrite's principal shareholders would also supply one-third of the capital equity in the station. The FCC awarded the permit and license for channel 19 to the Malrite/Diamond/Metroplex group in 1983.
WOIO – its call letters standing for the station's home state, "OhIO" – first signed on for the air on May 19, 1985. Originally operating as an independent station, the station maintained a programming lineup typical of an independent, consisting of off-network sitcoms, classic movies, off-network drama series and religious programs. The station identified as "WOIO nineteen", with the "nineteen" spelled out visually and rendered in script font.
WOIO was the third independent station to operate in the Cleveland market. Its main competitors were WUAB, which signed on the air on September 15, 1968, and WCLQ, which signed on March 3, 1981; WOIO gained a fourth competitor when WBNX-TV signed on the air on December 1, 1985. That fall, WOIO began carrying animated series and cartoon showcases on Monday through Saturday mornings and on weekday late afternoons. By the end of 1985, channel 19 had surpassed WCLQ as the market's second highest-rated independent station, falling behind WUAB.
In early 1986, Malrite Communications Group purchased the 51% controlling stock interest in WOIO from the principals of Diamond Broadcasting and Metroplex Communications for $1.2 million. Malrite also retained ownership of WHK and WMMS under an exception to FCC rules prohibiting common ownership of television and radio stations under the agency's "one-to-a-market rule," which allowed such combinations that involved a UHF station.

Fox affiliation

WOIO became a charter affiliate of the Fox when the fledgling network inaugurated programming on October 9, 1986; WUAB—despite its status as one of the strongest independent stations in the country—turned down an offer to become an affiliate because its status as a regional superstation made it unattractive for then-owner Gaylord Broadcasting to sign with the network, as most of the markets located within WUAB's cable television footprint had enough commercial stations for Fox to maintain a local affiliate. Though it was technically a network affiliate, Channel 19 continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station. Even after the network's programming expanded with the launch of a three-hour Sunday night lineup in April 1987, Fox offered prime time programs exclusively on weekends until September 1989, when it began a five-year expansion towards a nightly prime time schedule. WOIO continued to air a movie at 8:00 p.m. on nights when network programs did not air.
Soon afterward, it became the over-the-air flagship of the Cleveland Cavaliers—a relationship that continued for six years—and also carried Cleveland Browns preseason games, Cleveland Force MISL indoor soccer and Cleveland State Vikings college basketball. It also appeared on cable providers in the Youngstown market, which did not have a Fox affiliate of its own until WYFX-LP signed on in 1998; WOIO continues to be carried on cable in that market to this day.

CBS affiliation

On May 23, 1994, Fox network parent News Corporation and New World Communications signed a long-term affiliation agreement in which thirteen television stations affiliated with either CBS, ABC or NBC would switch to Fox. WJW-TV – which had served as Cleveland's CBS affiliate since March 1955 – was among the New World stations slated to join Fox as part of the group affiliation deal once individual contracts with each of the stations' existing affiliated networks expired. Fox wanted to upgrade affiliates in certain markets in response to its acquisition of the National Football Conference's broadcast television rights, which had been carried by CBS for the previous 38 years, starting with the 1994 NFL season.
With WJW's CBS network contract set to expire on or shortly after September 1, 1994, the Fox-New World deal gave CBS only a five-month window to find a replacement for WJW-TV as its Cleveland affiliate. The agreement with New World concerned CBS executives, as New World planned to switch several stronger-performing CBS affiliates in other markets to Fox, which would force the network to sign with either a former Fox affiliate or a lower-profile independent station, as many of the Big Three stations and—with the exception of those in Dallas–Fort Worth and Phoenix—some higher-rated independents it approached rejected offers to join CBS due to its faltering ratings and the older-skewing programming slate it had at the time. To prevent such a situation from happening in Cleveland, CBS approached Scripps-Howard Broadcasting to lure ABC affiliate WEWS to switch to the network. The threat of Scripps-Howard moving WEWS to sign a ten-year agreement with ABC on June 16, 1994, in which the group renewed its affiliation contracts with WEWS and WXYZ and agreed to switch three other stations to the network.
In June 1994, Malrite had entered into a local marketing agreement with then-WUAB owner Cannell Communications, under which WUAB assumed responsibility for providing production, advertising and promotional services and master control operations for channel 19. Both stations moved to facilities located at the first floor of the Reserve Square apartment/hotel complex on East 12th Street in downtown Cleveland. The area currently occupied by the WOIO/WUAB newsroom and the soundstage housing the stations' news set was once occupied by a movie theater for the Reserve Square Apartments, which began operation when the facility opened as the Park Centre Apartments in 1973 and was closed in 1978 after the Park Theater's ownership sold the leased space; the former theater was gutted and renovated in preparation for WOIO/WUAB's relocation into Reserve Square and the expansion of WUAB's news department to include newscasts for WOIO.
On July 8, CBS reached an agreement with Malrite Communications to move its programming to WOIO, originally slated to take effect August 29. The fact that the LMA with WUAB resulted in WOIO being tied to the only Cleveland station not affiliated with any of the "Big Three" networks that had a functioning news department played a factor in CBS's decision to sign an affiliation agreement with channel 19. WOIO became the Cleveland market's CBS affiliate on September 3, 1994; WJW-TV concurrently switched to Fox, ending its affiliation with CBS after 40 years and becoming the first New World station to switch to Fox under the group's agreement with that network. As a consequence of the affiliation swap, Channel 19 moved most of its recent off-network and first-run syndicated sitcoms and syndicated animated series to WUAB, which also assumed the local over-the-air television rights to the Cavaliers as WOIO's switch to CBS left channel 19 without enough room on its schedule to continue airing the NBA team's game broadcasts. The Fox Kids block moved instead to independent station WBNX-TV as WJW, like most of the New World stations affected by the Fox affiliation agreement, declined carriage of the block to focus on its news-intensive program schedule; WBNX also picked up the local rights to some of the older sitcoms then in WOIO's inventory that WUAB lacked room for on its schedule.
On April 6, 1998, Raycom Media announced that it would acquire Malrite Communications for an undisclosed price; the LMA with WUAB was included in the deal. The sale was finalized six months later on September 17. In September 1999, WOIO and WUAB underwent a unified rebranding, adopting the respective brands "Hometeam 19" and "Hometeam 43". The rebranding was intended to signify an emphasis on local news and sports coverage placed by both stations as well as play on the fact that at the time they carried all three of Cleveland's major professional sports teams—Indians and Cavaliers games were carried on WUAB, with Browns games airing on WOIO by way of CBS' NFL rights. On March 2, 2000, six months after the Federal Communications Commission relaxed its local ownership rules to allow common ownership of two commercially licensed television stations in the same media market, Raycom exercised an option to acquire the station outright from Cannell Communications; the sale was finalized two months later on May 10.
In January 2001, Raycom hired controversial station manager Bill Applegate as WOIO and WUAB's general manager; subsequently in February 2002, WOIO and WUAB ditched the uniform "Hometeam" branding, with the former replacing it in favor of identifying as ""Cleveland's CBS 19" for general promotional purposes and newscasts seen on both stations being reformatted as 19 Action News. On August 24, 2015, as part of a universal rebranding of WOIO and WUAB, channel 19 changed its branding to the uniform "Cleveland 19".

Sale to Gray Television

On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets under Gray's corporate umbrella, in a cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion. The sale was approved on December 20, and was completed on January 2, 2019. Upon completion of the deal, WOIO/WUAB became Gray's largest television stations by market size, a title formerly held by the company's Knoxville, Tennessee duopoly of fellow CBS affiliate WVLT-TV and CW affiliate WBXX-TV as well as having a new sister station in the nearby Toledo market, ABC affiliate WTVG.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
19.11080iWOIO-DTMain WOIO programming / CBS
19.2480iMeTVMeTV / MyNetworkTV
19.3480iDABLDabl

On August 1, 2011, WOIO became the Cleveland affiliate of the classic TV network MeTV, which is carried on digital subchannel 19.2; that subchannel had previously operated as "Weather Now", consisting of a 24-hour loop of weather forecasts and local radar. 19.2 is also carried on some northeast Ohio cable providers.
On January 29, 2019, WOIO-DT2 quietly began to carry MyNetworkTV during late night hours, without public notice.
In December 2019, 19.3 was activated with a "coming soon" slide with no information about what would air on the subchannel. After a couple of months passed, Dabl – a lifestyle network featuring cooking and home decor oriented shows – would eventually debut on February 24, 2020.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WOIO shut down its analog signal, over channel 19, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition VHF channel 10. Through the use of, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 19.
WOIO operates a digital fill-in translator station in Akron on UHF channel 24, which began operating on August 12, 2011. The translator serves the south-central portion of the Cleveland market where viewers lost WOIO's signal after the June 2009 digital transition.
The channel 10 digital signal causes co-channel interference with CTV 2 owned-and-operated station CFPL-DT in London, Ontario during temperature inversion and tropo skip events. On October 22, 2009, WOIO boosted its effective radiated power to 9.5 kW.

Programming

WOIO currently carries the entire CBS network programming lineup. Syndicated programs broadcast on WOIO as of 2019 include Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and Family Feud.

Sports programming

Cleveland Browns

WOIO and the Cleveland Browns entered into a television partnership in April 2005—in effect, resuming an agreement that ended with the original team's 1995 relocation to Baltimore. Replacing former longtime television partner WKYC-TV, WOIO acquired the rights to air all preseason games as well as a preseason draft show, exclusive training camp reports and a Monday night coaches' show.
On July 18, 2006, the Browns announced that the team was ending its partnership with WOIO, the result of a controversy over the station's coverage of the drowning of team owner Randy Lerner's six-year-old niece. On its newscasts, WOIO aired a 9-1-1 recording of Nancy Fisher, Lerner's sister, calling for assistance. Although WOIO was within its legal bounds to air the tape and it was public record under Ohio's laws regarding 911 call audio, the Browns thought that it was an unnecessary invasion of the family's privacy. WOIO subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Browns on July 26, 2006, alleging breach of contract and seeking to retain the broadcast rights to Browns games as the agreement had one year left to run. The Browns' contract with WOIO ended on August 1, 2006; two days later.
As aforementioned, since their 1999 re-activation, WOIO is the primary home station of the Browns, but since 2014, games that involve them playing an NFC team at home or another AFC team can be moved to WJW from WOIO through the NFL's 'cross-flex' broadcast rules.

News operation

WOIO presently broadcasts 40½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week. It also produces an additional 9½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week for WUAB. Combined across both stations, WOIO produces a total of 50 hours of newscasts each week.

News department history

Early years

WOIO originally had no intention to start a news department; however, CBS informed WOIO that it "preferred" that the station air newscasts. With just months before WJW was due to switch to Fox, there was little time to form a full-scale news division from scratch. Instead, WOIO had LMA partner WUAB produce its newscasts. WOIO began airing newsbriefs during CBS This Morning with Julie Hanahan, WOIO's first news employee, and Betty Haliburton. Early additions to the news staff were Emmett Miller, Denise Dufala ; weeknight meteorologist Dave Sweeney; weeknight sports anchor Jeff Phelps; weekend co-anchors Gretchen Carlson and Dave Barker; weekend sports anchor Ronnie Duncan; and weekend meteorologist Julie Hanahan.
WOIO started airing newscasts at 6:00, 6:30, and 11:00 p.m. on February 5, 1995. The now-shared news operation of WOIO and WUAB became collectively known as Cleveland Television News. Romona Robinson and Jack Marschall remained as anchors for WUAB, maintaining their long history of ratings success at 10:00 p.m.; however, WUAB's ratings success with its prime time newscast did not yet translate to WOIO's newly created 11:00 p.m. newscast. One of the first big stories aired on WOIO featured the "glasses cam", which Dave Barker used to show how he could just walk into a school without being stopped. In 1996, WOIO and WUAB dropped the Cleveland Television News moniker; WOIO began identifying as CBS 19 and titled its newscasts CBS 19 News. WJW had been one of the strongest CBS affiliates in the country, and WOIO hoped that viewers would associate the network with a high-quality local newscast. Emmett Miller left and Gretchen Carlson joined Denise Dufala, creating a two-woman anchor team for its weeknight newscasts. This had rarely been tried in other markets around the nation and had never been tried in Cleveland at the time. It failed to catch on, and Carlson left WOIO, finding success later at the Fox News Channel. Later that year, WOIO added a weekday morning newscast at 6:00 a.m. and pre-empted most of the first hour of CBS This Morning with local news; the station also added a noon newscast around the same time. Still, WOIO failed to win viewers.
Also in 1997, WOIO tried to operate its news studio at street level so pedestrians could see the newscasts being taped. The street-level studio concept did not last long in Cleveland, but today this concept is being used by Good Morning America and Today, as well as several television stations in larger markets.
After Carlson's departure, Kevin Cokely joined Denise Dufala at the anchor desk for the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts. This lasted until 1999, when Jack Marschall was brought in to replace Cokely, while still continuing to anchor the 10:00 p.m. news on WUAB with Cynthia Tinsley. Several months later in February 2000, WOIO's newscasts were rebranded as Hometeam 19 News and introduced a new look that coincided with Raycom's takeover of WOIO and WUAB. After WUAB lost the broadcast rights to the Cleveland Indians in 2001, the Hometeam branding was dropped and WOIO's newscasts were simply known as 19 News. Because of the continued low ratings, Bill Applegate was brought in as general manager, who would make sweeping changes at WOIO and WUAB over the next several months.

''19 Action News''

In May 2002, WOIO and WUAB's newscasts were uniformly re-branded as 19 Action News. A popular press format was put into place, using Shelly Palmer's Palmer News Package, a theme based on the musical signature used and adapted by fellow CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago. The pacing, the look, the style and the language of each newscast took on a dramatically different look and feel. Soon after, the newscasts on both WOIO and WUAB would officially be retitled to 19 Action News. Ratings improved almost immediately, especially at 11:00 p.m., where that newscast became the only late news program to gain viewers four years in a row, as WKYC, WEWS and WJW's late newscasts either remained flat or lost viewers. The station added an hour-long newscast at 5:00 p.m. in 2002, joining WEWS and WJW's late afternoon newscasts for a three-way competition for second place in the time slot at the time. In June 2004, WOIO debuted Cleveland's first 4:00 p.m. newscast. It premiered in last place, but began to grow steadily and eventually fought for second place with WJW's Judge Judy, but still trailed WEWS' The Oprah Winfrey Show at that hour.
WOIO's 11:00 p.m. newscast mounted a serious challenge to WKYC that began in 2004 and had success in marginally overtaking WKYC once in 2008. In recent years the 11:00 p.m. news race in the Cleveland area has been highly competitive, with WOIO taking part in this spirited competition; often, no more than one ratings share point separates first place from third place among the three newscasts which air in that time slot. However, WOIO's newscasts frequently finish at a distant third or in fourth place in most other dayparts.
The theme music used for the newscasts beginning in 2005 was from "The CBS Enforcer Music Collection", a package by Gari Music created for the CBS owned-and-operated station group which also has its roots with WBBM-TV's signature tune, based on an old folk song, "I Love Chicago, Chicago My Home".
Tabloid style
After 2002 when the 19 Action News branding was implemented, WOIO developed a reputation in the Cleveland market for having a "tabloid" news format, viewed at times as going to extremes in order to cover news and generate publicity. Examples include:
WOIO began to broadcast its newscasts in high definition on October 21, 2007, with the station's 6:30 p.m. newscast, making the Cleveland market the first in the nation to have all of its Big Four affiliates broadcasting news in the format. The 10:00 p.m. newscast on WUAB also broadcasts in HD, though in 720p, while Action News programs on WOIO air in CBS' 1080i format.

''Cleveland 19 News''

Although elements of the tabloid-style news format remained, in 2012, WOIO began shifting towards a more traditional newscast format. Under vice president-general manager Dominic Mancuso and news director Fred D'Ambrosi, the station decided to completely overhaul the tone of its newscasts.
On August 19, 2015, WOIO announced that it would rebrand its newscasts as Cleveland 19 News. In describing the change to a more conventional format for its newscasts, Mancuso cited that while the Action News format was "attention-getting" albeit "more about the brand and the presentation," the change toward a traditional news format would place more of an emphasis "about the stories, with less of the hyperbole," although it would retain an emphasis on investigative journalism that was expanded upon by the news department during the Action News era. The rebranding and format change officially debuted on August 24, 2015, beginning with WOIO's noon newscast; the station also implemented a standardized graphics package for the Raycom stations that originated on Wilmington sister station WECT in December 2014, and adopted "This is the Place" by Stephen Arnold Music as the theme for its newscasts.

''19 News''

On April 8, 2019, WOIO rebranded itself as "CBS 19" and it's newscasts as "19 News", with the slogan of "First. Fair. Everywhere."; a nod to its Action News-era slogan of Honest. Fair. Everywhere.

Notable alumni

The station is available over-the-air in Kingsville, Leamington and Pelee Island in southern Essex County, Ontario and was once listed in the TV Guide edition for those communities. Unlike WKYC, WEWS and WJW, it was not one of the Cleveland stations carried on local cable providers in those three locations. WOIO is available on cable in St. Thomas and was briefly available on the digital tier in London in early 2005.