is the
American Broadcasting Company -owned and operated television station (
O&O ) in the
Flint -
Saginaw -
Bay City, Michigan television market. Its studios are located in Flint, its
City Of License . The station broadcasts with 316
Kilowatt s of power from a 1,000-foot tower located near
Chesaning, Michigan .
On cable, WJRT can be seen on
Comcast Flint channel 7 and
Charter Tri-Cities channel 11. WJRT can be seen on cable systems throughout northeastern Michigan, as far north as
Alpena . At one time, it was seen on cable as far north as
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario , where the
Shaw system there offered WJRT instead of
WGTU from across the locks; in the early-2000s, Shaw replaced WJRT with Detroit's
WXYZ-TV .
WJRT is one of many ABC O&O's that do not brand itself as "
Eyewitness News " , it simply calls itself ABC 12 News.
The station was founded by Goodwill Stations, the owner of
WJR at the time. That company won out over two other companies seeking to operate channel 12, the Trebit Corp. which owned
WFDF (AM) and W.S. Butterfield Theatres, Inc. Failed plans to place the transmitter facilities in
Independence Township, Michigan are part of the story of WJRT's birth. When it was learned that Independence Township was in the
Detroit television market, the station's founders settled on placing their transmitter facilities near
Chesaning, Michigan ; the transmitters remain there today. Once this was done, WJRT went on the air on
October 12 ,
1958 , as an ABC network affiliate. WJRT was the first Michigan television station outside of Detroit to go all-color in
1967 .
Goodwill Stations merged with
Capital Cities Communications (which ironically would re-acquire WJRT three decades later) in
1964 , but WJRT was spun off to Poole Broadcasting (owned by a former Capital Cities stockholder) due to FCC limits on television station ownership at the time. In April
1978 , WJRT was sold to
Knight Ridder . During the late 1980's, Knight Ridder decided to bow out of broadcasting by selling its stations to separate owners; as a result, WJRT was sold to SJL Broadcast Management (now Montecito Broadcast Group) in
1988 .
During the
1970s WJRT became
Mid-Michigan 's highest rated television station, helped by ABC's ratings improvements during the decade. During the late
1980s and into the
1990s , WJRT had placed second to
WNEM . However, after ABC (which had merged with Capital Cities in
1986 ) purchased WJRT from SJL in
1995 , the station returned to the top of the Mid-Michigan ratings for primetime, where it remains today. The reason for ABC buying the station was
WNEM-TV's change in network affilation from
NBC to
CBS and ABC wanted WJRT to remain an ABC affilate. The station continues to rank as a strong second place to WNEM for local newscast ratings, but may fall in the marketshare due to a deal between
WNEM and
WSMH , where WNEM will produce a 10 PM newscast for WSMH, who dropped their production after
News Central folded.
Ironically, when ABC acquired WJRT in 1995, it was a reunion of sorts with its namesake radio station, WJR, which is also owned by ABC. And in
2002 , WFDF, which unsuccessfully sought a channel 12 license in the 1950s, would also become a sister to WJRT, when it was acquired by Disney. However, this reunion will soon be partially broken up, as ABC sold WJR, along with other
ABC Radio properties, to
Citadel Broadcasting in January,
2006 .
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"http://wwwinformationdelightinfo/encyclopedia/entry/WTAC-TV" class="copylinks">WTAC-TV studios While the studios undergone some remodelling over the years, WJRT is still there today
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