Fiktiv USA - WKRC-TV

WKRC-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 12, is a dual CBS/CW-affiliated television station licensed to Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group. WKRC-TV's studios and transmitter are located on Highland Avenue in the Mount Auburn section of Cincinnati.

WKRC-TV first signed on the air on April 4, 1949, originally operating as a CBS affiliate on VHF channel 11; it is Cincinnati's second-oldest television station, but first to receive an FCC license. The station was owned by the Ohio-based Taft family, who were active in both politics and media. The Tafts published The Cincinnati Times-Star, and also owned WKRC radio (550 AM and 101.9 FM, now WKRQ) under their broadcasting subsidiary, Radio Cincinnati. In 1958, the Tafts sold the Times-Star to the locally based rival E. W. Scripps Company, owner of The Cincinnati Post and WCPO-AM-FM-TV. The Tafts' broadcasting interests were then reorganized as Taft Broadcasting, with WKRC-AM-FM-TV as the flagship stations. The WKRC stations' call letters were derived from the original owner of WKRC radio, Clarence Ogden of the Kodel Radio Company. Following the release of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Sixth Report and Order, WKRC-TV moved to channel 12 on October 12, 1952.

In 1953, three television stations owned by Taft Broadcasting Company and Cox Enterprises formed the short-lived "Tri-State Network" to compete with entertainment programming produced by Crosley Broadcasting Corporation on Crosley television stations in the Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton broadcast markets. On January 11, 1954, The Wendy Barrie Show premiered from the studios of WHIO-TV in Dayton, simulcast on Taft Broadcasting's WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WTVN-TV (now WSYX) in Columbus. Barrie's contract was terminated in October 1954 and replaced by her co-host of nine months, Don Williams.

In 1961, the station became an ABC affiliate, switching networks with WCPO-TV. This came after that network's founder Leonard Goldenson persuaded Taft president Hulbert Taft Jr., a longtime friend, to switch several of the company's stations to ABC. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. WKRC's nickname in the 1960s was "Tall 12", a reference to the station's transmitter tower which was the tallest in Cincinnati at the time. Like WCPO-TV, channel 12 used a distinctive jingle ID at the top of the hour in the 1960s. The upbeat, orchestrated "Channel 12" jingle was followed by children's show host Glenn Ryle announcing: "This is WKRC-TV Cincinnati". Also, during its tenure with ABC, WKRC (through ABC) aired a number of animated shows produced by Hanna-Barbera, which Taft purchased in 1967. In 1975, it began airing movies on late night Saturdays in a program called The Past Prime Playhouse. Hosted live by local personality Bob Shreve, the show would air until 1988.

On June 23, 1983, after a yearlong field trial, WKRC began broadcasting teletext magazines to Cincinnati-area owners of Electra decoders, making Cincinnati the first market in the United States where teletext was commercially available. WKRC broadcast 100 screens of information and games, along with closed captioning of ABC programming, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Electra's manufacturer, Zenith Electronics, marketed the service with a mobile demonstration van at locations around the city to promote sales of its decoder. David Klein, the media critic for The Cincinnati Post, wrote a negative review of the service, noting slow loading time, unengaging content, and primitive graphics. WKRC's teletext magazine was later syndicated nationally by Satellite Syndicated Systems.

In 1987, Taft was dissolved in a hostile takeover of its board and all of its stations (except WTVN-TV in Columbus and WGHP-TV in High Point, North Carolina) were absorbed into Great American Broadcasting, which became Citicasters in 1993. WKRC was subsequently acquired by Jacor in September 1996 after most of Citicasters' other television stations were sold to New World Communications, which had become involved in an affiliation deal with Fox that was announced in May 1994. The Jacor deal reunited channel 12 with its AM sister, which had been bought by Jacor in 1993 during Great American Broadcasting's bankruptcy reorganization. Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications in 1998.

While Cincinnati was initially unaffected by the 1994–96 affiliation switches, as WCPO was in a middle of a long-term affiliation contract with CBS, the affiliation contract was abruptly stopped. The station returned to CBS in 1996, reversing the 1961 affiliation swap. WCPO had agreed to affiliate with ABC in September 1995, but WKRC's contract with ABC was not set to expire for another year. In May 1996, WKRC began airing half-hour-long special programs detailing upcoming programming changes at the two stations. On June 3, 1996, WKRC's contract ended, and WKRC rejoined CBS while WCPO rejoined ABC. The last ABC program to air on WKRC was the ABC Sunday Night Movie airing of the 1993 telefilm The Only Way Out, and the first CBS program since it rejoined was CBS This Morning.

Although owned by Clear Channel at the time, the station changed its branding to "Local 12" in 2003. This was inspired by the "Local Mandate", a station brand standardization adopted by Post-Newsweek Stations for its own television stations.

In 2006, Clear Channel ranked WKRC as the top CBS affiliate in the United States. On November 16 of that year, the company announced that it would sell its entire television division, including WKRC, after being bought by private equity firms in order to focus on its radio and event properties. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its stations to Providence Equity Partners. Providence Equity teamed up with Sandy DiPasquale to form a new holding company, Newport Television, for the station group. Concurrently, Clear Channel applied to place WKRC and several other stations to the Aloha Station Trust just in case Newport Television failed to close on the group. However, as a result of Newport Television closing on the purchase of WKRC and the other stations on March 14, 2008, Aloha Station Trust and the would-be new owners of Clear Channel opted not to consummate on the acquisition of the station. As a result, Newport Television became WKRC's fourth owner in just over 20 years. As a result of the sale, the Citicasters name disappeared from WKRC's license, dissolving channel 12's last link to Taft Broadcasting; the Citicasters name is still alive as a holding company within the corporate structure of Clear Channel's successor, iHeartMedia.

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of WKRC-TV to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group as part of a 22-station deal that involved Nexstar, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cox Media Group. The transaction was completed on December 3.

During its first few years as a CBS affiliate, WKRC-TV ran the entire schedule except for several hours of the CBS Saturday morning cartoon lineup which would soon be reduced to only a few hours anyway. Once that reduction was made, WKRC-TV was then running the entire CBS schedule with an occasional exception. Syndicated programs currently broadcast on WKRC-TV include Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, and Comics Unleashed. On weekends, during the overnight hours, it also airs re-runs of such CBS shows as NCIS: New Orleans, and Madam Secretary, all of which air, or have aired, first-run on the station.

In 1998, the station became the primary home station for most Cincinnati Bengals games (when CBS acquired the AFC broadcast rights that year, displacing longtime incumbent WLWT in that role).

WKRC currently broadcasts 41½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and 2½ hours on Sundays); it also produces an additional 13½ hours of newscasts weekly (with 2½ hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays) for WKRC-DT2. WKRC's newscasts and reports are also seen on the Ohio News Network. During weather segments, it uses regional weather radar data in a system called "Precision Doppler 12 Network."

For most of its history, WKRC has been a solid runner-up to WCPO in the local newscast ratings. However, in the past decade or so, WKRC and WCPO have taken turns in first and second place. WKRC usually wins on weekday mornings and at 11 p.m., while WCPO leads in the 5 to 7 p.m. block. However, since the May 2010 Nielsen ratings period, WKRC has dominated its competition in all newscast timeslots, with WCPO slipping to second. This dominance in the Cincinnati local news race continued as of the May 2012 sweeps period. At one point, all three of Cincinnati's "Big Three" network affiliates were locally owned. WLWT began falling behind in the ratings after becoming the first of the three to be sold to outside interests. WCPO is now the only one of the three to remain under locally based ownership.

From 1977 to 1992, its news division was branded Eyewitness 12 News. (The Eyewitness News moniker would be reused by WLWT in 1998.) Afterward, the station was usually announced as 12 News. With the arrival of chief meteorologist Tim Hedrick in 1988, WKRC began using the top of the Chiquita Center as its Weather beacon.

In 1994, WKRC refreshed its newscasts with the slogan "A New Generation of News", which referred to anchors Kit Andrews and Rob Braun, along with new graphics, a green screen set, and music originally composed by Rick Krizman for KRON-TV in San Francisco. WKRC made extensive use of "Texta", a graphics package that included a persistent on-screen banner with the current story's headline. Seasonal school closing information and eventually a news ticker appeared below the Texta headline. That October, WKRC debuted 11 minutes of "Non-Stop News" on its 11 p.m. newscast, reviving a feature the station attempted in 1989. In 1996, the station debuted a half-hour 4 p.m. newscast on weekday afternoons that remains the Cincinnati area's earliest afternoon newscast.

From August 22, 2001 to January 2005, WKRC aired its weekday Good Morning Cincinnati broadcast live from a $500,000 remote studio at the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau on the ground floor of Fifth Third Bank's downtown headquarters, with the Tyler Davidson Fountain as the backdrop. Despite WKRC's initial hopes for a Today-like atmosphere, the show failed to attract a regular crowd on Fountain Square. From March 2004 to 2008, WKRC aired Nuestro Rincón ("Our Corner"), a twice-weekly Spanish-language news program hosted by Sasha Rionda. It was the only television program in the market airing in a language other than English.

On April 26, 2006, WKRC entered into a news share agreement with WSTR to produce a nightly prime time newscast at 10 p.m., which began airing on August 21. This resulted, once MyNetworkTV began, in a CBS affiliate's newscast being carried on a station affiliated with a Fox sister network. On January 7, 2008, WKRC began simulcasting Good Morning Cincinnati on WKRC-DT2; it had been aired on the main channel from 5 to 8 am, but the third hour was dropped when CBS reclaimed the 7 a.m. hour for The Early Show, after the network required all of its affiliates to air the show (which was replaced by CBS This Morning in 2012) in its entirety after receiving a makeover hoping to better compete against its rivals, NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America. The 7–8 a.m. hour of Good Morning Cincinnati can now be only seen on WKRC-DT2. WKRC announced its intent to move the prime time newscast on WSTR to WKRC-DT2 in August 2008; on August 4, 2008, it began a brief simulcast of the program on WKRC-DT2, with it eventually being dropped from WSTR on August 22. The program then became known as CW News at 10.

Newport Television released a statement in October 2008 stating that WKRC would eventually begin broadcasting its newscasts in 1080i high definition. The company used channel 12 as a pilot station before investing in HD equipment for its other television stations. On October 30, it debuted a new set on its First at 4 broadcast in preparation for the HD debut. After nearly a year of delay, the station launched its high definition newscasts along with a revised logo and new graphics on September 27, 2009 during its 11 p.m. newscast; WKRC became the third station in the Cincinnati market (after WCPO and WXIX-TV, channel 19) and the second in the Newport group (after WOAI-TV) to make the upgrade. WKRC currently use JVC ProHD 250 Series cameras in its studios. The newscasts on The CW Cincinnati were not initially included in the upgrade, until it upgraded to HD at some point in 2013. On July 7, 2013, WKRC launched Sunday morning newscasts, airing in two blocks: one hour at 8:00 a.m. and an additional half-hour at 11:30 a.m.

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WKRC-DT2, branded on-air as The CW Cincinnati, is the CW-affiliated second digital subchannel of WKRC-TV, broadcasting in high definition on virtual and VHF digital channel 12.2. On cable, it is available in standard definition on Spectrum channels 20 in Ohio, 25 in Kentucky, and 989 in both states, and on Cincinnati Bell channel 17. A high definition feed is carried on Spectrum digital channel 1024 in Ohio and channel 901 in Kentucky, and on Cincinnati Bell channel 517.

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. WKRC signed a deal to affiliate with the new network on a new second digital subchannel resulting in UPN affiliate WBQC-CA (channel 25) becoming an independent station. Meanwhile, WB affiliate WSTR-TV joined another new network, News Corporation-owned MyNetworkTV (now owned by 21st Century Fox) which launched on September 5. With the affiliation, WKRC-DT2 became the largest subchannel-only CW affiliate by market size, and is one of the few such stations located in the top 100 markets (most CW-affiliated stations that carry the network via a subchannel are located in the 110 smallest U.S. television markets and carry The CW Plus, an automated feed featuring a pre-packaged schedule of syndicated programs outside CW programming hours; the few that are located among the top 100—such as WTVG-DT2 in Toledo—maintain an independently programmed schedule as their primary channel counterparts do).

Cincinnati cable viewers were concerned that WKRC-DT2 would face the same problems as WBQC. For years, Time Warner Cable had refused to carry that station full-time, eventually airing its prime time programming on a low-profile channel. However, Time Warner Cable was a division of Time Warner at the time (who would be half-owner of The CW), so it was in the company's best interest to air WKRC-DT2 over its systems. By late in the day on September 17, Time Warner Cable agreed to carry the new station only hours before the network's launch on September 18. WKRC-DT2 launched on Time Warner channel 2 in prime time only to start out with and 24 hours a day on digital cable channel 913, before earning a full-time broadcast basic placement on channel 20 as of October 18, displacing WBQC and a commercial access channel. The station also debuted on Insight Communications and DirecTV under WBQC's former channel slots. As a result, the channel can be viewed by 66% of the local population.

While now branded as simply "The CW Cincinnati," the subchannel originally branded as "The CinCW," a portmanteau with "Cincy", a common nickname for the city. It currently airs the entire CW schedule in-pattern with films and syndicated programming (and sometimes second runs of WKRC's programming) airing outside network hours along with occasional coverage of high school sports and/or telecasts from FC Cincinnati on weekends. In the event of breaking news (either from WKRC or CBS News) or sports coverage, WKRC-DT2 airs CBS programming when needed. Repeats of some shows formerly aired by WKRC, along with the second half of CBS' Face the Nation, can also be seen. Through The CW, it also carried the daily self-titled talk show of local WLW radio personality Bill Cunningham until that show ended in 2016.