WLUK-TV is the Fox-affiliated television station for the Fox River Valley area of Northeastern Wisconsin. It is licensed to Green Bay. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 11 from a transmitter on Scray's Hill in Ledgeview. Owned by LIN TV Corporation, WLUK also operates the market's CW affiliate, WCWF, which became owned by LIN TV in April 2011 after a period where that station was run under a shared service and joint sales agreements while former owner ACME Communications sold it. The two stations share studios on Lombardi Avenue (U.S. 41 Bus) in Green Bay. Syndicated programming on this station includes: Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Seinfeld, King of the Hill, Judge Judy, and Judge Joe Brown. WLUK can also be seen in Escanaba, Michigan, on digital translator W40AN-D channel 40 from a transmitter in Wells Township.

History

WLUK signed-on September 11, 1954, as NBC affiliate WMBV-TV licensed to Marinette. The station was owned by William Walker and largely constructed from the assets of a failed NBC affiliate in Oshkosh, WOSH-TV. By 1959, it changed its city of license to Green Bay and its call sign to the current WLUK-TV (for its then on-air slogan "Lucky 11"). The channel also switched affiliations with WFRV-TV becoming an ABC affiliate. In 1960, the station was sold to Morgan Murphy Stations. Five years later in 1965, WLUK was sold to Post Corporation (a small media chain not affiliated with Post-Newsweek) whose properties included the nearby Appleton Post-Crescent and a sister station in Marquette, Michigan, WLUC-TV. In 1966, WLUK built a new studio and office building on Highland Avenue (now known as Lombardi Avenue). It aired some local entertainment programming including a Saturday night polka show and a daily children's cartoon show using the franchised Bozo the Clown character.

In 1983, WLUK reclaimed the NBC affiliation when WFRV switched to ABC. In 1984, Gillett Broadcasting bought this channel but turned around and sold it in 1987 to Burnham Broadcasting in order to become owner of the KKR stations. In 1994, Burnham Broadcasting sold most of its stations (WLUK, KHON-TV in Honolulu, WVUE in New Orleans. and WALA-TV in Mobile) to SF Broadcasting who in turn announced that the four stations would become Fox affiliates. Savoy Communications and Fox shared ownership in SF Broadcasting. Originally Fox had voting stock but this was changed prior to the stations' sale becoming final. A fifth Burnham station, KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, California, was excluded from the SF deal and was instead spun off to a new company formed by several former Burnham executives.

WLUK became a Fox affiliate in August 1995 swapping affiliations with WGBA-TV (although the station had never really identified with the NBC network, only using the NBC Peacock sparingly in station advertising). Like most former big three network affiliates switching to Fox during that time, WLUK picked up almost no syndicated programming from WGBA, though it was unnecessary because of WGBA's local marketing agreement with WACY; WGBA's programming mainly moved to that station instead.

Because of Fox's 1994 purchase of National Football Conference television rights, the switch made WLUK the unofficial "home" station of the Green Bay Packers which became a major ratings draw. Unlike the New World Fox affiliation converts, WLUK still took Fox Kids programming running it an hour early on weekdays afternoons from 1 until 4. The channel ran Fox Kids until the weekday block ended at the end of 2001 (when it had been pushed back to as early as 10am) and Saturday morning programming known as Fox Box and later 4KidsTV until that block ended nationally at the end of 2008. The station is one of the few in the nation to use the 1970's NBC drama Little House on the Prairie to fulfill their educational and informational content obligations; the show has run weekdays at 1pm since the 2000-01 television season.

Over the last decade, Packer football games have routinely drawn an eighty percent share of the audience that is far and away the highest-rated programs in the market. SF sold WLUK and the other three Fox affiliates in 1997 to Silver King/USA Broadcasting. Emmis Communications purchased the station along with WVUE, KHON, and WALA in 1998. LIN Broadcasting bought WLUK early in 2006 as Emmis put all of its stations up for sale. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, WLUK is only available over-the-air in Menominee County and via a low powered digital translator in Escanaba. Despite this, WLUK is carried by Charter in the West and Central Upper Peninsula along with WLUC-DT2 except in Gogebic County which is covered by KQDS-TV in Duluth, Minnesota and the Eastern Upper Peninsula which is covered by WWUP-DT 10.2 (standard definition digital simulcast of WFQX-TV in Cadillac, Michigan). WLUK can also be seen on Charter in the town of Ludington, Michigan across Lake Michigan from the Green Bay area.

On June 4, 2010, it was announced that LIN TV would begin to operate WIWB through shared service and local sales agreements. WLUK began to provide technical, engineering, promotional, administrative, and other operational support services for WIWB, advertising sales services under a related but separate joint sales agreement. That station moved into WLUK's studios that August. This was the second LMA (or similar) in the market (Journal Communications-owned WGBA-TV has operated WACY-TV which is owned by Ace TV Inc. since 1994). On September 20, 2010, WIWB changed it calls to WCWF. In April 2011, WCWF was officially sold to LIN under a failing station waiver, and both WLUK and WCWF are now fully sister stations.

On August 17, 2011, the station increased its transmitter power from 17.19 kW to 40 kW. Previously, fellow Fox affiliate WMSN-TV in Madison was broadcasting on channel 11, so WLUK had to decrease its transmitter power. When that channel became available, WLUK applied to the FCC to increase power once again.

Retransmission controversies

With retransmission agreements firmed up with the satellite providers, LIN TV began to pursue the dominant local cable providers for new deals. Charter was the first to be affected with its carriage agreement with WLUK expiring on July 1. The station began to air news ticker scrolls during programming to advise viewers of the fact and negotiations did break down on June 4. It restarted soon, and by June 11, Charter and LIN TV came to a new agreement under undisclosed terms and WLUK-DT was launched on digital channel 611 shortly thereafter, AT&T;'s new U-Verse service made an agreement to carry the digital signal on June 30, 2008 while Comcast's lone Northeastern Wisconsin system in Manitowoc offered compensation to carry WLUK-DT on June 12 on digital channel 234. This left Time Warner as the lone standout in the area to carry the DT signal as it and LIN TV had not come to an agreement nationally.

The ticker strategy was reused to pressure viewers into forcing Time Warner to come to an agreement, but with no success from either viewer pressure or contentious negotiations, the system was forced to pull WLUK from its systems at Midnight on October 3, 2008. Time Warner quickly offered free antennas to customers to receive the station while WLUK employed its website and Zollar to tell their side of the story while encouraging viewers to switch to Dish Network and U-Verse to continue to watch the station in some form. In the month that passed, the ratings of LIN TV stations affected by the Time Warner dispute plunged while viewers complained about the loss of Green Bay Packers games and the MLB Playoffs.

By the time of the World Series, Time Warner made an odd but creative move to allow its viewers to watch the 2008 World Series on its system offering Fox Sports en Espanol on basic cable which carried the series in Spanish while encouraging viewers to turn down the Spanish call and listen to the game in English on ESPN Radio affiliate WDUZ radio. Eventually, the two entities finally came to a paid compensation agreement on October 29 and WLUK's analog signal was restored on the same day with WLUK-DT being placed on digital channel 712 (currently 1012) shortly thereafter giving the station's digital signal full cable and satellite carriage on par with the other big three network affiliates.

WLUK was removed on March 5, 2011 from Dish Network at the expiration of the 2008 agreement as LIN and Dish could not come to terms on pricing for their stations, and was restored upon a new agreement on March 12. WCWF remained unaffected as LIN's purchase of that station was not closed and is under the terms of their pre-WLUK SSA carriage agreement negotiated with ACME Communications.

News operation

In August 1995 after gaining the Fox affiliation, this station expanded its local news offerings. In its first year with the network, local news ran on weekdays from 6 to 8 a.m., 5 to 6:30 p.m., and 9 to 10:30 p.m. As a news-intensive Fox affiliate, the channel currently airs 37 hours of local news each week (with six hours on weekdays and 3½ hours on weekends). However, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, WLUK's Saturday and Sunday 5 p.m. newscasts are subject to preemption due to sports coverage.

Since 2007 during the MLB on Fox's coverage of one of the League Championship Series and World Series, NFL Playoff games in January, and several NASCAR on Fox primetime races, WLUK's 9pm newscast aired at the original 9pm time over a leased access channel of Time Warner Cable. As of October 2010, WCWF will take over airing WLUK newscasts in pre-emption situations.

On June 5, 2007, WLUK replaced WGBA as the provider of weather updates for Midwest Communications radio stations in Green Bay/Fox Cities and Sheboygan. Updates can be heard on eleven Midwest-owned outlets. In addition to their main facilities, this channel operates a Valley Newsroom on West College Avenue in Appleton along U.S. 41. The station has its own weather radar, known as "Fox 11 StormTrackerX", at their main studios, and in 2009 a new addition to the Lombardi Avenue studios was completed to expand the station's newsroom space, and is known as the "Fox 11 Digital Content Center". The station also maintains a tower cam on their Doppler tower known as the "Lambeau Cam" which is mainly pointed in the direction of the stadium.

The station is also the only current local television station to have full featured iOS, Android Market (for mobile phones and tablets) and Yahoo! Widgets (for Internet-connected television) applications.

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

Station slogans

News music packages

News team

Current on-air staff

Anchors/hosts

Fox 11 Severe Weather Lab Team

Sports team

Reporters

Former staff

References

External links