Early history The station first signed on the air on May 21, 1956, operating as an
independent station; it was originally owned by Independent Television, Inc., to whom the channel 6
construction permit was granted by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 29, 1955. The station was originally licensed to the North Shore village of
Whitefish Bay on a technicality in order to address short-spacing concerns with
Davenport, Iowa station WOC-TV (now
KWQC-TV, which also broadcast on channel 6) before the FCC fully finessed spacing among television station signals in different markets. In October 1956, the station affiliated with the
NTA Film Network, which provided the station with 52 films from the
20th Century Fox library and syndicated programs. Among the NTA programs aired by WITI were
The Passerby,
Man Without a Gun and
This is Alice. From 1956 to 1959, WITI used the
DuMont Vitascan color system—which required a completely darkened set with a single strobe light, causing eye strain—for its locally produced programs. The situation was difficult for the on-air talent, according to Sid Armstrong, who worked at WITI as a news reporter during the station's early years.
First tenure with CBS, and switch to ABC On August 8, 1958,
Storer Broadcasting purchased WITI in hopes of affiliating the station with
CBS. Storer had very good relations with CBS; company founder George Storer was a member of the CBS board, and most of its stations were CBS affiliates. At the time, CBS owned a local UHF station, WXIX (originally channel 19, reassigned to channel 18, now
WVTV) as part of a corporate effort to determine if UHF station operation and ownership would be successful. Once the disadvantages of being on a UHF frequency became clear in the days before all-channel tuning, CBS wrote off the experiment as a failure. The network concluded it was better to have its programming on a VHF station, even if it was only an affiliate. CBS sold WXIX to Cream City Broadcasting president Gene Posner; WITI-TV then began its first stint as a CBS affiliate on April 1, 1959. At that time, WITI moved from its original studio facility in
Mequon to WXIX's former studios on North 27th Street in Milwaukee (which were later used by
WCGV-TV from 1980 to 1994). Storer also applied to move the channel 6 allocation from Whitefish Bay to Milwaukee; the request was granted on July 30, 1959. after WITI's move to Brown Deer. Even after WCGV's merger with WVTV in 1994, WITI's first studio continues to be an active production facility and its studios remain in use for commercial and video production. In 1961, WITI lost the NTA network due to its closure, and CBS decided to affiliate with
WISN-TV (channel 12), as
its sister radio station had been a longtime affiliate of the
CBS Radio Network. As a result, WITI-TV and WISN-TV swapped networks: channel 6 became an
ABC affiliate on April 2, 1961. The final CBS program channel 6 aired before it switched to ABC was the original broadcast of the
Gunsmoke episode "Little Girl", which ran the evening before the switch at 9 p.m.
Central Time. In August 1962, the station moved to its current
transmission tower located in Shorewood; for a short time, the transmitter had been the tallest free-standing tower in the world. The tower went into operation in 1963, finally putting WITI's signal on equal footing with Milwaukee's other television stations.
Second tenure with CBS During the
1975–76 season, ABC emerged as the highest-rated broadcast network in the United States–thanks in part to the success of two Milwaukee-set sitcoms,
Happy Days and its spin-off
Laverne & Shirley. However, Storer Broadcasting had developed a bitter relationship with the network stemming from ABC's June 1976 decision to move its affiliation in the
San Diego market from Storer-owned KCST-TV (now
KNSD) to former
NBC outlet
KGTV. Three years earlier KCST, a UHF independent station, won a long battle to strip the market's ABC affiliation from
Tijuana,
Mexico-based VHF outlet
XETV. Storer purchased KCST the following year, but ABC was not happy with being forced to surrender an affiliation with a VHF station in favor of a UHF outlet. Perhaps in protest, Storer announced on September 26, 1976, that it would re-affiliate WITI with CBS. Without hesitation, WISN-TV aligned with ABC, officially reversing the earlier 1961 affiliation swap; the two stations switched networks once again on March 27, 1977; the final ABC program to air on channel 6 was a rerun of the two-part
Starsky & Hutch episode "Murder at Sea", which aired at 8 p.m. Central Time on the night before the station rejoined CBS. In 1978, WITI moved its operations to a new facility located on
North Green Bay Road in Brown Deer, just outside Milwaukee; the upstart WCGV-TV (channel 24), which would eventually air programming from CBS that WITI refused, purchased WITI's former studios and used them from 1980 until 1994. It was one of the few Storer stations which used a more modern and open design for its studio building, compared to Storer's traditional use of
Georgian and
Colonial facades on its other studio facilities. After Storer Broadcasting was bought out by
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 1985, the station underwent a series of ownership changes. KKR sold the stations to
Racine native
George N. Gillett Jr.'s Gillett Communications in 1987; shortly thereafter, SCI Television was spun off from Gillett to acquire the stations after the latter company filed for
bankruptcy. After Gillett defaulted on some of its financing agreements in the early 1990s, its ownership was restructured and the company was renamed SCI Television. Eventually, SCI ran into fiscal issues; on June 26, 1991, Gillett Holdings filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after it failed to reach an agreement with the company's creditors before a court-imposed June 25 deadline. SCI Television also missed repayment of $162 million in bank loans before a June 30 deadline; as a consequence of its financial difficulties, Gillett/SCI decided to sell its broadcast holdings. On February 17, 1993, one day after SCI purchased
WTVT in
Tampa from Gillett Holdings in a separate agreement for $163 million,
New World Pictures purchased a 51% ownership stake in SCI Television from Gillett for $100 million and $63 million in newly issued debt. The purchase was finalized on May 25, at which point, the film and television production company folded WITI and its six sister stations—fellow CBS affiliates WTVT,
WJW-TV in
Cleveland,
WJBK-TV in
Detroit and
WAGA-TV in
Atlanta, NBC affiliate KNSD in San Diego and independent station
WSBK-TV in
Boston—into a new broadcasting subsidiary,
New World Communications.
Switch to Fox station New World Communications ownership , seen across North Green Bay Road (
WI 57) On May 23, 1994, as part of a broad deal that also saw
News Corporation acquire a 20% equity interest in the company, New World Communications signed a long-term agreement to affiliate its nine CBS-, ABC- or NBC-affiliated television stations with Fox, which sought to strengthen its affiliate portfolio after the
National Football League (NFL) accepted the network's $1.58 billion bid for the
television rights to the
National Football Conference (NFC)—a four-year contract that began with the
1994 NFL season—on December 18, 1993. WITI-TV was among the stations involved in the Fox agreement, which also initially included four of New World's other existing CBS-affiliated stations—WJBK-TV, WJW-TV, WTVT and WAGA-TV—and four additional stations—CBS affiliate
KSAZ-TV in
Phoenix, ABC affiliates
WBRC-TV in
Birmingham and
WGHP in
Greensboro–
Winston-Salem–
High Point, North Carolina, and NBC affiliate
WDAF-TV in
Kansas City—that were part of New World's concurrent $360-million acquisition of
Great American Communications's television properties. (The agreement would subsequently be amended to include four additional stations that New World acquired later that month from Argyle Television Holdings.) At the time, Fox's owned-and-operated and affiliate stations were mostly UHF outlets that had limited to no prior history as major network affiliates, among them its existing Milwaukee outlet, WCGV-TV, which had been affiliated with Fox since the network inaugurated prime time programming in April 1987. Although WCGV had become a formidable competitor to rival independent WVTV, Fox found the prospect to having its programming carried on a VHF station too much to resist. Its news department had been long-respected and well-awarded, and had spent most of the last two decades in a spirited battle with WISN-TV for second place in total day and news viewership behind
WTMJ-TV (channel 4). While channel 6 was in third place by the time the switch was announced, it was in a far stronger market position than its ratings indicated. With only a few months before WITI was set to switch to Fox, CBS began making plans to find a new Milwaukee affiliate and approached all of the market's major television stations to potentially reach an agreement, which was hampered partly because of the network's then-faltering ratings and an older-skewing programming slate. CBS first entered into discussions with WTMJ-TV for a contract; that station was subsequently eliminated as an option as NBC decided to approach
Journal Communications to renew its contract with WTMJ-TV. WISN-TV was automatically eliminated as an option for CBS as it was in the middle of a long-term affiliation agreement between ABC and that station's owner,
Hearst Broadcasting. The respective owners of WCGV and WVTV at the time—ABRY Communications and
Gaylord Broadcasting (the latter of which had already reached deals to switch two fellow independents,
KTVT in
Fort Worth and
KSTW in
Tacoma, to CBS)—also turned the network's offers down. This left the market's lower-rated independents—commercial outlets WJJA (channel 49, now independent station WMLW-TV) and
WDJT-TV (channel 58) or religious outlet
WVCY-TV (channel 30)—as the only viable options with which CBS could reach an affiliation agreement; WVCY owner
VCY America would eliminate itself from the running after the owner of its parent licensee,
Vic Eliason (in consultation with the VCY America
board), declined a $10 million offer by CBS Inc. to acquire that station directly on grounds that the bid was "unreasonably" below market value in a letter that also objected to racy programming content carried by the major U.S. broadcast networks. WJJA's owner, minister Joel Kinlow, wanted to maintain his station as a training venue for those wanting to know about the broadcasting business, but also did not want the stress of running a network affiliate, and thus also declined an affiliation offer. With a month to go before WITI was to join Fox, CBS had still not found a replacement affiliate. It was faced with the prospect of arranging to have out-of-market affiliates in nearby areas (either
WISC-TV in
Madison, or its two owned-and-operated stations in the region,
WFRV-TV in
Green Bay or
WBBM-TV in
Chicago) imported to cable systems throughout Southeastern Wisconsin until it could or in case it did not secure a new affiliate in Milwaukee. Virtually out of desperation, on December 6, CBS reached a ten-year agreement with
Weigel Broadcasting to affiliate with WDJT, despite the mediocre quality of its broadcast signal and the absence of a news department. (CBS faced a similar situation in Detroit where CBS wound up moving to a
low-profile independent station after being displaced by a longtime affiliate involved in the New World agreement; the WDJT deal was one of two eleventh-hour deals in which Weigel landed a
Big Three network affiliation, followed by its low-power outlet W58BT [now
WBND] in
South Bend, Indiana, which joined ABC in September 1995 after that network's longtime affiliate,
WSJV, switched to Fox.) The announcement came as a relief to WITI, which had prepared to help viewers find relocated programs via a telephone helpline and print advertising. However, it had been unable to launch the campaign without a replacement affiliate. The last CBS network program to air on WITI was a first-run episode of
Walker, Texas Ranger at 9 p.m. Central Time on December 10; this led into a message by then-station president and general manager Andrew Potos shortly before the start of that evening's edition of
TV-6 News at 10:00, informing viewers about the pending network changes. WITI-TV officially became a Fox affiliate on December 11, 1994, when the network's programming lineup moved to the station from WCGV; the first Fox network program to air on the station as a full-time affiliate was
Fox NFL Sunday at 11 a.m. Central Time that day, leading into that afternoon's NFL doubleheader: the 1994
Chicago Bears–Green Bay Packers game at
Lambeau Field (which served as one of Fox's early regional games that day and saw the Packers win in a 40–3
blowout victory) and a mid-afternoon national game between the
San Francisco 49ers and the
San Diego Chargers. WCGV temporarily converted into an independent station in the run-up to affiliating with the upstart United Paramount Network (
UPN) the following month (on January 16, 1995), though retaining
Fox Kids, as WITI held no interest in carrying the network's children's lineup due to a successful weekday afternoon and Saturday morning lineup, as most New World stations did. As a result of CBS affiliating with WDJT, Milwaukee became one of only two television markets affected by the New World deal (along with Detroit) where the replacement Big Three affiliate did not displace some of its existing syndicated programming following the local affiliation switch. In keeping with the branding conventions of most of the other New World-owned stations affected by the affiliation agreement with Fox, WITI-TV retained its longtime "TV-6" branding (which it adopted in 1973 as an ABC affiliate) upon the affiliation switch, with references to the Fox logo and name limited in most on-air imaging as well as the news branding it had been using before it joined Fox – in its case,
TV-6 News, the base moniker of which the station adopted in November 1984 as a CBS affiliate. In addition to expanding its local news programming at the time it joined Fox, the station replaced CBS daytime and late night programs that migrated to WDJT with an expanded slate of syndicated
talk shows as well as some off-network sitcoms,
game shows and documentary-based
reality series, and also acquired some syndicated
film packages and first-run and off-network syndicated drama series for broadcast in weekend afternoon timeslots on weeks when Fox did not provide sports programming; most notably it still holds the rights to a package of
colorized RKO Pictures films (now a part of the
Warner Bros. Discovery library after being colorized by then-rights holder
Turner Entertainment in the late 1980s) as of 2023. Unburdened by having to carry Fox Kids, WITI's revamped programming schedule—as was the case with most of New World's other Fox stations—relegated children's programs to the regulatory minimum on weekends, with the station instead choosing to continue producing their popular local homebuilding and home maintenance programming (and in the case of
Ask Gus, a do-it-yourself instructional program hosted by station announcer and
Wake Up News contributor Gus Gnorski, expanding it to a full weekly program). In the fall of 1995, WITI dropped its longtime branding as "TV-6" and began branding itself as "
Six is News", in order to emphasize the station's newly expanded news schedule. Conversely, in a move to comply with the network's branding conventions, Fox and other entertainment programming on the station was promoted as "Fox is Six" to try to build an audience for the growing network on the stronger Milwaukee station. (Cleveland sister station WJW used a very similar branding technique at that same period, branding itself as "
ei8ht is News" and "Fox is ei8ht", playing off the on-air branding that the station used as a CBS affiliate during the 1960s and 1970s.)
First Fox Television Stations ownership period On July 17, 1996, News Corporation—which separated most of its entertainment holdings into
21st Century Fox in July 2013—announced that it would acquire New World in an all-stock transaction worth $2.48 billion. The purchase by News Corporation was finalized on January 22, 1997, folding New World's ten Fox affiliates into the former's
Fox Television Stations subsidiary and making all twelve stations affected by the 1994 agreement owned-and-operated stations of the network. (The New World Communications name continues in use as a licensing purpose corporation—as "New World Communications of [state/city], Inc." or "NW Communications of [state/city], Inc."—for WITI and its
sister stations under Fox ownership, extending, from 2009 to 2011, to the former New World stations that Fox sold to
Local TV in 2007.) The transaction also made WITI the first Milwaukee television station to serve as an
owned-and-operated station of a major network since CBS owned WOKY-TV/WXIX (now WVTV) from 1954 to 1959. On January 26, coinciding with Fox's telecast of
Super Bowl XXXI (Fox's first
Super Bowl telecast, in which the
Packers defeated the
New England Patriots), WITI-TV changed its branding from "Fox is Six" and "
Six is News" to simply "Fox Six" (with its newscasts concurrently rebranding as
Fox Six News), using a logo that matched the
design language of the logo for the NFL on Fox, with "SIX" in place of "NFL". Subsequently, in April 1998, WITI simplified its branding to "Fox 6", (Coinciding with this, the station introduced the "Milwaukee's Newscenter" set that would remain in use until 2011, along with a "Weather Deck" located outside of Brown Deer Road studio facility that was used as an outdoor setting for forecast segments.)
Local TV and Tribune ownership On December 22, 2007, Fox sold WITI and seven other owned-and-operated stations – WJW, WBRC, WGHP, WDAF-TV,
KTVI in
St. Louis,
KDVR in
Denver and
KSTU in
Salt Lake City – to Local TV LLC (a broadcast holding company operated by
private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners that was formed on May 7 of that year to assume ownership of the broadcasting division of
The New York Times Company) for $1.1 billion; the sale was finalized on July 14, 2008. Through a management company formed between Local TV and the Chicago-based
Tribune Company formed the day prior to the Fox station purchase (December 21) to handle the operation of its existing
broadcast television properties and the Local TV stations as well as provide web hosting, technical and engineering services to stations run by the latter group, WITI began sharing newsgathering resources between WITI and Tribune's television
flagship WGN-TV in the adjacent Chicago market. (In addition, channel 6 continues to share news footage and other resources with Fox's Chicago O&O
WFLD through the Fox NewsEdge affiliate service.) Under this same agreement, WITI has also carried certain public interest programming carried by other Tribune/Local TV stations such as a May 6, 2011
telethon produced by
Huntsville sister station
WHNT-TV, which was carried by WITI over digital subchannel 6.2, to raise funds for organizations helping victims of the
April 27 Super Outbreak that affected
Alabama). On July 1, 2013, the Tribune Company announced it would acquire the assets of Local TV LLC for $2.75 billion; the sale was completed on December 27. On August 28, 2014, WITI's affiliation with Fox officially became the longest network affiliation the station held, passing the station's 7,200 days (or near 19¾ years) over its two separate stints as a CBS affiliate.
Aborted sale to Sinclair On May 8, 2017,
Hunt Valley, Maryland-based
Sinclair Broadcast Group—which owns
CW affiliate WVTV (channel 18) and owned
MyNetworkTV affiliate WCGV-TV at the time—entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in debt held by Tribune. Sinclair had already announced that it had sold WCGV's spectrum in April in the FCC's 2016
spectrum auction and it would cease operations in technicality, albeit with WCGV's main schedule and subchannel moving to WVTV's DT2 subchannel on January 8, 2018; that move effectively would have alleviated any regulatory complications involving the sale for the Milwaukee stations, outside any physical and employee assets that would have been sorted out prior to the deal's closure. The purchase of WITI would have given Sinclair control of the three Fox affiliates in Wisconsin's largest markets (Sinclair already owns
WMSN-TV in Madison and
WLUK-TV in Green Bay). On December 15, 2017, it was speculated that Sinclair would then re-sell WITI back to Fox Television Stations; however, on April 24, 2018, when Sinclair announced its list of the 23 stations that it would sell in order to alleviate conflicts with FCC ownership rules as well as those with Fox over the affiliate share it would have had if the purchase had not been modified, WITI was not included among them. On July 18, 2018, the FCC voted to have the Sinclair–Tribune acquisition reviewed by an
administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties; with the future of the deal still uncertain, 21st Century Fox reached a multi-year agreement with Tribune to renew the affiliations of WITI and five of the group's other Fox affiliates on August 6, 2018. Three days later on August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, and concurrently filed a
breach of contract lawsuit in the
Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the DOJ over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.
Sale to Nexstar; resale to Fox On December 3, 2018,
Irving, Texas–based
Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire Tribune's assets for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019—would give WITI temporary sister stations in nearby markets including Green Bay (CBS affiliate WFRV-TV),
La Crosse–
Eau Claire (Fox affiliate
WLAX and satellite WEUX) and
Rockford (Fox affiliate
WQRF-TV and ABC-affiliated SSA partner
WTVO). The sale was approved by the FCC on September 16 and was completed on September 19, 2019. On November 5, 2019, Nexstar Media Group announced that WITI would be re-acquired by Fox Television Stations (which by then had become a subsidiary of
Fox Corporation following the
acquisition of 21st Century Fox by
The Walt Disney Company) in a $350 million deal that also includes Seattle sister stations
KCPQ and
KZJO, and is concurrent with Nexstar's purchase of
WJZY and
WMYT-TV in
Charlotte, North Carolina from Fox. Fox stated that Milwaukee and Seattle were "two key markets that align with the company's sports rights" (referencing their primary carriage of
Seattle Seahawks and
Green Bay Packers home games, respectively). The sale was completed on March 2, 2020. ==WITI-DT2==