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WEVV-TV (channel 44) is a television station in Evansville, Indiana, United States, affiliated with CBS, Fox, and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Allen Media Group, the station maintains studios on Carpenter and Bond streets in downtown Evansville and a transmitter at John James Audubon State Park in Henderson, Kentucky.
WEVV-TV began broadcasting on November 17, 1983, as an independent station. Put on the air by local investors, it was owned from 1985 to 1999 by Ralph C. Wilson Industries. The station became affiliated with Fox in 1986, moved to new downtown studio facilities in 1990, and launched a local news department in 1992, initially providing the market's first 9 p.m. local newscast. In 1995, a three-station affiliation switch resulted in WEVV becoming a CBS affiliate. Wilson sold the station to Communications Corporation of America (ComCorp) in 1999; it was ComCorp's only broadcast property outside of Texas and Louisiana. The news department was shuttered due to low ratings in July 2001.
In 2011, an affiliation dispute led to WEVV becoming the Fox affiliate again, this time on its 44.2 subchannel. After Bayou City Broadcasting acquired WEVV in 2014, it moved the station into its present facilities and relaunched local news in August 2015. Allen acquired the station in 2019. WEVV produces local newscasts for air on its CBS and Fox subchannels.
Family TV had not built the station by July 1982, when Dick Shively was hired to help start the operation. Shively's extensive experience in broadcasting, including in Evansville, was deemed necessary because lenders were unwilling to lend capital to the company due to its lack of track record. In early 1983, Shively and two other investors acquired 49 percent of the construction permit, which then bore the call sign WAFV ("American Family Viewing"). With its new investors, channel 44 secured the rights to telecast Evansville Purple Aces athletic events, beating out NBC affiliate WFIE (channel 14) by offering to air more basketball games. Shively also arranged for the call sign to be changed to WEVV, over the objections of WEHT. The transfer of partial ownership and a loan agreement were not timely notified to the FCC, resulting in a fine assessed in 1984.
After the first attempt to sign on November 10 was scrapped due to moisture in the transmission line, WEVV debuted on November 17, 1983. It had offices in the Executive Inn in Evansville and a transmitter site south of the Ohio River east of U.S. 41 in Kentucky. Its programming consisted of cartoons, syndicated programs, and movies.
From the moment Wilson purchased WEVV, the company sought to build studios in a high-visibility area of Evansville to raise channel 44's profile alongside increased community involvement. The company scouted several sites before choosing a downtown property at Main Street and Riverside Drive. Plans were approved in February 1989, in spite of a consultant report that riverfront development be more engaging with the waterfront than WEVV planned, The station moved into the studios at 44 Main Street in January 1990. Station management hoped that the new, facility would help the station capture more commercial production business.
The new studio facility was also home to a major expansion. General manager Skip Simms, who had desired to add news since he assumed the position in 1989 and had tried to do so sooner, announced in October 1991 that the station would produce an hour-long 9 p.m. local newscast on weeknights. At the time, nearby large-market Fox affiliates in Indianapolis (WXIN) and Louisville (WDRB) had both started newscasts in recent years. Fox 44 News at 9 debuted on February 23, 1992. WEVV, with the first new local news department in Evansville since WTVW (channel 7) began broadcasting in 1956, aimed to deliver longer-form, more detail-oriented stories on local news and issues. In April 1993, WEVV expanded to Sunday night news; the 30-minute program was higher-rated, leading the station to change its weeknight newscasts to a half-hour two months later.
WEVV expanded in 1993 by starting a new low-power TV station with programming focused on sports: WYYW-CD "TSN", specializing in sports programming.
The switch took place December 4, 1995. However, some CBS programs moved to channel 44 earlier as WEHT dropped them to pick up ABC programming dropped by WTVW. Programs including The Price Is Right, The Late Late Show, and CBS This Morning moved to channel 44 earlier than other CBS shows. Many syndicated programs channel 44 no longer had time to air with its commitments to CBS's larger program lineup were moved to TSN.
Switching to CBS also brought changes to the news department. The station did not air a 6 p.m. newscast, presenting an early report at 5 p.m. and counterprogramming the other stations with reruns of The Simpsons. The early news-and-interviews program, known as 44 at 5, fared poorly in the ratings and was converted to a regular 5 p.m. newscast in July 1996. From 1995 to 1998, WEVV and Owensboro, Kentucky–based Century Communications collaborated on a 9 p.m., cable-only newscast covering Owensboro news.
WEVV-TV shut down its news department on the afternoon of July 17, 2001. ComCorp management found that the ratings performance for news had fallen below the entertainment programming the station offered: ComCorp spokesman Tim Lynch told the Evansville Courier & Press, "It was just a decision we made, and it's kind of a situation where the viewing public in Evansville has said that they love our entertainment programming. They did not like our news." Forty employees were dismissed, some of them having an inkling that the news department was receiving fewer and fewer resources.
ComCorp put its stations on the market in 2005 ahead of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the next year, unable to reach debt repayment deals with its lenders. That August, WEVV began broadcasting a digital high-definition signal. WTSN-LP, which became a MyNetworkTV affiliate, was broadcast as subchannel 44.2. WTSN and WEVV parted ways in 2009, with the former becoming an America One affiliate.
WEVV-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, on June 12, 2009, the official digital television transition date. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 45.
Bayou City ownership brought major changes to WEVV. It moved out of the Main Street studio and to WTVW's former studios on Carpenter Street, which had sat vacant since that station merged into WEHT; the Main Street facility is now occupied by public broadcasting WNIN-FM and WNIN TV, which moved in in 2017. The move coincided with the return of local news to channel 44. Before taking control, McCoy announced his intention to restore newscasts for the first time since 2001. The newscasts premiered on August 3, 2015, consisting of morning news (4:30 to 7 a.m. on CBS and Fox and 7 to 9 a.m. on Fox alone) plus half-hour noon, 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 10 p.m. broadcasts on CBS and an hour-long 9 p.m. newscast on Fox.
On January 17, 2025, Allen Media Group announced plans to cut local meteorologist/weather forecaster positions from its stations, including WEVV, and replacing them with a "weather hub" produced by The Weather Channel, which the company also owns. The decision was reversed within a week by management in response to "viewer and advertiser reaction". Amid financial woes and rising debt, Allen Media Group announced on June 1 that it would explore strategic options, such as a sale of its television stations. On August 8, it was announced that AMG would sell a package of stations including WEVV and WEEV-LD to Gray Media for $171 million; in the Evansville market, this would create a duopoly with WFIE.
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WEEV-LD carries the Fox subchannel on a standalone basis:
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