WVAH-TV (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Charleston, West Virginia, United States, serving the Charleston–Huntington media market as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Catchy Comedy. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of dual ABC/Fox affiliate WCHS-TV (channel 8, also licensed to Charleston), for the provision of certain services. However, Sinclair effectively owns WVAH-TV as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. The two stations share studios on Piedmont Road in Charleston; WVAH-TV's transmitter is located atop Coal Mountain, south of Scott Depot, West Virginia.
History
Debut on channel 23
The station began airing an analog signal on UHF channel 23 on September 19, 1982, with an
Elvis Presley movie marathon. It was owned by the newly created Meridian Communications based out of
Pittsburgh, which won the license after the West Virginia Legislature forced West Virginia Public Broadcasting to withdraw its own application for the channel. It was the first independent station in West Virginia, as well as the first new commercial station in the market since what is now
WOWK-TV (channel 13) signed-on in 1955, and the first commercial UHF station in the state since
WKNA-TV in Charleston went off-the-air in 1955. Studios were located on Mount Vernon Road in
Teays Valley, an unincorporated area halfway between Huntington and Charleston, though its mailing address said Hurricane (the two areas share a ZIP code). It became a charter Fox affiliate on October 9, 1986. Act III Broadcasting bought the station in 1987, along with
WRGT-TV in Dayton, Ohio, from Meridian Communications, in a two-station group deal.
Move to channel 11
Soon after buying control, Act III applied to move the station to the
VHF band. Despite broadcasting from a tower with the maximum five million
of power, WVAH had considerable difficulty penetrating the market. The Charleston–Huntington market covers 61 counties in Central West Virginia, Eastern
Kentucky, and Southern
Ohio. Most of this area is a very rugged dissected plateau, and as a result, UHF stations usually do not get good reception in this kind of terrain. Some areas of the market were among the few where
cable television still wasn't available. As a result, WVAH was permitted to switch to VHF channel 11 on April 11, 1988,
barely two years after Fox's launch. This marked the first time that any station in the United States signed off as a UHF station, and return to the air as a VHF station.
However, the station was short-spaced to
WPXI in Pittsburgh and
WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tennessee. It then had to conform its signal to protect WJHL. As a result, it did not provide a clear over-the-air signal to the southwestern part of the market.
On January 16, 1995, WVAH began airing UPN programming during overnight hours. However, the station could not clear the entire schedule and dropped the network in early 2000.
Act III merged with Abry Broadcast Partners in 1995, with the company's stations coming under the Sullivan Broadcasting banner.
Following a tower collapse in 2002, WVAH moved its transmitter and almost all of its facilities to WCHS' studios in Charleston. However, its main studios remained in Teays Valley until late 2009.
On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WVAH-TV, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming until 2017.[ Sinclair Reups With Fox, Gets WUTB Option, TVNewsCheck, May 15, 2012.]
Losing Fox
On February 1, 2021, Sinclair moved its Fox affiliation to sister station WCHS-TV on channel 8.2, although it still markets the signal as "Fox 11". Sinclair did so in several markets to consolidate its affiliations onto stations owned directly by Sinclair rather than with its sidecar divisions.
The station began to carry programming from Weigel Broadcasting's Decades network (now known as
Catchy Comedy).
Carriage dispute
In summer 2006, Charter Communications streamlined its operations which included selling off portions of its cable system which were "geographically non-strategic". Charter accounts in the Charleston–Huntington area were purchased by Suddenlink Communications (formerly known as Cebridge). Sinclair requested a $40 million one time fee and a $1 per sub per month fee from Suddenlink for retransmission rights of WVAH and WCHS on the Suddenlink cable system.
This led to a protracted media battle and smear campaign between the two companies and Sinclair pulled the two stations from Suddenlink's lineup in the Beckley market. After several weeks of negotiations, the two companies reached an agreement allowing WVAH and WCHS to continue transmission over the Suddenlink cable system. The terms of the agreement were not released to the public.
Newscasts
As a Fox affiliate, WVAH had aired newscasts produced by sister station WCHS under the
Eyewitness News branding. This included
Eyewitness News This Morning on Fox 11, which was seen weekday mornings from 6 to 8 a.m., along with a 6:30 p.m. half-hour newscast weeknights, and an hour-long 10 p.m. newscast every night until the Fox affiliation moved to WCHS-DT2 in February 2021.
[ WVAH schedule - WVAH.com]
Transition to local HD
WCHS and WVAH started the switch over to high definition in June 2012 by first installing a new HD Master Control room. In July 2012, the station started to remove the set from the studio that was installed in the late 1990s. The old news desk, backdrop, monitors, and the chroma key wall were moved to a small conference room in the station until the transition to HD news was completed. In late July 2012, the new set arrived from Devlin Design Group based out of Crested Butte, Colorado. During the months of August and September, the new set was installed. On September 29, 2012, WCHS and WVAH became the third and fourth stations in the market to launch high definition newscasts.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:
+Subchannels of WVAH-TV | Channel
! scope = "col" | Res.
! scope = "col" | Aspect
! scope = "col" | Short name
! scope = "col" | Programming |
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Analog-to-digital conversion
WVAH-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition
UHF channel 19, using
virtual channel 11.
[ CDBS Print]
As part of the SAFER Act,
See also
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Channel 11 virtual TV stations in the United States
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Channel 24 digital TV stations in the United States
