WFFT-TV (channel 55) is a television station in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States, affiliated with the Fox network.

Owned by Allen Media Group, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities on Hillegas Road in Fort Wayne.

Due to the severity of the storm, engineers were trapped at the station, and rather than sign off the air as they normally would, they got permission from management to simply continue transmitting.

They filled the time with information about the weather situation (to the degree that they could given their limited resources), and public domain films and videos from the station's library.

The appeal of 24-hour broadcasting was so popular, it later ended up staying on the air all night each Friday and Saturday on a regular basis during a time when the other Fort Wayne stations would sign-off around 1 or 2 a.m.; it filled the overnight timeslot with a feature film showcase called Nite Owl Theatre, which began with the opening refrain of "(I've Been) Searchin' So Long" by Chicago as its theme music.

In later years, Friday late nights featured classic horror movies such as: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mole People and Invasion of the Body Snatchers hosted by a character called "The Shroud" on Nightmare Theatre (of which only one episode is currently known to exist[3]).

Beginning in 1982, the station carried programming from CNN Headline News during various parts of the day, including the overnight hours on weekdays.

The show was based on an original program called Happy's Hour, that had begun broadcasting on WTVQ, Channel 62, in Lexington, Kentucky in 1976.

During commercial breaks, local entrepreneur Mike Fry donned a hobo clown costume to entertain the children in the audience.

A local clown, 'Chuckles', played by Charles Willer, turned down the Happy part when the station asked him to retire his other character as a condition of employment.

WFFT's programming—apart from the required Fox schedule—was centered around syndicated fare including daytime talk and court shows, and reruns of network sitcoms.

On July 25, 2011, Nexstar Broadcasting filed an antitrust lawsuit against Granite Broadcasting, claiming that the company tried to monopolize advertising sales through its shared services agreement with WPTA (owned by Malara Broadcast Group) and the five network affiliations shared between WPTA and WISE-TV (WPTA carries ABC on its primary channel and The CW on a second digital subchannel, while WISE-TV carries NBC on its primary channel as Fox and MyNetworkTV shared that station's second digital subchannel).

[10] WFFT reverted to independent status on August 1, 2011, which made Fort Wayne one of the only television markets in the United States with all three legacy broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) with primary affiliations, and all three current post-1986 networks (Fox, The CW and MyNetworkTV) carried as digital multicast channels in a market with four commercial full-power stations.

Nexstar announced on June 13, 2016, that it would sell WFFT-TV and four other stations to Heartland Media, through its USA Television MidAmerica Holdings joint venture with MSouth Equity Partners, for $115 million.

Airing for 35 minutes on weeknights and anchored by broadcast veteran Jim Blue, the show competed with a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast on WISE-DT2 that was produced by WPTA and WISE-TV's Indiana's NewsCenter operation.

Until December 2007, the signal transmitted programming only in standard definition at an effective radiated power of 980 watts limiting reception to within miles of the station.

[citation needed] This was due to contractual agreements by the Fox network itself which disallow signal duplication of network programming by an out-of-market signal despite the station's longtime service to each area, a source of controversy already in other duplicative market areas in the past, as was the case in October 2008 when WANE-TV was pulled from Bright House.