WVTV (channels 18 and 24) is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with The CW and owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

On October 21, 1954, CBS purchased WOKY-TV for $335,000[3] and announced it was moving its programming there from its original affiliate in the city, WCAN-TV (channel 25, now defunct).

Those viewers not lucky enough to get a signal from WBBM-TV in Chicago, WISC-TV in Madison, or WBAY-TV in Green Bay were forced to rely on expensive UHF converters to watch channel 19, and even then the picture quality left a lot to be desired.

WXIX went dark that same day but returned on July 20 of that year after being purchased by Gene Posner, the owner of Cream City Broadcasting and others.

Both the WXIX and WUHF calls now reside with Fox affiliates in Newport, Kentucky (part of the Cincinnati market), and Rochester, New York, respectively.

The WKY Television System, based in Oklahoma City and the forerunner to Gaylord Broadcasting, bought the station in 1966 and changed its call letters to WVTV.

This started the station on its path to becoming one of the most popular independent stations in the country, with strong local programming such as The Bowling Game (which would eventually be syndicated across the Midwest), along with a strong slate of syndicated programs such as cartoons, classic off-network sitcoms, more recent sitcoms, drama series, sports, and movies.

As cable television became more popular, WVTV became a regional superstation in the mold of sister stations KTVT in Fort Worth, KHTV (now KIAH) in Houston and KSTW in Tacoma.

[4] Despite its status as one of the strongest independent stations in the country, channel 18 turned down an offer by the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company for an affiliation in 1986.

WVTV continued to be the leading independent station in the market until Fox came into its own, resulting in a boost in WCGV's ratings.

The station's ownership went into a state of flux after Gaylord began easing out of the television business (except for its stake in The Nashville Network).

Jackson argued that Glencairn ownership was making an end-around by passing itself off as a minority-owned company (its president, Edwin Edwards, was black) when it was really an arm of Sinclair, and used the LMA to gain control of the station.

Sister station WCGV affiliated with MyNetworkTV two weeks before on September 5, creating one of five Sinclair-owned and/or controlled CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies in the country at the time.

The studios of WVTV/WCGV were then located a half-mile south of Lincoln Creek, on the corner of North 35th Street and Capitol Drive, and the building and technical equipment belonging to the stations suffered major damage, forcing channels 18 and 24 off the air for the majority of the time after 6 p.m. on July 22 until the early morning of July 24; the two stations, once they returned to the air, had their programming fed into their master control facilities via another unknown Sinclair master control.

On June 6, 2012, Sinclair received approval from the Milwaukee Common Council's Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee to move to an existing building near the 41/45 Interchange on Milwaukee's northeast side on Calumet Road in the Park Place office park and install receiving satellite dishes, generators and a studio/transmitter link tower, with full Common Council approval coming a week later on June 12.

[11][12][13] From June 2012 until the end of December 2013, the engineering and master control of WVTV/WCGV transmitted 16:9 syndicated programming in full screen, but in standard definition as a stopgap solution until the move to the new studios.

Both stations have seen their talk-heavy daytime lineups struggle against the classic television programming of Weigel's WBME-CD (channel 41), which is one of the flagships of the MeTV network.

[15] By the 2014–15 season, Sinclair had settled on having WVTV's daytime schedule dependent on talk show programming, while WCGV featured a mixed schedule of court shows, sitcoms and lifestyle programming, with WVTV's ratings eventually stabilizing as The CW has found better success in later seasons.

The transaction would have alleviated any regulatory complications involving the sale within Milwaukee, outside any physical and employee assets which would have needed to be sorted out later on (including the then-likely move of the WVTV/My 24 intellectual unit to WITI's Brown Deer facility).

[17] 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.

Tribune also filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division 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.

[24][25][26][27][28][29] Because of non-preemptable coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics on NBC affiliate WTMJ-TV, WVTV aired two Green Bay Packers preseason games against the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos respectively on August 16 and 22 of that year, a role previously taken by Ion Television station WPXE-TV (channel 55) during the 2004 preseason.

The station's signal is multiplexed, with the former WCGV channels numbered with virtual channel 24: On June 23, 2014, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Sony Pictures Entertainment announced an affiliation agreement for Sony's digital subchannel movie network, getTV, which included WVTV for the Milwaukee market and came online the afternoon of July 3.

On February 2, 2009, Sinclair told cable and satellite television providers via e-mail that regardless of the exact mandatory switchover date to digital-only broadcasting for full-power stations (which Congress rescheduled for June 12 days later), the station would shut down its analog signal on the original transition date of February 17.

[39][40] As part of the SAFER Act,[41] WVTV kept its analog signal on the air until March 4 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.