The station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and maintains studios on West Maple Street in Kalamazoo; its transmitter is located in northwest Yankee Springs Township on Chief Noonday Road/M-179 near Patterson Road.
In 1958, the WKZO stations moved their operations to an old car dealership on West Maple Avenue in Kalamazoo, the "Fetzer Broadcast House."
[attribution needed] In 1985, Fetzer retired and began selling off his vast broadcasting empire, which by this time included, among other holdings, WWTV in Cadillac, Michigan, and KOLN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska.
[attribution needed] Freedom announced on November 2, 2011, that it would exit from television and sell its stations, including WWMT, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
As a result, WWMT and WLAJ joined Fox affiliate WSMH in Flint as two of the three Sinclair-owned television properties in the state of Michigan.
On February 16, 2016, upon the completion of the merger between Schurz Communications and Gray Television, South Bend CBS affiliate WSBT-TV was spun off to Sinclair to meet regulatory guidelines, allowing WWMT and WSBT to become sister operations to one another for the first time, outside of existing news video sharing agreements.
[5][6][7][8][9] On April 24, 2018, in an amendment to the Tribune acquisition through which it proposed the sale of certain stations to both independent and affiliated third-party companies to curry the DOJ's approval, Sinclair announced that it would sell WXMI and eight other stations – Sinclair-operated KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, WRLH-TV in Richmond, WOLF-TV (along with LMA partners WSWB and WQMY) in Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, KDSM-TV in Des Moines and WXLV-TV in Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point, and Tribune-owned WPMT in Harrisburg – to Standard Media Group (an independent broadcast holding company formed by private equity firm Standard General to assume ownership of and absolve ownership conflicts involving the aforementioned stations) for $441.1 million.
[10][11][12][13][14] Three weeks after the FCC's July 18 vote to have the deal reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, on August 9, 2018, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal, intending to seek other M&A opportunities.
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 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.
The termination of the Sinclair sale agreement placed uncertainty for the future of Standard Media's purchases of WXMI and the other six Tribune- and Sinclair-operated stations included in that deal, which were predicated on the closure of the Sinclair–Tribune merger.
To assist in story-gathering efforts in these areas, it operates a bureau on Michigan Avenue West in downtown Battle Creek.
On two occasions, WWMT's existence prevented WOTV, the other major station based in the southern part of the market, from establishing a local news presence.
Marketing director Mark Bishop told the Grand Rapids Press that "McAtee will be active in the Navy Reserve for a year or two.
Weekday morning news anchor Jeff Varner (participant in Survivor: The Australian Outback) moved to the weeknight broadcasts alongside Judy Markee.
[28] On September 18, 2008, WWMT began producing a nightly prime time newscast at 10 p.m. on its CW-affiliated second digital subchannel.
After WLAJ came under the ownership of Shield Media on March 1, 2013, all news programming produced by WWMT ceased airing on the Lansing station and was replaced by newscasts from WLNS-TV.