WLIO

WLIO is the NBC-affiliated television station for Northwest Ohio licensed to Lima. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 8 from a transmitter at its studios on Rice Avenue in the city. The station can also be seen on Time Warner Cable channel 5 and in high definition on digital channel 1005. Owned by Block Communications, WLIO shares its studios with its sister station, Class A ABC affiliate WOHL-CD.

Digital channels

History

The station signed-on April 18, 1953 with the calls WLOK-TV. It aired an analog signal on UHF channel 73. The station was owned by WLOK, Inc., a company that had former Ohio State football great Lloyd A. Pixley as its president. The station was co-owned with WLOK radio (1240 AM and 103.3 FM). WLOK-TV carried programming from all four networks of the Golden Age of television (NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont). It would eventually lose secondary affiliations with DuMont in 1956, CBS in 1972, and ABC in 1982.

In 1952, Federal Communications Commission files show two television construction permits for Lima. In addition to WLOK-TV on channel 73, Northwestern Ohio Broadcasting Corporation, owner of WIMA radio (1150 AM and 102.1 FM, now WIMT) and controlled by George E. Hamilton and Robert W. Mack, had applied for channel 35. After the death of Lloyd Pixley, WIMA bought the WLOK stations on April 24, 1955 to obtain WLOK-TV. Because FCC rules at that time forbade licensees from owning multiple AM or FM stations in the same market, the WLOK radio licenses were offered to Ohio Northern University, but the university declined due to the costs of operating them, and the licenses were surrendered to the FCC for cancellation. Northwestern Ohio Broadcasting Corporation then filed to modify WLOK-TV's license to specify operation on channel 35, supplanting its earlier construction permit, and changed its call letters to WIMA-TV to match its new radio sisters.