WVVA-DT2

WVVA-DT2 is the CW-affiliated television station for Southern West Virginia and Southwestern Virginia. The station is part of The CW Plus which is a special national CW feed broadcasting on cable and/or over-the-air on a digital signal. It is a second digital subchannel of NBC affiliate WVVA owned by Quincy Newspapers. Over-the-air, WVVA-DT2 broadcasts a standard definition digital signal on UHF channel 46.2 (PSIP virtual channel 6.2) from a transmitter on East River Mountain along the Virginia and West Virginia state line. Known on-air as Two Virginias' CW, it can also be seen on Comcast channel 10 and Suddenlink channel 18.

History

The station launched in late-1998 as a cable-only station with the fictional call sign "WBB". It was a WB affiliate through The WB 100+ which was a similar operation to the current CW Plus service. "WBB" was identified on-air as "West Virginia's WB 18" (based on its channel location on cable). WVVA provided promotional and advertising services for this station. On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced the two networks would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined service would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of corporate parents "C"BS (the parent company of UPN) and the "W"arner Bros. unit of Time Warner.

WVVA

WVVA, channel 6, is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Bluefield, West Virginia, USA, owned by the Quincy Newspapers media chain. The station's studios are located on U.S. Route 460 in Bluefield, and its transmitter is based at East River Mountain, near the West Virginia-Virginia border.

Digital channels

History

The station went on the air on July 31, 1955, under the special commitment of a VHF allotment made to Bluefield following the release of the Federal Communications Commission's Sixth Report and Order in 1952. Because of its proposed antenna height and location on East River Mountain, the channel 6 allocation in Bluefield was short-spaced to WATE-TV (also on channel 6) in Knoxville, Tennessee and side-spaced to WCYB-TV (on adjacent channel 5) in Bristol, Virginia. As a result, the proposed station on the channel 6 frequency would therefore be limited to one-half of the visual maximum effective radiated power, or 50,000 watts effective radiated power.

The station's original call letters were WHIS-TV, named for West Virginia politician Hugh Ike Shott. Shott died in 1953, two years before the station made it to air, and his heirs were channel 6's original owners. The Shotts constructed a privately owned microwave relay system to receive NBC programming from WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, the closest and most accessible city receiving network signals. When it was completed in September WHIS-TV began carrying NBC programs, the first being The Pinky Lee Show. The station's operations were originally housed in the Bluefield Municipal Building; on January 1, 1967, the WHIS stations moved into new facilities on Big Laurel Highway (U.S. Routes 19 and 460), known as "Broadcast Center," and channel 6 began full color operations.