WNYO-TV
WNYO-TV is a broadcast television station in
Buffalo, New York,
United States, affiliated with
The WB network. It broadcasts on channel 49. It is owned by the
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which also owns
WUTV, the
Fox affiliate in the Buffalo market. WNYO runs a general entertainment format featuring WB prime time first-run shows, cartoons from Kids WB, sitcoms, first-run talk shows, reality shows, and court shows.
WNYO's transmitter is located in
Cowlesville, New York at 2034 Folsomdale Road. It is commonly known as
Buffalo's WB49, but will soon change its moniker to
MyTV Buffalo. [
1]. The station originally planned for the its moniker to be
"NYO 10" (10 being their channel assignment on most area
cable television systems), but the plans were changed soon after the affiliation agreement with MNTV. [
2]
Channel 49 was founded on
February 15,
1984 as
WBKL-TV' but then changed its call letters to
WNYB-TV just twelve days later. That came into play even though the station did not begin its broadcasting operation until
1987. It began first -- as a
Fox affiliate as Fox 49, under a corporate deal from its owner, TVX. In
1988, the station was sold to
Act III Broadcasting, which almost immediately turned around and offered to buy
WUTV Channel 29 from Citadel Broadcasting. Citadel accepted the offer in
1989, and the sale was finalized in June
1990. Act III moved WNYB's programming (including its Fox affiliation) to WUTV. WNYB was then sold to
Tri-State Christian Television and began to carry religious programming full-time, including programming from the
Trinity Broadcasting Network.
Grant Broadcasting acquired Channel 26 in
Jamestown in
1995, and negotiated with Tri-State Christian Television for Channel 49 in exchange for Channel 26 and cash, as well as a new broadcasting facility. As a result, in September
1996, Trinity Broadcasting moved to Channel 26 along with the WNYB call letters, and Channel 49 became WNYO, a
WB affiliate.
The
Sinclair Broadcast Group purchased WUTV in
1997 and WNYO in
2001, making WUTV and WNYO sister stations. Because of this, WNYO will become an affiliate of Fox's new
My Network TV in September
2006, thus ending the WB Network on Channel 49. (Current
UPN affiliate
WNLO, owned by
LIN TV, will become an affiliate of
The CW Television Network at that time.)
Until March 2006, it ran the
WB49 News at Ten, a nightly newscast as part of Sinclair's
News Central operation. However, due to poor ratings and poor responses regarding the structure of that newscast, WNYO cancelled its own news operation;
News Central folded at the end of March.
On April 13, 2006, Sinclair announced that NBC affiliate
WGRZ-TV will produce a new 10PM newscast for WNYO, to be called
2 On NYO 10 at 10, using WGRZ's current news staff. That newscast began Thursday, April 20, but was not called
2 On NYO 10 at 10, but called
2 News on 49, Ten at 10. [
3] [
4]
*
WNYO WB49 Homepage
