WISH-TV

The station first signed on the air on July 1, 1954[3] at 6:00 p.m. Founded by C. Bruce McConnell—owner of WISH radio (1310 AM, now WTLC)—it was the third television station to sign on in the Indianapolis market, after WFBM-TV (channel 6, now WRTV), which signed on in May 1949 and Bloomington-licensed WTTV (channel 10, now on channel 4), which signed on six months later in November 1949. WISH-TV originally operated as a primary ABC affiliate with a secondary affiliation with DuMont Television Network and NBC.[3] WISH-TV originally transmitted its signal from a tower it shared with WISH radio; the following year, the station constructed a 1,000-foot (305 m) transmitter tower, which allowed the station to improve its signal coverage in the market.

In 1956, McConnell sold the station to the Indiana Broadcasting Company, the broadcasting subsidiary of J.H. Whitney & Company and owners of WANE-TV in Fort Wayne. The new owners persuaded CBS to move its programming to channel 8,[3] taking that affiliation from WFBM. Conversely that same year, WISH-TV lost the ABC affiliation to WTTV; this resulted in WLBC-TV, channel 49 in Muncie (whose allocation is now occupied by PBS member station WIPB) serving as the de facto ABC affiliate for the northern part of the market as WTTV's signal did not extend very far north outside of Indianapolis's northern suburbs as its transmitter was located farther south than the market's other stations. Also in 1956, WISH became one of the first television stations in the United States to install a videotape machine.

WISH-TV's studio facility on Meridian Street.

Indiana Broadcasting became the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation in 1957, with WISH-TV serving as the company's flagship station. From 1958 to 1959, it was an affiliate of the NTA Film Network. Corinthian merged with Dun & Bradstreet in 1971. Dun & Bradstreet sold its entire broadcasting unit to the Belo Corporation in February 1984. However, the merger put Belo two stations over the television ownership limits that the Federal Communications Commission had in effect at the time. As a result, the company sold WISH-TV and WANE to LIN Broadcasting (the predecessor of LIN Media) the following month in March 1984. LIN was headquartered in Indianapolis for many years, with WISH-TV serving as that company's flagship television property; the company eventually moved its headquarters to Providence, Rhode Island in the late 1990s, resulting in WPRI-TV replacing WISH as LIN's flagship station. LIN later acquired low-power independent station W11BV (channel 11, now WIIH-CD channel 17) in 1992. In 1995, WISH-TV relocated its transmitter to a new tower built in the Augusta section of Indianapolis.

WISH-TV signed on its digital signal on VHF channel 9 on December 17, 1998;[4] two days later on December 19, the station broadcast its first program in high definition when it broadcast an NFL game telecast in the format. In 2002, WISH-TV began handling the master control operations of WANE-TV and fellow sister station WLFI-TV in Lafayette. The hub expanded to include the Buffalo duopoly of WIVB-TV and WNLO in October, with other LIN-owned stations gradually being added to the WISH hub by the summer of 2003.[5]

On February 10, 2005, the Paramount Stations Group subsidiary of Viacom sold UPN affiliate WNDY-TV (channel 23, now a MyNetworkTV affiliate) as well as its Columbus, Ohio sister station WWHO to LIN TV for $85 million, creating a duopoly with WISH-TV when the sale was finalized that spring.[6] On May 18, 2007, the LIN TV Corporation announced that it was exploring strategic alternatives that could have resulted in the sale of the company.[7]

On September 15, 2008, LIN and Time Warner Cable entered into an impasse during negotiations to renew retransmission consent deals for some of the group's television stations. Bright House Networks, one of two major cable providers serving Indianapolis, negotiates retransmission consent contracts through Time Warner Cable. LIN TV requested compensation for carriage of its stations in a manner similar to the deals that cable networks have with pay television providers, as other broadcast station owners began to seek compensation from cable and satellite providers for their programming. The carriage agreement with Bright House expired on October 2.[8] By 12:35 a.m. on October 3, LIN's television stations were replaced on Time Warner Cable systems in markets where the group owns stations and where either provider operates systems with programming from other cable channels. LIN's stations (with the exception of WIIH-CA) were restored 26 days later on October 29 through a new carriage agreement reached between Time Warner Cable and LIN TV.

The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition VHF channel 9.[9][10] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 8.

On August 7, 2009, WISH-TV began operating a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 8.1, which originally was only accessible via an app for BlackBerry devices.[11]

On January 29, 2010, LIN TV filed an application to the FCC to operate a digital fill-in translator on UHF channel 17,[12] an allotment that was previously occupied by the analog signal of Class A sister station WIIH-CA; the FCC granted a construction permit to build the translator's transmitter facilities on June 16.[13] The translator, which shares the same transmitter facility as WISH's main signal in the Augusta section of Indianapolis and began operating on January 13, 2011, serves parts of Indianapolis that lost signal coverage after the 2009 digital transition. The translator is mapped as virtual channel 8, which results in PSIP channel duplication while tuning sequentially on digital tuners in areas that are able to receive both signals, as the translator simulcasts WISH-TV's main channel and its two digital subchannels. As mentioned above, in late March 2015, a simulcast of WISH's main signal was added via WNDY-DT3.

On March 21, 2014, Media General announced that it would buy LIN Media in a $1.6 billion deal, described as a "merger."[14][15] The merger was completed on December 19.[16]

On August 11, 2014, Tribune Broadcasting announced that CW affiliate WTTV would become the market's CBS affiliate on January 1, 2015, as part of an agreement that also renewed the CBS affiliations on Tribune-owned stations in five other markets.[17] The deal, which resulted in the end of WISH-TV's 58-year relationship with CBS, was reportedly struck as a result of WISH station management balking at the network's demands for sharing of retransmission consent revenue from its affiliates.[18] This marked the second time in Indianapolis television history that WTTV took an affiliation from WISH, the first being ABC in 1956.

As the other major broadcast networks had existing affiliation deals with other area stations (WRTV's ABC affiliation was up for renewal around this time, though the E. W. Scripps Company reached a deal to allow WRTV and nine of the company's other stations to remain with ABC the day prior to the announcement[19]), WISH announced on December 11, 2014 that it would become an independent station upon losing CBS, filling timeslots previously occupied by network shows with additional newscasts and an expanded inventory of syndicated talk shows, newsmagazines and sitcoms,[20] including some shows relocated from sister station WNDY-TV to make up for the loss of CBS daytime and late-night programs on channel 8's schedule and a national news program from TouchVision (the latter of which was later replaced with an additional half-hour of the station's morning newscast, 24-Hour News 8's Daybreak, on July 13, 2015) to serve as a replacement for the CBS Morning News.[20][21][22]

However, on December 22, 2014, Tribune announced that it would sell the market's CW affiliation to Media General—the deal occurred three days after the completion of the company's merger with LIN. As a result, WISH instead became a CW affiliate, in effect switching affiliations with WTTV and preventing a situation in which The CW, which WTTV originally planned on carrying over its second digital subchannel (which had previously been affiliated with This TV prior to December 2014), would be relegated to the lower digital subchannel tier on local cable systems and probable subjection to non-carriage by satellite providers for months until carriage agreements were struck.[23][24] The loss of WISH's CBS affiliation also affected the Media General-LIN merger, with the purchase price being lowered by $110 million in stock, though no other factors were affected.[25]

Media General signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment to affiliate several of its stations with GetTV. WISH added the network on its .2 subchannel on February 1, 2016.[26]

After a failed bid for Media General to merge with Meredith Corporation,[27][28] Nexstar Broadcasting acquired Media General in January 2017. The WISH-WNDY duopoly gained new sister stations in nearby markets within Indiana: the Evansville virtual duopoly of ABC affiliate WEHT and fellow CW affiliate WTVW, and the Terre Haute virtual duopoly of NBC affiliate WTWO and ABC affiliate WAWV-TV. CBS affiliate WANE-TV in Fort Wayne was the only existing sister station of WISH and WNDY that became part of the combined group, as Media General and Nexstar each sold certain Indiana stations they already owned (Nexstar's Fox affiliate WFFT-TV in Fort Wayne and Media General's two other Indiana-based CBS affiliates, WTHI-TV in Terre Haute and WLFI-TV in Lafayette to Heartland Media, and Nexstar's WEVV-TV in Evansville to Bayou City Broadcasting) to alleviate conflicts with FCC ownership rules.[29][30][31][32][33]

In late March 2015, Media General added a 1080i HD simulcast feed of WISH's main signal on the 23.3 subchannel of WNDY-TV, mainly for the convenience of over-the-air viewers, especially those unable to receive WISH's VHF channel 9 signal due to signal limitations by way of their geographic location in proximity to the transmitter and or a lack of an antenna able to properly receive VHF signals.[34] In January 2016, the station converted the subchannel from a 24-hour feed of its Doppler radar into an affiliate of the Justice Network.[35]

On December 3, 2018, Nexstar announced it would acquire the assets of Chicago-based Tribune Media—which has owned Fox affiliate WXIN (channel 59) since July 1996 and CBS affiliate WTTV since July 2002—for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. Due to FCC ownership rules, Nexstar could not retain both duopolies.[36][37][38][39] On April 8, 2019, it was announced that Circle City Broadcasting (owned by DuJuan McCoy of Indianapolis, the then-principal owner of the aforementioned, now defunct, Bayou City Broadcasting) would acquire WISH and WNDY for $42.5 million.[1][40] The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

WISH-TV originally launched digital subchannel 8.2 in 2005 as an over-the-air feed of its 24-hour weather service, LWS (or "Local Weather Station"); formatted similarly to the now-defunct SkyTrak Weather Network service previously operated by WTHR and its low-power sister station WALV-CD (channel 46), the service also began to be simulcast on low-power sister station WIIH-CA on January 1, 2009, after that station lost its Univision affiliation; WIIH-CA dropped the service when it was converted into a fill-in translator of WISH-TV in January 2011. Until February 2016, Channel 8 carried a half-hour simulcast of the LWS service on its primary channel on Friday nights/early Saturday mornings.

• Mike Barz - anchor/reporter
• Chet Coppock - sportscaster (1974–1981; later at WMVP-AM in Chicago; deceased)[53]
• Eboni Deon - weekend meteorologist, (now at WFTV) [54]
• Debby Knox - anchor (1980–2013; retired November 26, 2013; came out of retirement as anchor for WTTV on January 1, 2015)[55]
• Nicole Manske - sports anchor/reporter (2004–2006; now at ESPN)[56]
• Mark Patrick - sports director (1990–1999)[57]
• Jane Pauley - weekend anchor (1972–1975; later co-anchor of Today, now host of CBS News Sunday Morning)[58]
• Rolland Smith - anchor (1967–1969)[59]
• Sage Steele - sports reporter (1997–1998; now at ESPN)[60]
• John Stehr - anchor (later at WTHR; retired June 20, 2018)[61]
• Anne Marie Tiernon - anchor/reporter (1991–2000; now at WTHR)[62]
• Vince Welch - sports anchor (1990–1995; later with ESPN, now with Fox Sports)[63]