Wews-tv history

WAKR-TV's launch was delayed for several years: originally intended as a VHF license on a channel 11 allocation assigned to Akron, that allocation was removed as a result of the FCC's 1952 Sixth Report and Order in favor of two UHF allocations, one of which was not considered operable at the time.

WAKR-TV (channel 49) began operations on June 7, 1953, as a primary ABC affiliate, two years prior to WEWS joining the network.

WEWS originally operated as a CBS affiliate, with secondary ABC and DuMont affiliations; it lost the CBS affiliation to WJW-TV (channel 8) in 1955 after that station's then-owner, Storer Broadcasting, used its influence with CBS to land the affiliation.

The station later lost the DuMont affiliation when that network ceased operations in 1956.

The station largely lost money in its early years and relied on profits from WAKR in order to remain solvent even after it moved from channel 49 to channel 23 in 1967.

In 1977, WEWS-TV went before the United States Supreme Court for recording and broadcasting the entire human cannonball act of Hugo Zacchini.

When founding owner Summit Radio/Group One Broadcasting sold off their radio assets in 1986, the TV station was renamed WAKC.

WEWS (Channel 5), the first television station in Ohio and only the 16th in the nation, went on the air officially on 17 Dec. Its uplink satellite was the first of its kind in Cleveland, and in 1991 WEWS introduced the 24-hour newsroom concept with live, hourly updates.

After nearly 40 years of continuous ownership by Summit/Group One, WAKC was sold to ValueVision in late 1993; ABC immediately renewed their affiliation after the sale closed, forcing the home shopping programmer into operating the station as a conventional network affiliate.

Following consummation of a subsequent sale to Paxson Communications, the station's entire news department was fired outright on February 28, 1996 and all ABC programming was dropped that December 31.

Paxson ultimately used the renamed WVPX-TV as a charter affiliate for the Pax TV network—a direct antecedent of Ion Television—which launched on August 31, 1998.