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WRTV history
WRTV company history timeline
The station first signed on the air on May 30, 1949, as WFBM-TV. Founded by the Consolidated Television and Radio Broadcasters subsidiary of the Bitner Group, owners of radio station WFBM (1260 AM, now WNDE), it is the oldest television station in the state of Indiana.
Bitner sold its broadcasting interests to magazine publisher Time-Life in 1957.
In late October 1970, WFBM-AM-FM-TV were sold to McGraw-Hill in a group deal that also involved Time-Life's other radio and television combinations in Denver, San Diego and Grand Rapids, Michigan; and KERO-TV in Bakersfield, California.
By the time the sale was finalized in June 1972, the purchase price for the entire group was just over $57 million.
The two networks swapped affiliations in Indianapolis on June 1, 1979, with WRTV becoming the market's new ABC affiliate, and WTHR (channel 13) becoming an NBC affiliate.
On October 3, 2011, The McGraw-Hill Companies announced that it would sell its seven-station broadcasting division, including WRTV, to the E. W. Scripps Company for $212 million.
The sale received FCC approval on November 29, 2011, and was formally consummated on December 30.
In June 2012, WRTV opened a secondary facility at the studios of news/talk radio station WIBC (93.1 FM) in downtown Indianapolis; most of the station's newscasts are produced out of the Monument Circle studio, which underwent renovations to house production facilities.
by Ryan Hamlett | Nov 12, 2013 | Historic Miscellania | 14 |
In May 2014, Scripps announced that WRTV's North Meridian Street studios would begin handling the master control operations of the company's 19 television stations as early as July of that year, expanding upon an existing regional centralcasting hub built under McGraw-Hill ownership.
On August 13, 2020, WRTV dropped its longtime "RTV6" moniker, and began branding itself as simply "WRTV: Working for You". Concurrent with the move, the station introduced a new logo; for the first time in WRTV's 71-year history, the station's analog/virtual channel number was not shown.
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Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of WRTV, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about WRTV. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at WRTV. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by WRTV. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of WRTV and its employees or that of Zippia.
WRTV may also be known as or be related to WRTV and Wrtv.