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WTTO / WDBB
WTTO: Homewood/Birmingham, Alabama WDBB: Bessemer/Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Branding	CW 21
Channels	Analog: WTTO: 21 (UHF) WDBB: 17 (UHF) Digital: WTTO: 28 (UHF) WDBB: 18 (UHF)
Affiliations	The CW Raycom Sports
Owner	Sinclair Broadcast Group (WTTO: WTTO Licensee, LLC) (WDBB: WDBB-TV, Inc.)
First air date	WTTO: April 21, 1982 WDBB: October 1984[1]
Call letters’ meaning	WTTO: Television Twenty- One[2] WDBB: DuBose Broadcasting (original owners of WDBB)
Sister station(s)	WABM
Former affiliations	WTTO: independent (1982-1991) Fox (1991-1996) WDBB: independent (1984-1986) Fox (1986-1996, simulcast with WTTO from 1991) Both stations: The WB (1996-2006)
Transmitter Power	WTTO: 1050 kW (analog) 765 kW (digital) WDBB: 2240 kW (analog) 350 kW (digital)
Height	WTTO: 408 m (analog) 427.3 m (digital) WDBB: 675 m (both)
Facility ID	WTTO: 74138 WDBB: 71325
Transmitter Coordinates	WTTO: 33°29′4.5″N 86°48′25.5″W / 33.484583, -86.807083 WDBB: 33°28′51.3″N 87°24′2.9″W / 33.480917, -87.400806 (WDBB)
Website	www.wtto21.com

WTTO is the CW affiliate for the Birmingham/Anniston/Tuscaloosa, Alabama market. It broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 21 and its digital signal on UHF channel 28. It is licensed to Homewood, a Birmingham suburb. Its transmitter is located on Red Mountain.

WDBB is a satellite of WTTO, and is licensed to Bessemer, another Birmingham suburb, but primarily serves the Tuscaloosa area. It broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 17 and its digital signal on UHF channel 18. Its transmitter is located near Windham Springs.

Both stations are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which also owns sister station WABM, the local My Network TV affiliate.

History

WTTO began originally on April 21, 1982 as Alabama's second independent station (and the Birmingham market's first), signing on a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile. It was a typical UHF independent that aired numerous cartoons, movies, and sitcoms. The first program it broadcast was a rerun of the 1970s action show, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The station was owned by Chapman Broadcasting. Arlington Broadcasting bought WTTO in 1983. It was sold to HR Broadcasting in 1987. It turned down the Fox affiliation when that network started up. The station did very well even without Fox, and in fact was one of the top independent stations in the country. HR Broadcasting sold WTTO to Abry in 1989.

Meanwhile, WDBB had its start in October 1984 as an independent station licensed to Tuscaloosa, also serving Birmingham. In the fall of 1985, WDBB gained the broadcasting rights to the Alabama Crimson Tide's football and basketball coaches shows. The shows had aired on WBRC for 30 years, and this was a major coup for the upstart station.

In 1986, the station began broadcasting from a tower near Bessemer in an attempt to imprve its coverage in the Birmingham area. It signed on WNAL-TV (channel 44) in Gadsden as a satellite. At the same time, WDBB/WNAL became a Fox affiliate. However, neither station decently covered Birmingham and couldn't get on a couple of large Birmingham-area cable systems. In January 1991, Fox moved its affiliation to WTTO after all efforts to get better cable coverage for WDBB/WNAL failed. Soon after, WDBB and WNAL began simulcasting WTTO for all but two hours of the broadcast day. By 1993 WNAL and WDBB became full-time satellites of WTTO, which nonetheless only called itself "FOX21". WDBB then moved back to its original transmitter in Tuscaloosa, but remained licensed in Bessemer. Within a few years, WTTO was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country.

Abry merged with Sinclair in 1994. A few months later, Sinclair began a Local marketing agreement with WABM, which joined UPN in 1995. Meanwhile, that same year, New World bought WBRC from Citicasters. At the same time, it bought WVTM-TV from Argyle. This posed a serious problem for New World. It not only owned two stations in the same market, but now owned more stations than the FCC allowed. A few months later, however, New World and Fox reached a deal in which New World would switch all its stations to Fox affiliates. This gave New World a chance to solve its Birmingham ownership problem by selling WBRC directly to Fox.

ABC originally wanted to affiliate with WTTO, which by this time had become the third-highest rated station in Birmingham. However, at the time Sinclair didn't budget for local newscasts on its stations (it would not own any Big Three stations for another year). Also, Sinclair was only interested in ABC's prime time shows, sports, and ABC News, not a full affiliation. ABC found this offer unattractive, and WTTO and WDBB continued as Fox stations until WBRC's affiliation deal with ABC ran out in September 1996. The two stations then became independents, though WTTO held onto Fox Kids after WBRC didn't pick it up. In the meantime, WNAL was sold to Fant Broadcasting and became the CBS affiliate for Gadsden and northeast Alabama. That station is now WPXH, the ION Television station for central Alabama.

In February 1997, WTTO and WDBB affiliated with the WB network. Before then, Birmingham had been one of the largest markets without a WB affiliate.

In the late 1990s WTTO evolved gradually away from movies, classic sitcoms, and cartoons to more talk/reality shows, court shows, as well as recent sitcoms (which they ran all along). WTTO dropped Fox Kids programming in the Fall of 2000 and WBRC did not pick it up. That year Fox stopped requiring its own stations from carrying it whether or not another station could be found. The main reason for this change was because the stations were having a tougher time making a profit running such programming. This was due to new FCC regulations in terms of the amount of ads allowed during children's programming as well as the content of such advertising. This made advertisers for children rely more on cable and caused syndicators to move their programming to cable.

Still WTTO continued cartoons in the afternoons as they ran Kids' WB programming until that ended nationwide in January 2006. The CW4Kids still runs on Saturday Mornings. In September 2003, WTTO finally began to produce its own local newscast, titled "WB21 News at 9:00". However, in October 2005, the market's CBS-affiliate, WIAT, began producing the newscasts for WTTO. As of October 13, 2006, WTTO is no longer airing local newscasts.

The WB had shut down in September 2006, along with UPN, to form The CW, a network featuring programming from both networks. Sinclair announced on May 2, 2006 that WTTO would become the CW affiliate. As a CW affiliate, the station had been branded as "CW21".

Tower

It has been suggested that WTTO Tower be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

See also

• Tallest structures in the U.S.

References

External links

• Tower Site of the week; "A Quick Jaunt Through Birmingham, Alabama" (2002)
• Listing 1050693 in the FCC Antenna Structure Registration database
• Listing 1035175 in the FCC Antenna Structure Registration database
• WTTO website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WTTO
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WDBB
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WTTO-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WDBB-TV
• Program Information for WTTO at TitanTV.com

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