WISH-TV: An Indianapolis station with six decades of local roots

WISH-TV is one of Indianapolis’s long-established television stations and operates as a CW affiliate. The station is locally owned by Circle City Broadcasting, which also owns WRTV, WNDY-TV and WIIH-CD. Together, the four stations share studio space on North Meridian Street, near the north end of the area known as Television Row on Indianapolis’s near north side.

WISH-TV and WNDY-TV also share transmitter facilities on Walnut Drive in the Augusta section of the city’s northwest side, near Meridian Hills. That arrangement gives the station both a central studio location and a separate transmission site within Indianapolis.

The station began broadcasting on July 1, 1954, signing on at 6 p.m. It was founded by C. Bruce McConnell, who also owned WISH radio, a 1310 AM station now known as WTLC. At the time of WISH-TV’s launch, it was the third television station in the Indianapolis market.

The market’s first television station was WFBM-TV, which began broadcasting in May 1949 and is now WRTV. Bloomington-licensed WTTV followed six months later in November 1949; it is now identified with channel 4. WISH-TV therefore entered an already developing local television landscape rather than opening the market’s first station.

In its earliest years, WISH-TV carried ABC programming as its primary affiliation. It also maintained secondary affiliations with the DuMont Television Network and NBC. The station initially transmitted from a tower shared with WISH radio. In the following year, it began construction of a taller tower, according to the station’s historical account.

For Indianapolis media watchers, WISH-TV’s history traces several layers of the city’s broadcasting infrastructure: a radio operation that expanded into television, an early position in the local market, and a present-day connection to a group of four stations under common ownership. Its North Meridian Street studios place it within a recognizable local concentration of television operations, while its northwest-side transmitter site reflects the technical geography behind the broadcasts seen by viewers.

The station’s early affiliations and ownership history also show how its role has changed over time. WISH-TV began with a combination of network relationships during television’s formative period and now operates under the CW banner as part of Circle City Broadcasting’s Indianapolis portfolio.

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Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/business/dealbook/nexstar-clinches-deal-to-acquire-media-general.html?_r=0 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-21/media-general-cuts-lin-tv-price-after-cbs-drops-affiliate.html - https://variety.com/2014/tv/news/cbs-switches-indianapolis-affiliation-in-tribune-pact-bumping-cw-to-digital-channel-1201279881/ - https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/tv-station-meredith-media-general-merger-1201587744/ - https://web.archive.org/web/20130829004251/http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf - https://web.archive.org/web/20130315055310/http://www.wthr.com/global/Story.asp?s=825910 Image rights Photograph description: 24 June 2021 - Indianapolis, IN - US Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh speaks to LGBTQ Community Leaders at Baby's restaurant in Indianapolis, Indiana. Official Department of Labor Photograph*** Photographs taken by the federal government are generally part of the public domain and may beused, copied and distributed without permission. Unless otherwise noted, photos posted here may be used without th Creator: US Department of Labor. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AL-21-06-24-A-002_(51269405515).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.