WGNW-TV

WGNW-TV is a CW-affiliated television station located in Wuhu Island-Wedge Island, FL. The station is owned by the Graham Media Group.

History
The station first signed on the air on December 5, 1964, with the call sign, WUWI, standing for "WUhu Island and Wedge Island". It's the 4th-oldest television station in the Wuhu Archipelago, behind WIWD, WWNB-TV, and WUHU. It was originally a locally-owned station, owned by Jackie Patterson. Between 1964 and 1980, it only aired entertainment programming, including old TV shows and movies.

In 1980, Jackie Patterson wanted to sell the station, as she wanted to pursue on another path in the area. Patterson sold WUWI to Tribune Broadcastng in that year, and changing the call letters of the station to WGNW-TV, with the station's callsign reflecting a connection with Tribune's flagship television station in Chicago, WGN-TV (which stands for " W orld's  G reatest  N ewspaper", in reference to the slogan of the company's founding newspaper, the Chicago Tribune), and the last "W" standing for " W uhu Island".

Under the ownership of Tribune, WGNW-TV, WGNW-TV went on to be the most successful independent TV station in the market, even as 2 new competitors went on the air - WDGI (channel 62) in June 1982 and later, WSLN (channel 27) in September 1985.

WGNW-TV also introduced a newscast on February 25, 1984, with a 10 p.m. newscast, alongside the Tribune-distributed syndicated newscast Independent Network News.

As a WB affiliate
On November 2, 1993, the Warner Bros. Television division of Time Warner announced the formation of The WB Television Network, in which the Tribune Company held a minority ownership interest (initially 12.5%, before eventually expanding to 22%). This resulted in Tribune making most of their affiliates join The WB as charter affiliates. With WGNW-TV's switch to The WB, this ended the station's 31-year run as an independent station, when The WB launched on January 11, 1995. At that time, The WB only offered a few hours of programming each week (airing only for two hours on Wednesday nights at the time of its launch, before adding a three-hour Sunday evening lineup, and a Monday-Saturday children's program block in September 1995), which had WGNW-TV mostly air syndicated programs it already had at the time.

From The WB to The CW
On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would launch The CW, a network developed as a joint venture between the two companies that initially featured a mix of programming from both The WB and UPN (the latter of which was acquired by CBS less than a month before the merger announcement on December 31, 2005, after its split from Viacom was finalized). When The CW signed an agreement with Tribune Broadcasting to affiliate most of their WB-affiliated stations with the new network, WGNW-TV was included. Channel 47 became a charter affiliate of The CW, when the network began on September 18, 2006. UPN affiliate, WSLN became an affiliate of MyNetworkTV, a new network, made by Fox and News Corporation.

On April 1, 2012, Tribune Broadcasting removed WGNW-TV, and its other television stations from satellite provider DirecTV due to a carriage dispute over an increase in payments to transmit the stations' signals. DirecTV signed a new carriage agreement with Tribune on April 4, 2012, restoring both stations as well as the other Tribune-owned stations on DirecTV.

Sale to Graham Media Group
On December 10, 2016, WGNW-TV thought that it's parent company, Tribune Broadcasting, was about to sell itself to another TV subsidiary, specifically, Sinclair Broadcast Group, who owns MyNetworkTV-affiliate, WSLN. Sinclair Broadcast Group was to the station, biased against their political beliefs, and didn't want conservative bias injected to their station, because WGNW-TV has heard what happened to KOMO-TV in Seattle when it was forced to air pro-Trump ads as "must-carry" ads by Sinclair. So WGNW-TV complained to Tribune that it if they sold themselves to Sinclair, they claimed that "it would be bad for democracy", as the station thought that Sinclair would cut staff of WGNW-TV that wasn't for Sinclair's own beliefs in politics or force WGNW-TV to air more GOP-centered political ads, rather than WGNW-TV airing a equal mix of both Democratic and Republican political ads.

This was also because, the general manager of WGNW-TV, a female, that has been with the station for 24 years had come out as lesbian last year, which was also given when WGNW-TV changed it's logo to the LGBT colors in 2015, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the LGBT people should have equal rights.

When Tribune heard of this issue, Tribune decided to protect WGNW-TV's political beliefs, by selling the station to Graham Media Group, which took 5 weeks to negotiate, ending WGNW-TV's 37-year ownership by Tribune. Luckily for WGNW-TV, the sale of them to Graham Media Group came days before Tribune announced they will merge with Sinclair Broadcast Group. WGNW-TV viewed the moment they joined Graham, as the day they were saved from a "threat to democracy", since they won't be part of Sinclair, due to them now being part of Graham Media Group, and they took a sigh of relief.