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WTTO, virtual channel 21 (UHF digital channel 28), is a CW-affiliated television station serving Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Licensed to the nearby suburb of Homewood. WTTO maintains transmitter facilities located at Red Mountain. The station operates a full-time satellite, WDBB (virtual channel 17; UHF digital channel 18), which is licensed to Bessemer, another Birmingham suburb, but primarily serves Tuscaloosa and the western part of the market. WDBB's transmitter is located near Windham Springs. WTTO is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group; Sinclair operates WDBB under a time brokerage agreement with owner Cunningham Broadcasting, though Sinclair effectively owns WDBB as well due to Cunningham's ownership structure. Both are sister stations to MyNetworkTV affiliate WABM (channel 68). All three stations share studio facilities located on Beacon Parkway West in southeastern Birmingham. Receiving the WTTO signal, the station is also available on Bright House Networks channel 9, Comcast Xfinity channel 4 and AT&T U-verse channel 21. ==History== The UHF channel 21 allocation in Central Alabama was originally allocated to Gadsden and was occupied by WTVS, which operated during the 1950s. It was one of the earliest UHF television stations in the United States, but could not gain a foothold with the region's other stations and soon ceased operations after suffering from low viewership due to the lack of television sets in Central Alabama that were capable of receiving UHF stations since set manufacturers were not required to equip televisions with UHF tuners until the Federal Communications Commission passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1961, with such tuners not included on all newer sets until 1964.〔http://dumonthistory.tv/a10.html〕 The WTVS callsign has since been used by a PBS member station in Detroit, Michigan. WTTO first signed on the air on April 21, 1982 as the second independent station in Alabama (and the first in the Birmingham market), debuting a few months after WPMI-TV in Mobile. On paper, Birmingham had been large enough for an independent station since the early 1970s. However, the Birmingham market is a very large market geographically, and parts of it are somewhat mountainous. By the early 1980s, cable had gained enough penetration in central Alabama to make an independent station viable. 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 series ''Buck Rogers in the 25th Century''. It quickly became the strongest independent station in Alabama, and one of the highest-rated in the nation. The station's original owner, Chapman Broadcasting, sold WTTO to Arlington Broadcasting in 1983. It was then sold to HR Broadcasting in 1987. Despite being one of the strongest independent stations in the country, WTTO turned down the Fox affiliation when that network launched in 1986. Even without Fox, the station continued to prosper. HR Broadcasting sold WTTO to Abry Communications in 1989. WDBB began operations on October 8, 1984 as an independent station licensed to Tuscaloosa, also serving Birmingham. The station was owned by Dubose Broadcasting (hence its call letters) and operated from studios located on Jug Factory Road on the southern edge of Tuscaloosa. 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 ABC affiliate WBRC (channel 6) and then NBC affiliate WAPI-TV (later WVTM-TV, channel 13), and WDBB's acquisition was a major coup for the upstart station. For most of the 1980s, WTTO and WDBB waged a pitched battle for viewership, even though Birmingham was just barely large enough at the time for two independent stations. When WTTO passed on the Fox affiliation, WDBB quickly signed up as the central Alabama outlet for the upstart network. The Fox affiliation came just as WDBB was about to sign on WNAL-TV (channel 44) in Gadsden as a satellite station to serve the northern part of the market. WDBB used its new status to make a concerted effort to improve its reach in Birmingham. In addition to signing on WNAL, it moved its license to Bessemer, which allowed it to build a new, stronger tower closer to Birmingham. WDBB/WNAL officially joined Fox when that network launched on October 8, 1986. However, neither station decently covered Birmingham, even though Bessemer is only 18 miles southwest of the city. As a result, several large Birmingham-area cable providers refused to carry it. In January 1991, Fox moved its affiliation to WTTO after all efforts to get better cable coverage for WDBB/WNAL failed. Soon afterward, WDBB/WNAL began simulcasting WTTO for all but three hours of the broadcast day. As part of the deal, WDBB/WNAL merged its stronger programming onto WTTO's schedule. WTTO now had a large amount of programming it no longer had time to air, so it sold some of its classic sitcoms to WABM. By 1993, Abry had bought WDBB and WNAL outright and turned them into full-time satellites of WTTO, which nonetheless only called itself ''"Fox 21"''. WDBB then moved back to its original transmitter in Windham Springs (a tall guyed mast structure that was constructed in 1982), but remained licensed to Bessemer. The three stations provided a strong combined signal comparable to those of WBRC and WVTM. Also in 1993, WTTO entered a local marketing agreement with WABM, which had been sold earlier in the year. By 1994, WTTO was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country, and was actually the third-highest rated station in central Alabama. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WTTO」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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