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WVAH-TV, channel 11, is a Fox-affiliated television station located in Charleston, West Virginia, USA. WVAH-TV is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, is operated through a local marketing agreement (LMA) by the Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned ABC affiliate WCHS-TV (channel 8). The two stations share studios and offices in Charleston, and WVAH-TV broadcasts from a transmitter south of Scott Depot, West Virginia. ==History== The station was founded on September 19, 1982 and aired an analog signal on UHF channel 23. It was owned by the newly created Meridian Communications based out of Pittsburgh, which won the license after the West Virginia General Assembly forced West Virginia Public Broadcasting to withdraw its own application for the channel. It was the first Independent station in West Virginia, as well as the first new commercial station in the market since what is now WOWK-TV signed-on in 1955, and the first commercial UHF station in the state since WKNA-TV in Charleston went off-the-air in 1955. Studios were located on Mount Vernon Road in Teays Valley, an unincorporated area halfway between Huntington and Charleston, though its mailing address said Hurricane (the two areas share a zip code). It became a charter Fox affiliate on October 6, 1986. Act III Broadcasting bought the station in 1987. Soon after buying control, Act III applied to move the station to the VHF band. Despite broadcasting from a 1,500 foot tower with the maximum five million watts of power, WVAH had considerable difficulty penetrating the market. The Charleston/Huntington market covers 61 counties in Central West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Southern Ohio. Most of this area is a very rugged dissected plateau, and as a result, UHF stations usually do not get good reception in this kind of terrain. Some areas of the market were among the few where cable television still wasn't available. As a result, WVAH was permitted to switch to VHF channel 11 in 1989, three years after Fox's launch. However, the station was short-spaced to WPXI in Pittsburgh and WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tennessee. It then had to conform its signal to protect WJHL. As a result, it did not provide a clear over-the-air signal to the southwestern part of the market. Act III merged with Abry Communications in 1994. That company, in turn, was merged into the Sinclair Broadcast Group later in 1994. In 1997, Sinclair purchased the broadcasting properties of Heritage Media, which included WCHS (the remainder of Heritage Media went to News Corporation). It could not keep both WCHS and WVAH due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules in effect at the time forbidding duopolies. Sinclair opted to keep the longer-established WCHS and sold WVAH to Glencairn, Ltd. which was headed by former Sinclair executive Edwin Edwards. However, nearly all of Glencairn Ltd's stock was held by the Smith family, owners and founders of Sinclair. In effect, Sinclair still owned WVAH. Sinclair further circumvented the rules by signing a local marketing agreement with Glencairn that allowed it to continue operating WVAH. While WVAH retained its own studios in Teays Valley, most of its operations were merged into WCHS' studios in Charleston. On January 16, 1995, WVAH began airing UPN programming during overnight hours. However, the station could not clear the entire schedule and dropped the network in early-2000. In 2001, Sinclair tried to acquire Glencairn outright, but the FCC did not allow Sinclair to re-acquire WVAH because it does not allow common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market. As a result, Glencairn kept WVAH and changed its name to Cunningham Broadcasting. However, nearly all of Cunningham's stock is controlled by trusts in the name of the Smith family. There is virtually irrefutable evidence that Cunningham is a shell corporation that Sinclair operates to circumvent FCC ownership limits. Following a tower collapse in 2002, WVAH moved its transmitter and almost all of its facilities to WCHS' studios in Charleston. However, its main studios remained in Teays Valley until late-2009. On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WVAH-TV, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming until 2017.〔(Sinclair Reups With Fox, Gets WUTB Option ), ''TVNewsCheck'', May 15, 2012.〕 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「WVAH-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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