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WVLA-TV, virtual channel 33, is the NBC-affiliated television station for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It transmits its digital signal on UHF channel 34. It is owned by White Knight Broadcasting, but it is operated by Nexstar Broadcasting Group, and is sister station to the area's independent affiliate, KZUP-CD. WVLA also shares facilities and staff with WGMB-TV and WBRL-CD, and all four stations broadcast from its studios at 10000 Perkins Road in Baton Rouge. WVLA's transmitter is located near Addis, Louisiana. The station is seen via satellite through DirecTV, Dish Network and AT&T U-verse and on cable Cox Communications. ==History== The station first signed on the air on October 16, 1971〔(Station History )〕 as WRBT, an ABC affiliate. The station was originally founded by Romac Baton Rouge Corporation, a consortium of Southern Educators Life Insurance Company and local businessmen Richard O. Rush and Ramon V. Jarrell. The station temporarily operated from Florida Boulevard before moving to studios on Essen Lane, where it stayed until 2000. Before WRBT began, ABC was limited to off-hours clearances on then-NBC affiliate WBRZ-TV and CBS affiliate WAFB-TV. The station originally broadcast from 10:30 a.m. until midnight on Mondays thru Fridays; 7 a.m. until midnight on Saturdays; and 9 a.m. until midnight on Sundays. In March 1976, Rush Broadcasting Corporation, owned by Jules B. LeBlanc and Cyril Vetter, purchased the station.〔1989 Broadcasting Yearbook〕 Although Baton Rouge had been large enough on paper to support three full network affiliates since the 1950s, only two VHF licenses were allocated to that market—channels 2 and 9, occupied by WBRZ and WAFB, respectively. There was an effort to move the transmitter of proposed Houma television station KHMA to the Greater Baton Rouge area in 1964 to serve as the city's ABC affiliate, with that management of that station going as far as to establish an advertising office in Baton rouge; however, the owners of WAFB and WBRZ successfully petitioned the FCC to block the transfer, citing the urge of UHF development in the area. In the late 1970s, ABC became the most-watched network and was seeking out stronger stations, while NBC fell to third and last place in ratings. While WRBT was still trying to find its feet, WBRZ was the top-rated station in Baton Rouge. WBRZ approached ABC for an affiliation, and ABC readily accepted. More or less by default, WRBT joined NBC. WRBT swapped affiliations with WBRZ on September 5, 1977, and became an NBC affiliate with NBC Nightly News as its first aired program. In 1979, Vetter purchased LeBlanc's stake to become sole owner. In mid-September 1983, the station received national attention when it pulled ''Late Night with David Letterman'' and replaced it with ''All in the Family'' reruns due to poor ratings. After 3,500 LSU students presented Vetter with a petition to bring the show back to Baton Rouge, Vetter told them he would only reinstate Letterman if every student maintained a C average for the fall semester. Other Baton Rougeans, including then-Secretary of State Jim Brown, lobbied WRBT to keep Letterman on the air, and this compelled Vetter to reinstate the program by late September.〔"On with the Show," Newsmakers, Philadelphia Inquirer, September 24, 1983〕 Eventually, many residents of New Orleans tuned to WRBT to watch Letterman when NBC affiliate WDSU preempted the show in favor of ''Thicke of the Night''. In 1992, WVLA cancelled Letterman again, citing poor ratings, and replaced it with Rush Limbaugh's talk show. The station, however, aired ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' when it premiered the next year. On May 2, 1986, WRBT was the first local station in Baton Rouge and the second station in Louisiana to broadcast in stereo, after KMSS-TV in Shreveport. It changed its calls to WVLA on November 26, 1987 after building a higher and more powerful tower that boosted its signal to a full five million watts. In 1989, WVLA dropped its primetime newscasts and aired reruns of off-network sitcoms in their place. Vetter supported this move with a desire to make channel 33 a complete entertainment station, taking into account the station's poor primetime news ratings against WAFB and WBRZ. Nonetheless, this proved successful ratings-wise, as the station's share jumped from 3 percent to 7 percent after the move.〔At WLYH, news loses out to love- Matchmaker show takes 11 p.m. slot, Sunday News, Lancaster, PA, June 16, 1991〕 From April 1990 until February 1991, the station took a secondary affiliation with Fox by airing week-delayed episodes of ''The Simpsons'' and ''Married... with Children''. Vetter owned the station until 1996, when he sold it to Lafayette-based White Knight Broadcasting, owned by Sheldon Galloway. This move created a partnership, as Communications Corporation of America, a company controlled by Galloway's father, Thomas, owned Fox affiliate WGMB. Around this time, WVLA began branding itself as ''NBC 33,'' which, with the exception of a brief period in the early 2000s, would remain the station's branding until 2015. Since then, WGMB, WVLA, WBRL, and KZUP have shared the same studios, moving to its current studios on Perkins Road in 1999. On April 24, 2013, ComCorp announced the sale of its entire group to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group. WVLA and KZUP was planned to be sold to Mission Broadcasting. But on August 13, 2014, Mission withdrew its application.〔(Application Info ), ''CDBS Public Access'', Federal Communications Commission, Retrieved 6 December 2014.〕 Nexstar will continue to operate WVLA and KZUP under a shared service agreement, with sister stations WGMB and WBRL.〔https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS_Attachment/getattachment.jsp?appn=101552312&qnum=5040©num=1&exhcnum=1〕 The sale was completed on January 1, 2015.〔(Consummation Notice ), ''CDBS Public Access'', Federal Communications Commission, Retrieved 6 January 2015.〕 On July 1, 2015 sister stations KADN and KLAF-LD launched NBC on 15.2 and 46.1 with programming coming from WVLA.〔(NEXSTAR BROADCASTING'S KLAF-TV TO BECOME FIRST NBC NETWORK AFFILIATE SERVING LAFAYETTE - Cajun First )〕 Cox Communications dropped WVLA from its Lafayette regional lineup and replaced it with KLAF as WVLA programming will be on the channel until January 2016. In June 2015, Nexstar relaunched WVLA and WGMB's website under one banner, www.brproud.com, and in September 2015, Nexstar upgraded the station's new set and hired additional talent. When the upgrades were completed, the station rebranded itself as Local 33 and adopted the news theme "Evolution" in place of "The Rock," similar to sister NBC stations KTAL in Shreveport and KTVE in Monroe/El Dorado.() In October 2015, WVLA will celebrate the 45th Anniversary of its original airdate. 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「WVLA-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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