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WTSJ-LD (channel 38) is a low-power television station in
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
, Wisconsin, United States, owned by Innovate Corp. The station's transmitter is located at the
Milwaukee PBS Milwaukee PBS is the collective brand for two PBS member television stations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States: WMVS (channel 10) and WMVT (channel 36). Both stations are owned and operated by the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). ...
tower on North Humboldt Boulevard in Milwaukee's Estabrook Park neighborhood.


History


Early license establishment

WTSJ-LD has its origins in a
construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...
for a low-power television station on channel 55 in
Ludington, Michigan Ludington ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat and the largest city in Mason County, Michigan, Mason County. The population was 7,655 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the fourth largest city i ...
, which the
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(FCC) granted to Richard L. Bourassa on May 31, 1995 and issued the call sign W55CG. Bourassa sold the station to MS Communications on November 16, 2000. A month later, MS filed for a license to cover the permit, which was granted on February 16, 2001; on May 24, the company obtained a construction permit to move the station to channel 53 in Milwaukee as W53CC. The channel 53 permit was subsequently replaced with one for operation on channel 38 (as W38DT) on April 14, 2004. MS Communications had plans to establish wireless cable networks, but never broadcast anything other than
test pattern A test card, also known as a test pattern or start-up/closedown test, is a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active but no program is being broadcast (often at sign-on and sign-off). Used since the ear ...
s on its stations.Digital TV Market Listing for WSDI-LD
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Bustos era with Azteca

Bustos Media purchased the station from MS Communications for $1,350,000 on June 9, 2006. MS had shut down the W55CG facility in Ludington on the previous day in preparation for the completion of the sale. Bustos changed the call letters to WBWT-LP on August 30, 2006, built the channel 38 facility in Milwaukee, began airing a test pattern in September 2006, and officially signed WBWT-LP on the air on December 12. The station originally served as an affiliate of Azteca América and also initially carried a video
simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously) ...
of the morning program from sister radio station WDDW (104.7 FM). It expected to add additional local programming to serve Milwaukee's Hispanic community.
Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, o ...
began carrying the station throughout its service area in October 2009 on
digital cable Digital cable is the distribution of cable television using digital data and video compression. The technology was first developed by General Instrument. By 2000, most cable companies offered digital features, eventually replacing their previo ...
channel 807. Bustos filed for a construction permit with the FCC to build digital transmitter facilities on UHF channel 31 in 2010. In September of that year, Bustos transferred most of its licenses to Adelante Media Group as part of a settlement with its lenders.


Switch to MundoFox

On July 25, 2012, Adalante announced that it had signed an affiliation agreement to switch its Azteca America affiliates to upstart Spanish-language network MundoFox, which officially launched on August 13. However, WBWT-LP switched to the network two weeks earlier on August 1 during its unadvertised soft launch period. Azteca's national feed was eventually picked up by Time Warner and Charter. Adalante sold WBWT-LP, along with KBTU-LP in
Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...
, to DTV America Corporation for $425,000 on July 16, 2015. On October 20, DTV America changed the station's call letters to WTSJ-LP; the calls stand for the initials of their print media partner '' The Spanish Journal'', Milwaukee's leading Hispanic-American publication.


DTV America era; going digital, return to Azteca, and additional networks

Around the time of the sale to DTV America, the station launched their digital signal on channel 38 via a flash cut. In addition to MundoMax on 38.1, WTSJ-LP resumed their affiliation with Azteca on 38.2, with both signals transmitting in
720p 720p (720 lines progressive) is a progressive HD signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HD (1.78:1). All major HD broadcasting standards (such as SMPTE 292M) includ ...
. With the move of WTSJ-LP to digital operations, it was the last station in the Milwaukee market to end analog operations. Slowly, DTV America began to establish their common template of having multiple subchannel networks on one signal seen in other markets. In December 2015, Azteca was replaced with Buzzr and the feed was converted to 480p. On May 5, 2016, the station launched a third subchannel for the Katz Broadcasting network Escape (the current day Court TV Mystery), which eventually transitioned to Katz sister station
WTMJ-TV WTMJ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by the E.W. Scripps Company alongside Kenosha-licensed Ion Television station WPXE-TV (channel 55). WTMJ-TV's studios are ...
(channel 4). In late October 2016, WTSJ-LP again resumed carrying Azteca on their main channel, its third affiliation round with the network, as the moribund MundoMax network began to wind down operations. In addition, a fifth subchannel carrying The Country Network was added. This returned that network to Milwaukee after a year-long absence, since
WCGV-TV WCGV-TV (channel 24) was a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, which operated from 1980 to 2018. In its latter years, it was owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV; it had common ownership with ...
had dropped it from their second subchannel for
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along with the AccuWeather Channel on a seventh subchannel (using the national feed without local conditions). Eventually the sixth subchannel was filled by Tuff TV, and all three subchannels were remapped. With WTMJ ending their carriage of
Cozi TV Cozi TV (stylized on-air as COZI TV) is an American free-to-air television network owned by the NBC Owned Television Stations division of NBCUniversal. The network airs classic television series from the 1950s to the 2000s. The network originat ...
at the start of 2017, WTSJ-LP dropped Escape in the month before as WTMJ picked it up in its place. WTSJ-LP3 was left vacant with a paid programming loop until January 15, 2017, when WTSJ-LP completed the exchange and added Cozi TV for several months until July 27, when that network became exclusive to WIWN (channel 68). With HC2 Holdings' mid-2017 acquisition of DTV America and the November 2017 acquisition of Azteca, the station became an owned and operated station, though its new ownership began to wind down most local operations and promotions. With the repeal of the Main Studio Rule in 2019, the station's studio and office on South 108th Street in West Allis was closed, and it is now centralcased out of what is now Innovate's programming hub with no local presence. On October 25, 2019, WTSJ-LP went temporarily silent as an after effect of the operators and engineers of the Milwaukee PBS tower adjusting the tower's various antennas before and after the market's October 18, 2019, FCC-required frequency shifts involving the spectrum auction. WTSJ-LP also shifted to a post-repack channel of channel 26 and when it did, took an "LD" channel suffix. Azteca America discontinued operations on December 31, 2022, with Innovate replacing it with Timeless TV, a network run by Burlington-based Canella Media. By the next month, Spanish programming had returned to the station's main channel, and it carried the Visión Latina network until the start of 2025, whens witched to the Fubo Sports Network.


Subchannels

The station's digital channel is
multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...
:


References


External links


History of Milwaukee television
{{DTV America 2006 establishments in Wisconsin Buzzr affiliates Innovate Corp. Low-power television stations in Wisconsin Spanish-language television stations in Wisconsin Television channels and stations established in 2006 TSJ-LD TeleXitos affiliates