WCWW

WCWW, broadcasting as WCWW-LD on channel 25, is a low-power television station in South Bend, Indiana, in the United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by Weigel Broadcasting alongside two other low-power stations in the market: WBND-LD (channel 57), the ABC affiliate, and WMYS-LD (channel 69), the MyNetworkTV affiliate. The three stations share studios on Generations Drive, near the Indiana Toll Road, in northeastern South Bend, while WCWW's transmitter is located just off the St. Joseph Valley Parkway on the city's south side.

Because of its low-power status, WCWW's over-the-air signal covers only the immediate South Bend area, and Weigel relies on carriage by pay-television providers to deliver the station to the whole South Bend-Elkhart market, known as Michiana. Despite that technical limitation, WCWW holds one of the market's major network affiliations, and it is today the only CW affiliate owned by Weigel Broadcasting, after the company's Chicago flagship WCIU-TV returned to independent status on September 1, 2024.

Founding as a religious station

The station was founded on August 31, 1990, as W25BM, operating as an affiliate of the Three Angels Broadcasting Network, the religious broadcaster based in Illinois. In October 1995, it changed its call sign to WYGN-LP. For its first decade, channel 25 was therefore a religious service, a small low-power outlet of a national ministry network, with no connection to the entertainment networks whose programming it would later carry.

That changed in 2002. On March 14 of that year, the station was transferred to its current owner, Weigel Broadcasting, the Chicago-based company that had built an improbable collection of network affiliations in South Bend using low-power stations. Weigel had previously been broadcasting general entertainment programming on what is now WYGN-LD, the station that took over the Three Angels affiliation when channel 25 changed hands.

The Weigel shuffle of 2002

Weigel's arrival set off a chain of changes across its South Bend low-power stations. Channel 25 dropped the 3ABN affiliation, which moved to the station now known as WYGN-LD, changed its call sign to WRDY-LP, and began simulcasting ABC programming from its sister station WBND-LP, the low-power ABC affiliate. Then, in the fall of 2002, the simulcast ended and the station took a network identity of its own: it affiliated with The WB, which moved to channel 25 from the original WMWB-LP on channel 69, and on October 9, 2002, it adopted the WMWB-LP call sign previously held by channel 69, reflecting its new affiliation. WMWB stood for Michiana's WB.

The episode is characteristic of Weigel's South Bend operation, in which call signs, affiliations and programme schedules were periodically moved between the company's low-power signals to place each service on the most suitable channel. The same two stations, channels 25 and 69, have at different times carried each other's call letters and each other's networks, a history that is nearly impossible to follow without a scorecard but which consistently left each major network service available somewhere in the Weigel cluster.

Becoming The CW in 2006

On March 1, 2006, Weigel officials announced that WMWB would affiliate with The CW, the new network formed from the merger of The WB and UPN by their owners, Time Warner and CBS Corporation. When The CW launched in September 2006, channel 25 changed its call letters to WCWW-LP upon the network's launch on September 18, 2006, and it has carried The CW ever since.

The call letters themselves were recycled within the family: the WCWW calls had previously belonged to sister station WMYS, channel 69, which at the same moment took an affiliation with The CW's short-lived competitor MyNetworkTV, launched two weeks earlier. With that exchange, Weigel held both of the new 2006-vintage network services in South Bend, The CW on channel 25 and MyNetworkTV on channel 69, alongside its established ABC service on channel 57.

The failed sale to Schurz

In early August 2008, Weigel Broadcasting agreed to sell all three of its South Bend stations, including WCWW, to Schurz Communications, the longtime owner of the market's CBS affiliate, WSBT-TV (channel 22) and of the South Bend Tribune. The sale would have ended Weigel's unusual low-power experiment in the market and placed the ABC, CW and MyNetworkTV affiliations under the market's dominant local media company.

The transaction was never completed. In the absence of action by the Federal Communications Commission, the deal was called off in August 2009, a year after it was announced. Weigel retained the three stations, and the South Bend cluster, WBND, WCWW and WMYS, remains in Weigel hands today, one of the company's longest-held station groups outside Chicago.

Low-power economics and cable carriage

WCWW's business model is the one Weigel pioneered in Milwaukee and South Bend in the 1990s: use inexpensive low-power licences to hold major network affiliations, and rely on cable and satellite carriage, rather than over-the-air reach, to deliver the audience. Low-power stations do not enjoy the same must-carry rights as full-power stations, so Weigel's distribution rests on negotiated paid-television carriage. The station is explicit about the arrangement: its broadcasting radius covers only the immediate South Bend area, and subscription carriage is what makes it a market-wide service.

The strategy also explains the shared facilities. WCWW, WBND and WMYS operate from a single studio complex on Generations Drive and are sold and run as one cluster, so that a low-power CW affiliate can share news, sales and engineering resources with its ABC and MyNetworkTV sisters.

Programming and subchannels

Channel 25.1 carries The CW's full prime-time schedule, and the station has been branded as The CW 25 and CW 25 Michiana. In 2011, WCWW launched a second digital subchannel, 25.2, as an affiliate of This TV, the classic film and television network. Its multiplex has since also carried Start TV, and a subchannel carrying a simulcast of sister station WBND's ABC programming, allowing the cluster to reinforce the reach of its flagship affiliation. As with the other Weigel stations, the exact subchannel mix has been adjusted over time as multicast network contracts change.

WCWW became Weigel's sole CW affiliate through events in Chicago rather than South Bend. Weigel's flagship WCIU-TV had taken the CW affiliation in Chicago on September 1, 2019, making Weigel the owner of both of the network's affiliates on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. When WCIU reverted to an independent station on September 1, 2024, channel 25 in South Bend was left as the company's only CW station, a distinction it still holds.

Technical information

WCWW is a low-power digital station; its call sign suffix changed from -LP to -LD on November 16, 2012, reflecting the station's conversion from analog low-power to digital low-power operation. It is displayed to viewers as channel 25, the number it has used since its founding as W25BM in 1990. Its transmitter stands just off the St. Joseph Valley Parkway on the south side of South Bend. The station's FCC call sign history records its sequence of identities: W25BM from 1990, WYGN-LP from 1995, WRDY-LP and then WMWB-LP in 2002, WCWW-LP from 2006 and WCWW-LD from 2012.

The Weigel South Bend cluster

To understand WCWW, it has to be seen as one third of a single operation. Weigel entered South Bend in 1995 when its W58BT became the market's ABC affiliate by default after WSJV left ABC for Fox; channel 69 served first as a translator and then as the market's WB affiliate; and channel 25, acquired in 2002, became first the WB and then the CW outlet. Together the three low-power stations gave a market of full-power competitors a full set of network services from signals that, on paper, barely covered the city of South Bend itself.

Summary

WCWW began in 1990 as a religious low-power station, passed to Weigel Broadcasting in 2002, carried The WB from that fall, and has carried The CW under its present call letters since the network's first day in September 2006. It survived a year-long, ultimately abandoned sale to Schurz Communications, built a digital subchannel service alongside its network schedule, and emerged in 2024 as Weigel Broadcasting's only CW affiliate. Its history demonstrates how, in the low-power sector, a major network affiliation can matter far more than transmitter power.