About WLOO

WLOO

WLOO, channel 35, is a television station licensed to Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States, serving the Jackson television market. It is programmed primarily as an independent station while maintaining a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV, and it brands itself as My 35 The Loo. The station is owned by Tougaloo College, a historically Black private college in Mississippi, and operated by Gray Media alongside NBC affiliate WLBT, channel 3, and Fox affiliate WDBD, channel 40. The three stations share studios on South Jefferson Street in downtown Jackson, while WLOO's transmitter is located on Thigpen Road southeast of Raymond, Mississippi.

WLOO's story has three distinct chapters. It signed on in 2003 as WUFX, restoring a local Fox affiliate to Jackson after a two-year absence, and doing so only after a shooting at its transmitter site delayed its launch. In 2006 it swapped network identities with WDBD in the reshuffle that created The CW and MyNetworkTV. Then, in 2012 and 2013, its license passed for one dollar to Tougaloo College, which intended to use the station as a teaching tool, and it took the WLOO call sign, a play on the college's name. Few American television stations are owned by a college that is not a public broadcasting licensee, which makes WLOO a notable case.

A Market Without Fox

The station exists because Jackson lost its Fox affiliate at the start of the 2000s. WDBD, Jackson's original Fox station, dropped the network in favor of The WB in October 2001 after a payment dispute between its owner, Pegasus Broadcasting, and Fox. For the next 23 months, the Jackson area had no over-the-air Fox affiliate. Cable viewers in Jackson received Fox programming through Foxnet, the network's cable-only service for markets without an affiliate, while cable providers in the Natchez area carried WNTZ-TV from Alexandria, Louisiana, instead.

A construction permit for a new Vicksburg station on UHF channel 35 had an unusually long gestation. The station's founding is dated to October 1, 1996, and WUFX was granted an original construction permit after the Federal Communications Commission finalized the digital television allotment plan on April 21, 1997. As a result, the station did not receive a companion digital channel, since it was authorized as the digital transition framework was being set. The permit was eventually built out by Jackson Television as the vehicle to bring Fox back to the market over the air.

A Launch Delayed by Gunfire

Channel 35 was scheduled to begin broadcasting at 11 a.m. on September 7, 2003, in time for the start of the 2003 NFL season, a natural showcase for a new Fox affiliate. That plan collapsed for a reason few stations have ever faced. On August 31, two members of the tower construction crew working at the station's analog transmitter site in Edwards were shot at. All work at the site was halted for 22 days while the Hinds County Sheriff's Department investigated. Deputies eventually determined that it was safe for the crew to resume work and provided on-site security until construction was completed.

WUFX finally signed on September 29, 2003, airing an analog signal on UHF channel 35. It became Jackson's second Fox affiliate, following WDBD's original tenure, and throughout its Fox affiliation it branded itself as Fox 35 with the slogan Fox for You. The station gave the market a full local network lineup again and carried Fox's sports and prime time programming, including the NFL coverage whose season opener it had hoped to debut with three weeks earlier.

The 2006 Affiliation Swap

The landscape of American broadcast networks was redrawn in early 2006, when it was announced that The WB and UPN would merge to form The CW, and News Corporation, the owner of Fox, announced a new programming service called MyNetworkTV. In Jackson, UPN affiliate WRBJ was named the market's CW station, while WUFX was slated to join MyNetworkTV. Rather than simply switch networks, WUFX and WDBD swapped affiliations in advance. On July 3, 2006, WUFX temporarily picked up The WB while beginning to identify itself on air as My 35, in anticipation of MyNetworkTV's launch. After joining MyNetworkTV, it continued carrying WB programming on a secondary basis until that network shut down on September 17, 2006. WDBD, meanwhile, rejoined Fox and became Fox 40.

The swap settled the two stations into the roles they still broadly occupy: WDBD as the Fox affiliate and channel 35 as the market's MyNetworkTV outlet. In later years WLOO's primary identity shifted toward that of an independent station, with MyNetworkTV held as a secondary affiliation, a pattern common among MyNetworkTV affiliates after that service evolved from a network into a programming service made up largely of syndicated drama repeats.

Sale to Roundtable Broadcasting

WUFX and WDBD were sold by Jackson Television to Roundtable Broadcasting in early 2010, although the licensee listing with the Federal Communications Commission continued to show Jackson Television for a time. The Roundtable period was brief but included one programming milestone: in April 2010, WDBD began producing a weeknight half-hour newscast for WUFX at 10 p.m., called Fox 40 News at 10 on My 35. The broadcast competed against the long-standing late newscasts of the market's Big Three affiliates and gave channel 35 its first regular local news presence.

Roundtable's tenure ended with a larger restructuring of Jackson television in 2012, in which the market's Fox, MyNetworkTV and low-power stations were consolidated under one operating roof. That transaction would also bring about the most distinctive feature of the station's modern identity, its ownership by an institution of higher education.

Tougaloo College Becomes a Station Owner

In July 2012, Vicksburg Broadcasting filed to sell WUFX and WBMS-CA to American Spirit Media. American Spirit was also acquiring WDBD and WXMS-LP from Roundtable Broadcasting. Because of ownership limits and the structure of the deal, the WUFX license was sold separately, for one dollar, to Tougaloo College. American Spirit provided sales services to the station under a joint sales agreement, and Gray Television, the owner of WLBT, provided certain services to the American Spirit stations under a shared services agreement. The transactions were consummated on November 13, 2012.

Tougaloo College stated that it intended to use the station to teach its students about the operation of television stations, turning a commercial license into an educational asset for a small liberal arts college founded in 1869. The arrangement placed WLOO in rare company nationally: a full-power commercial television station owned by a college, operated in partnership with professional broadcasters, in a state capital market. On April 15, 2013, the call letters were changed from WUFX to WLOO, echoing the Tougaloo name and giving the station the branding it still uses, My 35 The Loo. The station's public website is hosted through the college at tougaloo.edu.

News Programming

WLOO's news history is tied to its sister stations. The 10 p.m. newscast produced by WDBD beginning in April 2010 was channel 35's principal local program during the Roundtable and early American Spirit years. After American Spirit completed its acquisition of WDBD and entered the shared services agreement with WLBT, the Fox station's separate news department was shut down. Production of WDBD's newscasts was assumed by WLBT on November 12, 2012, and the new arrangement retained the sister stations' news programming except for the 10 p.m. show on WUFX, which was dropped because it would have competed directly with WLBT's own late newscast.

Since then, WLOO has not maintained a news operation of its own. Its schedule is built around MyNetworkTV programming, syndicated shows and the multicast networks on its subchannels, while local news in the Gray Media Jackson group is centered on WLBT and WDBD. That division of labor reflects the station's role in the market: an entertainment-oriented outlet complementing two full-service network affiliates under the same operating umbrella in downtown Jackson.

Technical Facilities and Subchannels

WLOO broadcasts on virtual channel 35 from a transmitter on Thigpen Road southeast of Raymond. Its Federal Communications Commission facility ID is 84253, its effective radiated power is 950 kilowatts, and its antenna height above average terrain is 582 meters, among the taller broadcast structures in Mississippi, giving the Vicksburg-licensed station a strong signal across the Jackson market. As WUFX, the station shut down its analog signal on UHF channel 35 on May 4, 2009, ahead of the national transition deadline. Its digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41, displayed as virtual channel 35, until the broadcast repack moved it to channel 36 in 2018.

The station's signal is multiplexed into six subchannels. Channel 35.1 carries the main WLOO programming in 720p high definition. The remaining services are standard definition: Heroes and Icons on 35.2, Start TV on 35.3, Catchy Comedy on 35.4, MeTV Toons on 35.5 and Movies! on 35.6. The lineup gives Jackson viewers a broad set of classic television and film networks from a single station, in keeping with WLOO's entertainment-focused position in the market.

WLOO and Its Market

Although licensed to Vicksburg, a city on the Mississippi River about 45 minutes west of the capital, WLOO is functionally a Jackson station: its studios are in downtown Jackson, its transmitter is in Hinds County's orbit southeast of Raymond, and its programming is aimed at the Jackson market. Vicksburg licensing for a Jackson-serving station is a familiar pattern in American broadcasting, where a smaller nearby community's allocation is used to serve a larger neighboring market.

The station's enduring significance rests on three facts. It restored Fox to Jackson viewers over the air in 2003, ending a 23-month gap. It carried the market through the 2006 network realignment that created The CW and MyNetworkTV. Most distinctively, it is owned by Tougaloo College, whose name its call sign honors and whose students the license was acquired to help teach. As an independent station with a secondary MyNetworkTV affiliation, operated by Gray Media alongside WLBT and WDBD, WLOO remains a fixture of central Mississippi television more than two decades after its eventful sign-on.