WWUP
WWUP, known on air as WWUP-TV and broadcasting on channel 10, is a television station licensed to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in the United States. It operates as a full-time, full-power satellite of WWTV (channel 9) in Cadillac, and together the two stations serve as the CBS affiliates for the northern Lower Peninsula and the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Because the station rebroadcasts its parent station in full, viewers in the Sault Ste. Marie area receive the same CBS network programming, the same local newscasts and the same syndicated schedule as viewers around Cadillac and Traverse City, delivered from a transmitter positioned to cover the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula.
The combined operation is branded as 9&10 News, a name that joins the two channel numbers into a single identity. WWUP is owned by 910 Media Group, through the Heritage Broadcasting Company of Michigan, and it has a sister relationship with WFQX-TV (channel 32), the market's Fox affiliate, and that station's satellite WFUP, which are provided with certain services under a shared services agreement. Aside from its transmitter, WWUP maintains no physical presence of its own in Sault Ste. Marie; its studios, newsroom and business operations are those of WWTV in Cadillac.
Origins in the WWTV story
WWUP cannot be separated from the history of its parent station. WWTV began broadcasting on New Year's Day in 1954, on channel 13, under the ownership of the Sparton Corporation, a radio manufacturer based in Jackson, Michigan. It was the first television station in Michigan north of Lansing, signing on several months before Traverse City's WPBN-TV. WWTV was a CBS affiliate from its first day, although in the unsettled network landscape of the 1950s it also carried secondary affiliations with ABC and with the DuMont network, which closed in 1956. When WPBN signed on, the two stations shared ABC programming until 1971, when WGTU signed on and became the area's ABC affiliate.
In 1958, broadcast pioneer John Fetzer purchased WWTV. Fetzer also owned the Detroit Tigers baseball team, and his purchase brought Tigers games to northern Michigan viewers for the first time. In 1961, a fire at the station's transmitter spread to the studio and destroyed the building, which was quickly rebuilt with new equipment. Those events set the stage for a major technical reorganisation in 1962, and it was that reorganisation which created WWUP.
Sign-on in 1962
In 1962, WWTV swapped channel assignments with WZZM in Grand Rapids and moved from channel 13 to channel 9. The move allowed WWTV to increase its broadcasting power and cover the entire northern half of the Lower Peninsula. Even so, the geography of northern Michigan placed one important population centre beyond reliable reach: Sault Ste. Marie, at the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula, separated from Cadillac by the Straits of Mackinac and a considerable distance of sparsely populated land.
On June 15, 1962, Fetzer signed on WWUP in Sault Ste. Marie as a full-time satellite of WWTV. A satellite station, in this sense, is a full-power station in its own right, with its own licence, channel and transmitter, whose purpose is to extend the parent station's programming into an area the parent cannot serve directly. From 1962 until around 1998, the pair branded themselves collectively as TV 9&10; since 1998 they have been known as 9&10 News, although many long-time viewers still use the older name.
The satellite model and what it means for viewers
The satellite arrangement shapes everything about WWUP. The station carries WWTV's schedule in full, including CBS network programming on its primary channel, so its programme history is the parent station's programme history. In its early years that included the secondary ABC clearance shared with the parent until 1971. There is no separate Sault Ste. Marie newsroom and no separate programme schedule; local identification is provided through the combined 9&10 branding, and the station's existence is acknowledged in the joint station identifications.
This model is common in large, rural television markets, where a single station's signal cannot physically cover the whole territory and where the population is too thin to support duplicate full-service stations in every community. Northern Michigan is exactly such a market. Together, WWTV and WWUP serve 23 counties in the northern Lower Peninsula and three counties in the eastern Upper Peninsula, in what is described as the largest television market, by land area, east of the Mississippi River. A full-power satellite on channel 10 was the practical way to give the eastern Upper Peninsula the same service as the rest of the region.
Coverage across the border
WWUP's signal has an international dimension that most American satellite stations do not. Its transmitter is located near Goetzville in Chippewa County, approximately 30 miles (48 kilometres) south-southeast of Sault Ste. Marie. From there, the signal can be received by viewers in Northern Ontario, including Sault Ste. Marie's Canadian sister city of the same name, which sits directly across the St. Marys River. For those over-the-air viewers in Ontario, channel 10 has long been part of the available choice of American network television, alongside the region's other border-spilling signals.
Within Michigan, the station's role is to anchor television service at the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula, a region of small communities for whom the 9&10 signal is the local CBS service. The call letters themselves record that geography: WWUP is explained as Water Wonderland's Upper Peninsula, a companion to WWTV's Water Wonderland Television, both referencing Michigan's former Water Wonderland nickname.
Ownership
WWUP has passed through the same ownership as its parent station throughout its life. John Fetzer's organisation built it in 1962, and the Cadillac-Sault Ste. Marie combination later came under the Heritage Broadcasting Company of Michigan. Today the owner is presented as 910 Media Group, the locally based Cadillac company whose licence holder remains Heritage Broadcasting Company of Michigan. The group's public description traces its roots on air to 1954 and presents 9&10 News, the Fox service branded Local 32, and MeTV Northern Michigan among its services.
Through a shared services agreement with Cadillac Telecasting, 910 Media Group also provides services to WFQX-TV, the Fox affiliate on channel 32, and its Vanderbilt-licensed satellite WFUP. That arrangement matters to WWUP viewers because the Fox programming for the market is also carried on the second subchannel of WWTV and WWUP, branded Local 32, tying the satellite's digital offering to the wider station group.
Programming and subchannels
The primary channel, 10.1, carries the CBS network schedule and the syndicated programming of the parent station, under the 9&10 News brand. The digital signal is multiplexed into several subchannels. Channel 10.2 carries Fox programming under the Local 32 brand, giving eastern Upper Peninsula viewers the market's Fox service without a separate full-power Fox transmitter in Sault Ste. Marie. Channel 10.3 is MeTV Northern Michigan, carrying the classic-television network MeTV. Further subchannels have included Laff on 10.4, the shopping services QVC and HSN, and Grit. Earlier, a fourth subchannel carried The CW Plus service until 2020, during both stations' period of offering that feed.
Because WWUP mirrors WWTV, changes to the subchannel line-up are decided at the group level in Cadillac and appear simultaneously on channels 9 and 10. The pattern illustrates the purpose of digital multicasting in a satellite operation: a single programme stream produced once in Cadillac can deliver CBS, Fox and several entertainment networks to communities hundreds of miles apart.
News operation
WWUP does not produce separate newscasts. Instead, it carries the full news output of 9&10 News from Cadillac, which is the identity under which the combined stations present their journalism. Historical programme filings for the joint operation list a full daily schedule of shared newscasts, including the morning programme Michigan This Morning, a midday newscast, early-evening and late-evening editions, and weekend evening newscasts, all of which were broadcast simultaneously on channels 9 and 10.
For viewers in the eastern Upper Peninsula, this means their CBS station's news is a regional service covering both peninsulas, rather than a Sault Ste. Marie-only programme. Weather coverage is a significant part of that service in a region where lake-effect snow from Lake Superior and Lake Michigan strongly affects both the station's home territory in the Lower Peninsula and the Chippewa County area served by WWUP's transmitter.
Technical information
WWUP broadcasts on digital VHF channel 10, displayed to viewers as virtual channel 10, matching the channel number it used throughout the analog era. Its authorised effective radiated power is 25 kW, with a height above average terrain of 370 metres (1,214 feet) from the Goetzville site. The station's FCC facility ID is 26993, one number below its parent station's 26994, reflecting how closely the two licences were created and administered.
The station's channel history mirrors the national digital transition. It broadcast in analog on VHF channel 10 from 1962 to 2009. Its pre-transition digital signal operated on UHF channel 49 from 2007 to 2009, after which the station moved its digital operation to its historic VHF channel 10 assignment. The parent station made a parallel move, and the pair's tall Cadillac tower, at 497 metres, is described as the tallest transmitter tower in Michigan.
Place in northern Michigan broadcasting
WWUP's significance is best understood geographically. When it signed on in 1962, it completed Fetzer's plan for a two-transmitter CBS service spanning both of Michigan's peninsulas, a plan made possible by WWTV's move to channel 9 the same year. More than six decades later, the arrangement endures: one newsroom, one programme schedule and one brand, delivered on channel 9 to the northern Lower Peninsula and on channel 10 to Sault Ste. Marie and the eastern Upper Peninsula, with a signal that also reaches across the border into Ontario. In a market defined by distance, water and sparse population, WWUP remains the mechanism that makes a single regional station truly regional.
