WEVV-TV

CBS/Fox/MyNetworkTV affiliate in Evansville, Indiana

WEVV TV (channel 44) is a television station in Evansville, Indiana, United States, affiliated with CBS, Fox, and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Allen Media Group, the station maintains studios on Carpenter and Bond Streets in downtown Evansville and a transmitter at John James Audubon State Park in Henderson, Kentucky. WEEV LD (channel 47) in Evansville operates as a low power translator of WEVV TV, relaying the Fox and MyNetworkTV programming shown on WEVV DT2; this station's transmitter is located on Wolf Hills Road in Henderson along the Ohio River.

Channel 44 first signed on the air on November 17, 1983, as an independent station. The station was originally owned by Ralph Wilson (owner of San Francisco independent station KICU TV, and founder of the Buffalo Bills). It was the first full market independent station in the Tri State, and the first full market commercial television station to sign on in the Evansville market since WTVW (channel 7, now a CW affiliate) debuted 27 years earlier in August 1956. Competing independent station WLCN (channel 19, later WAZE TV and now defunct)—which signed one month after WEVV began operations—primarily served the southern part of the market at the time. The station originally operated from studio facilities located on Main Street and Riverside Drive in downtown Evansville.

The station became an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company on April 5, 1987, when the network debuted its inaugural lineup of prime time programming, which aired on Sunday evenings. However, like other Fox stations during the network's early years, WEVV continued to be programmed as a de facto independent station, as Fox would not carry seven nights a week of programming until September 1993. Until Fox began airing programming on a nightly basis, WEVV aired movies on nights when network programs did not air, usually starting at 7 p. m. Shortly after affiliating with the network, the station began branding as "Fox 44". The station changed its branding to "WEVV Fox TV" in 1994.

In May 1995, Banam Broadcasting, a subsidiary of BankAmerica, sold WTVW to Petracom Broadcasting. Fox then acquired a 20% equity stake in Petracom; this led to a three way affiliation swap in which WTVW ended its affiliation with ABC after 39 years and joined Fox on December 3, 1995. Conversely, the ABC affiliation moved to WEHT (channel 25) ending that station's affiliation with CBS. On July 1, 1995, WEVV signed an affiliation agreement with CBS to become the network's new affiliate for the Evansville market. Although CBS' affiliation agreement with WEHT did not expire until December of that year, channel 25 (which was unhappy about losing its network affiliation with CBS after 42 years) began dropping CBS shows from its schedule in stages. As a result, CBS' programming gradually migrated to WEVV over the next four months, during which the station carried both CBS and Fox programming. The Price Is Right was the first CBS program to move to channel 44 on September 18, 1995. WEVV then picked up CBS This Morning in November. The switch to CBS was officially completed on December 3, when the remainder of the CBS programming schedule moved to WEVV. At that point, the station sold much of its syndicated programming inventory to WTSN LP (channel 56, now Retro Television Network affiliate WYYW CD on channel 15). On February 11, 1999, Wilson sold the station to Communications Corporation of America for $27.5 million. In June 2006, Comcorp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Western District of Louisiana. That September, WEVV began broadcasting a digital high definition signal; at the time, a digital subchannel was added on virtual channel 44.2, which was originally affiliated solely with MyNetworkTV and was simulcast on WTSN LP (and as such, was branded as "MyTSN"). The station's relationship with WTSN LP ended in 2009, at which time WEVV DT2 rebranded as "My44", with WTSN converting into an America One affiliate. WEVV TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre transition UHF channel 45, using virtual channel 44. On May 11, 2011, WEVV signed an affiliation agreement with Fox on its second digital channel after WTVW (which then became an independent station) lost its affiliation due to a dispute between Fox and Nexstar over Fox's revenue sharing demands of its stations' retransmission consent earnings—in essence, resulting in WEVV regaining the Fox affiliation it had lost 16 years earlier. WEVV added Fox programming to its second digital subchannel on July 1, 2011, on WEVV digital channel 44.2. Consequently, MyNetworkTV programming—which had been carried on the subchannel since it launched with the programming service on September 5, 2006—was moved from the 7 to 9 p. m. to 9 to 11 p. m., immediately following Fox programming. On June 24, 2011, WEVV TV signed on a new digital low power translator station on UHF channel 47, under the callsign W47EE D, to relay WEVV DT2's programming in 720p high definition over the air in the immediate Evansville/Henderson area. However, the deal came soon after the FCC began closely scrutinizing sharing agreements between two or more television stations within the same market to help increase female and ethnic minority ownership in television broadcasting. When it was apparent the Comcorp sale would be delayed, Nexstar announced on August 4, 2014, that it would instead sell WEVV to The Woodlands, Texas–based Bayou City Broadcasting (owned by DuJuan McCoy, who is African American) for $18.6 million; the sale price later increased to $26.85 million by its closure. The sale was completed on January 1, 2015. On January 8, 2015, WEVV and WEVV DT2 were removed from Dish Network in the Evansville market, due to a carriage dispute spurred by Bayou City and Dish's inability to agree on retransmission consent revenue during negotiations on a new carriage agreement. Bayou City representatives claimed that Dish was trying to gain leverage over the company in negotiations because of the company's smaller size in comparison to other television station groups. Dish, however, claimed the new owners wanted transmission fees higher than those it pays other local broadcasters. The dispute was resolved on February 3, 2015, through the reaching of a multi year carriage agreement with Dish Network. On August 3, 2015, upon the relaunch of its news department, WEVV moved its operations to WTVW's former studios on Carpenter Street in Downtown Evansville, which had sat vacant since WTVW merged operations with WEHT through a shared services agreement in December 2011. On November 11, 2015, the translator's callsign was changed to the current WEEV LD. The sale was completed on July 31, 2019.

WEVV started producing a 9 p. m. newscast February 23, 1992, as a Fox affiliate. Once it became a CBS affiliate in 1995, it moved the newscast to 10 p. m. and added additional newscasts. However, none of the changes to its newscasts helped the station in the ratings, and WEVV remained continually in fourth place behind WFIE, WEHT and WTVW. Unable to make any ratings headway, WEVV shut down its news department in July 2001, causing the layoffs of 40 staffers. As a result of the shutdown of the original news department, WEVV became one of the few Big Three affiliates that did not air any local newscasts—a group that includes CBS owned and operated station WWJ TV in Detroit, ABC affiliate KDNL TV in St. Louis and NBC affiliate WTWC TV in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2002, the station began airing local weather cut ins on weekday evenings, which were produced by WeatherVision out of its headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi. After Bayou City Broadcasting acquired WEVV, Bayou City president DuJuan McCoy announced on December 9, 2014, that the company planned to relaunch a news department in 2015. The newscasts premiered on August 3, 2015, with the debuts of a new weekday morning news program (initially airing from 4:30 to 7 a. m., and is also simulcast on WEVV DT2/WEEV LD), a 90 minute news block starting at 5 p. m. and half hour newscasts at noon and 10 p. m. on its main channel, which have all been produced in high definition since the return of in house news operations.