WEYI

WEYI-TV

WEYI, (known on the air as NBC 25), is the NBC affiliate for the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City television market. Although licensed to Saginaw, Michigan, WEYI's studios, offices, and transmitter facilities are actually located at 2225 West Willard Road in Vienna Township, near Clio, Michigan, on the Genesee (south) side of the Genesee / Saginaw county line. (On the Saginaw (north) side of the line, the road is known as Gary Road.) From its 1359-foot (414-meter) tower (the second largest structure in Michigan), WEYI operates with an effective radiated power of 2040 kilowatts. WEYI is operated by Barrington Broadcasting Company, which also operates WBSF, The CW affiliate for the same market.

History

The station is one of the nation's earliest UHF television stations, signing on as CBS affiliate WKNX Channel 57 in April 1953. In 1965, the station changed channel numbers from 57 to 25, and in 1972 the station relocated to its current studios. The move was so that channel 25 would serve Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, just like WNEM-TV and WJRT -- prior to 1972, Flint's official CBS affiliate was Lansing's WJIM-TV. At the same time, new owners Rust Craft Broadcasting changed the station's call letters to WEYI to reflect the station's CBS affiliation.

In 1979, Ziff-Davis acquired the Rust Craft stations through a merger. In 1983, WEYI along with then sister stations WROC-TV in Rochester, New York, WRDW-TV in Augusta, Georgia and WTOV-TV in Steubenville, Ohio were sold to Television Station Partners, which then sold WEYI, WROC and WTOV to Smith Broadcasting in 1996. In 1997, the WEYI license was transferred to Smith Broadcasting subsidiary Sunrise Television, which later merged with the LIN TV Corporation in 2002. In May 2004, the station's current owners, Barrington Broadcasting, acquired the station. WEYI was Barrington's first station in Michigan; in March 2006, they would be joined by Northern Michigan's WPBN & WTOM, Marquette's WLUC-TV and, to a degree, Toledo's WNWO-TV as part of Barrington's family of stations in Michigan, following Barrington's purchase of those stations from Raycom Media.

In 1995, WEYI and WNEM-TV traded network affiliations, resulting in WEYI becoming an NBC station. In 2004, WEYI launched Mid-Michigan's WB (WBSF), a station affiliated with The WB Television Network available on cable and through WEYI's digital signal. The deal was made primarily because WKBD declined to carry Detroit Pistons basketball, switching instead to WMYD, which is not available on most mid-Michigan cable systems. WBSF is now the CW46 and after the construction of a new tower in 2007, is available on all cable systems and by analog signal as well.

Trivia

Mickey York, now a reporter on FSN Detroit, was the sports anchor on WEYI-TV for 4 years.

Digital Broadcast

Channel	Programming
25.1 / 30.1	Main WEYI / NBC programming in HD
25.2 / 30.2	Main WEYI / NBC programming in SD

Before September 5, 2008, 25.2 / 30.2 was the digital channel of WBSF. Currently, WBSF has no digital channel (see WBSF Digital Television for further details).

Analog-to-digital conversion

After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on February 17, 2009

, WEYI will remain on its current pre-transition channel number, 30. However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display WEYI's virtual channel as 25.