WWAZ-TV
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WWAZ-TV is a television station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, broadcasting locally on channel 68 as an affiliate of The Baptist Channel. Founded October 2, 1989, the station is owned by Taylor Media Stations Group, and shares transmitter facilities with WWRS (Channel 52) which are located north of Iron Ridge in Dodge County. However as noted below, the station is currently airing religious programming and not broadcasting local programming.
Most of the station's audience had the station over-the-air, as WWAZ and Pappas had previously not pursued any must-carry provisions with local cable systems and the national satellite services because of affiliation uncertainties; for instance, the station was not carried on Fond du Lac's local Charter Communications system. However, this changed in mid-2007, when Pappas filed a must-carry provision with Time Warner Cable's Northeastern Wisconsin system, and the channel was subsequently added in Green Bay and the Fox Cities as of June 26, 2007 [1], replacing Milwaukee CW affiliate WVTV, which had aired on the system since the mid-1980's during that station's phase of becoming a superstation with intra-state coverage across Wisconsin.
The station ceased broadcasting in January 2008. A slide on the station's slot on Time Warner Cable contained the sentence WWAZ-TV informed Time Warner Cable that it has ceased broadcast operations until further notice. The station returned to the air as The Baptist Channel in January 2009.
Also in August 2007, FamilyNet was added to all Southeastern and South Central Wisconsin Charter systems on a digital family tier [2]. The Charter signal is the FamilyNet national feed, but since WWAZ carried the network feed raw without local interupption, there was no difference in the national and local channels.
The station changed their call letters in late 2004 from WMMF in anticipation for a change in affiliation to the Spanish language Azteca America network, which never happened; Pappas ended up dropping almost all affiliations with the network at the start of July 2007, replacing Azteca America with their own new Spanish-language network, TuVision.
It is unknown at present if Taylor Media still has plans to offer any local programming on this channel.
On January 15, 2008, WWAZ-TV filed a request with the FCC to cease broadcasting in analog before the end of the DTV transition and to become a digital-only station, broadcasting on channel 44. It became a digital-only station on January 15, 2009.
The request was approved in late July 2008 [2]
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WWAZ is the second television station to be licensed to Fond du Lac. KFIZ-TV, an independent station on Channel 34 and a sister station to KFIZ-AM and WFON FM, operated between 1968 and 1972.
