13 Facts About WTMJ-TV

WTMJ-TV is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with NBC.

The existence of television sets in Milwaukee before WTMJ-TV even debuted was because the city is close enough to Chicago that television stations from that market could be and still are viewable in Milwaukee; therefore, residents in southeastern Wisconsin had access to WBKB-TV, which signed on from Chicago in 1946 as the first commercially licensed television station outside of the Eastern Time Zone.

WTMJ-TV has been affiliated with NBC since its sign-on, owing to its radio sister's longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network; although, it initially carried programming from CBS, ABC and the DuMont Television Network.

On July 11,1953, WTMJ-TV moved to VHF channel 4, in order to alleviate interference with WKZO-TV in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is located nearly directly across Lake Michigan.

WTMJ-TV was one of the first television stations in the United States to purchase color equipment to transmit and produce programming in the format; in December 1953, it broadcast NBC's color telecast of Amahl and the Night Visitors, when only two prototype color sets existed in Milwaukee.

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On March 1,2006, WTMJ-TV launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 4.

Until 1974, WTMJ-TV aired a movie on nights when The Midnight Special wasn't airing; this preempted The Tomorrow Show.

WTMJ-TV has served as Milwaukee's "official station" of the Green Bay Packers since the mid-1990s, giving it rights to air the team's non-nationally televised preseason games; in addition to the team's existing television broadcasters elsewhere in Wisconsin, the game telecasts are shared with sister stations WGBA in Green Bay and KMTV-TV in Omaha through a March 2012 broadcasting agreement between the Packers and former station parent Journal Broadcast Group.

WTMJ-TV served as the original local television outlet for the Milwaukee Brewers, carrying at least 25 to 40 of the Major League Baseball team's games each season—mostly involving those played on the road—from 1970 to 1980.

WTMJ-TV aired any Milwaukee Bucks games that were part of NBC's NBA broadcast contract from 1990 to 2002.

WTMJ-TV maintains a news and weather content agreement with sister radio stations WTMJ and WKTI .

WTMJ-TV was formerly a partner with Time Warner Cable in offering their original programming and news on a delayed basis through video on demand before those features were discontinued with changes in that provider's strategy after the merger into Spectrum, and Scripps offering their own apps on mobile devices and digital media players to carry that content.

WTMJ-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 4, at noon on June 12,2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.