18 Facts About WTTO

WTTO is a television station licensed to Homewood, Alabama, United States, serving the Birmingham area as an affiliate of The CW.

The stations share studios at the Riverchase office park on Concourse Parkway in Hoover, while WTTO's transmitter is located atop Red Mountain, near the Goldencrest neighborhood of southwestern Birmingham.

The tower was erected alongside studios in the city's Goldencrest neighborhood in early 1982, and on April 21, after more than 18 years, WTTO debuted as Birmingham's fourth commercial TV station, with the first program being Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

WTTO gave Birmingham its first independent station and Alabama its second, debuting a few weeks after WPMI-TV in Mobile.

From its sign-on in 1982 until 1985, WTTO carried programming from the Financial News Network.

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WTTO quickly became known in the market for airing a broad mix of cult films as part of its film lineup, as well as spoof promotional campaigns for its programs.

WTTO quickly became the strongest independent station in Alabama, and one of the highest-rated independents in the United States.

WTTO remained the only independent station in central Alabama for its first two years of operation; however, it would eventually gain a competitor in the west-central part of the state.

WDBB then relocated its transmitter facilities to a tower in Moundville and reduced its transmitter power to reduce overlap with WTTO, but continued to maintain Bessemer as its city of license.

That same year, WTTO entered into a local marketing agreement with WABM, which had been sold a few months earlier to a locally based group.

Late that year, both WDBB and WNAL began airing separate programming during the daytime and late evening hours, consisting of syndicated sitcoms, drama and animated series that WTTO did not hold the rights to broadcast as well as local newscasts.

However, in what would be the catalyst to a change in the carriage policies for Fox Kids that allowed stations the option of either airing the block or being granted the right to transfer the rights to another station in the market, Sinclair approached WBRC about allowing WTTO to retain Fox Kids, which the Fox network allowed it to keep.

WTTO dropped the Fox Kids block in September 2000, at which time, the station moved the Kids' WB blocks to weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

WTTO has continued to air the children's program blocks carried by The WB, and later by The CW, without interruption through the years.

WTTO continued to show The WB's programming until The WB's The Night of Favorites and Farewells, which aired on September 17,2006.

On January 4,2016, as part of a groupwide affiliation agreement with the network spurred by the network's acquisition of rights to reruns of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, WTTO switched the affiliation of its second digital subchannel to Antenna TV; this resulted in the displacement of GetTV to a newly created fourth digital subchannel of the station.

On October 31,2015, WTTO launched a tertiary digital subchannel on virtual channel 21.

WTTO launched its own in-house news operation on September 8,2003, and began airing a nightly hour-long prime time newscast, titled WB21 News at 9:00.