![]() Orion Broadcasting reached a deal to merge with Cosmos Broadcasting, a subsidiary of the Liberty Corporation, in 1980. renamed itself Orion Broadcasting in reflection of its broadcasting holdings beyond Louisville. From a transmitter site near Trenary, WJMN-TV-so designated in honor of Jane Morton Norton, chairman of the board of the company -began broadcasting October 7, bringing a full NBC lineup and WFRV-TV's signal to a further 50,000 households. As a result of an attempt by Northern Michigan University to build an educational station on the wider-coverage channel 3 instead of the allocated channel 13, it would be nearly two years before a construction permit was granted on April 23, 1969. Two years later, the station began its move to build a satellite in the Upper Peninsula when it filed for channel 3 at Escanaba, Michigan on June 20, 1967. Local programming began to be broadcast in color in the fall of 1965, making it the second station (behind WBAY-TV) with that capability in the market. WFRV's first attempt at expanding to the Upper Peninsula, a construction permit to build channel 8 at Iron Mountain, Michigan, was scrapped at the company's request days after the sale, as was an application by the company to build a channel 9 station at Wausau. In December 1960, Valley Telecasting sold WFRV-TV to Valley Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of WAVE-TV at Louisville, Kentucky, for $1.09 million. Later that year, the station broadcast what was claimed to be the first ever coverage of a live lunar eclipse: a studio camera was wheeled out into the station parking lot. The next year, on February 1, the station changed affiliations from ABC to NBC. WFRV-TV was the Green Bay station in the short-lived Badger Television Network, which operated in 1958 and also included Milwaukee's WISN-TV and Madison's WKOW-TV. ![]() Master control switched to Green Bay in December when a new tower and transmitter building were activated, and production from the station's present Mason Street studios began in mid-January 1957. By 1956, Neenah-Menasha owned all of WFRV-TV that same year, the company announced plans to build a studio base in Green Bay. While the transmitter facility was new, WFRV-TV used WNAM-TV's Neenah studios. WFRV-TV signed on channel 5 on May 20, 1955, after an appeal lodged by WMBV-TV to block the merger of Valley Telecasting and Neenah-Menasha was declined for the final time the station aired film programming for its first ten days before beginning affiliations with ABC and the DuMont Television Network-then on its way out-on June 1. The combined station would retain some operations at Neenah for program production in the Fox Cities, but it would use the tower and transmitter building of the former WJPG-FM on Scray's Hill near De Pere. Sensing that the arrival of Valley Telecasting, which had selected the call letters WFRV-TV for its station to represent the "Wonderful Fox River Valley", would doom its UHF channel to oblivion, Neenah-Menasha reached a deal in November to merge with Valley and announced it would suspend operations of WNAM-TV on the evening of January 2, 1955. The FCC had awarded the third and final commercial channel for Green Bay, channel 5, to the Valley Telecasting Company, a consortium of 17 area leaders, in 1953. The UHF station was struggling WOSH-TV of Oshkosh had closed down in March. īy late 1954, northeastern Wisconsin had one UHF television station-WNAM-TV-and two VHF outlets, WBAY-TV channel 2 and new sign-on WMBV-TV channel 11. Owned by the Neenah-Menasha Broadcasting Company alongside radio station WNAM (1280 AM), the station carried programming from ABC as well as occasional NBC and DuMont programs. WNAM-TV began telecasting from Neenah on UHF channel 42 on January 26, 1954, after beginning test transmissions in December 1953. WFRV-TV's studios also house master control and some internal operations for MyNetworkTV affiliate WJMN-TV (channel 3) in Escanaba, Michigan, which served as a semi-satellite of WFRV for the central Upper Peninsula of Michigan until 2022 WJMN does maintain studios, sales offices and engineering operations in Marquette. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on East Mason Street in Green Bay, and its transmitter is located north of Morrison, Wisconsin. ![]()
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