Who was produced there: the three-stations-or-four question, settled

2008 · the building's first production roster

The conflict, printed whole: the contemporary accounts do not agree on the building's radio roster. The Tribune's groundbreaking report promised three radio stations; De Kever's history records studios for four. Both were describing the same move, and the difference is a fourth station that Schurz operated but did not own. The three Schurz-owned stations were WSBT (960 AM), its FM sister — by then WNSN, "Sunny 101.5" — and WZOC (94.3 FM). The fourth set of studios belonged to WHFB-FM (99.9), a station licensed to Benton Harbor, Michigan, which Schurz operated under a local marketing agreement; the trade-press tour of the new plant lists the cluster that moved as WSBT-TV, WSBT 960, "Sunny" WNSN 101.5 and the studios of WHFB-FM, operated under that agreement. A 2013 Federal Communications Commission letter confirms the arrangement from the regulatory side: WHFB-FM's main studio stood at 1301 East Douglas Road, Mishawaka, and its licensee was Douglas Road Radio, Inc., a company in which Schurz held a minority interest — a company whose very name took the Mishawaka street. WZOC was likewise a Douglas Road Radio station.

So the building's first production roster, at full count, was one television station and four radio operations, plus the Tribune's Mishawaka bureau and the Schurz corporate offices. The television side's "three channels" of the groundbreaking report were the station's own digital streams rather than three stations — a distinction the later record makes unavoidable, since the building housed exactly one television license for its first seventeen years. The four-station reading governs: De Kever's count was the count of studios, the Tribune's the count of stations Schurz owned outright, and the FCC's paperwork names the arrangement that reconciles them.

The consolidation nearly grew once more. On the trade-press tour of the plant in 2011, Schurz was negotiating to buy South Bend's low-power ABC, CW and MyNetwork affiliates from Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, with plans to move those stations into the Mishawaka building as well; the deal was never consummated, and the building's television roster stayed at one station for another fourteen years.

Sources

1. South Bend Tribune groundbreaking report (three radio stations) against Peter B.
2. Scott Fybush, "Site of the Week," the new WSBT facility — the moved cluster listed as WSBT-TV, WSBT 960, WNSN 101.5 and the studios of WHFB-FM 99.9, "a Benton Harbor, Michigan station operated under LMA by Schurz."
3. Federal Communications Commission letter, 2013 (CDBS record) — WHFB-FM main studio at 1301 E. Douglas Road, Mishawaka; licensee Douglas Road Radio, Inc.
4. Schurz Communications station list — minority interest in Douglas Road Radio, Inc.; WZOC likewise Douglas Road Radio–owned.