Television: WSBT-TV and the market it made

1952–2016

The first telecast: WSBT-TV first signed on in December 1952 — on the 21st by the Tribune's own fiftieth-anniversary account; a station reference record gives the 22nd, and the dates stand as the records give them. It broadcast from a converted radio studio on the third floor of the Tribune Building at Lafayette and Colfax, on UHF channel 34, primarily for CBS with secondary affiliations to NBC, ABC, and DuMont, which it held until Elkhart's WSJV signed on in March 1954. Its firsts are the market's foundation stones: it was the first UHF station in the United States to produce a live telecast — a five-minute local news bulletin — and it is the oldest continuously operating UHF station in the country; most sets of 1952, built for VHF only, needed a converter to see it at all.

It was the first station in Indiana to broadcast in color, the first color broadcast dated by the Tribune's retrospective to January 1954, the Tournament of Roses Parade, and the first Indiana station to telecast a high-school basketball tournament, from John Adams High School. F.A. Miller was president and editor of the Tribune when the station debuted, and the Tribune's anniversary account remembered his instruction in it: "A lot of newspaper owners didn't want to embrace radio but he did." In April 1956 the station dedicated its Broadcast Center at Lafayette and Jefferson. In January 1958 it moved from channel 34 to channel 22, where it remains. The newspaper-broadcast combination the Tribune built was among the few grandfathered when the FCC barred new common ownership of newspapers and stations in the same market in the 1970s, and WSBT stands as the longest-tenured CBS affiliate in Indiana.

The market's other South Bend stations are carried at the sizes their records support in the Producers chapter — WNDU-TV, Notre Dame's own station, on the air 15 July 1955, and the public station WNIT, first broadcast 31 January 1974, which in April 2010 moved into the Center for Public Media, the former WSBT-TV building at Lafayette and Jefferson, donated by Schurz — joined on the roster by LeSEA's WHME-TV on channel 46. The market's first televised Notre Dame home football game had come earlier than any local station, against Iowa in 1947, in the experimental years before the stations existed. WSJV, the market's second station, is Elkhart's — signed on there in March 1954 as channel 52 and moved to channel 28 in February 1958 — and its record belongs to Elkhart's build, as its sign-on's one South Bend consequence, the end of WSBT-TV's secondary affiliations, is stated above.

The move east, 2008: The station's own address had already changed before the sale. WSBT-TV left the Broadcast Center at Lafayette and Jefferson in 2008 for the Schurz building at 1301 East Douglas Road in Mishawaka, an all-digital plant of some 85,000 square feet raised on the Edison Lakes ground from 2007 and unveiled on 16 November 2008, beginning with the 10 p.m. subchannel newscast, the market's first high-definition local news plant. The Broadcast Center it left is the building WNIT took in 2010 as the Center for Public Media. Channel 22 broadcasts from the Mishawaka plant today; the building's full plant history is carried in the Mishawaka record.

The combination ended with the Schurz exit. Announced on 14 September 2015 as part of the $442.5 million sale of the company's broadcasting to Gray Television, WSBT-TV could not go to Gray, which already owned WNDU-TV; it was swapped instead to Sinclair Broadcast Group, the Federal Communications Commission approved the transaction on 12 February 2016, and the sale completed on 16 February 2016 — separating channel 22, after sixty-three years, from the Tribune that had signed it on and from the WSBT radio stations it had grown up beside. The separated houses kept working arrangements: WSBT-TV maintains a news and weather content agreement with its former radio sisters and a story-sharing partnership with the Tribune.

Sources:

1. The WSBT-TV station record and the South Bend Tribune's fiftieth-anniversary retrospective, "Starting South Bend's broadcast day" (2002) — the December 1952 sign-on (the 21st in the retrospective; the 22nd in the station reference record), the converted third-floor studio, channel 34, the first live UHF telecast, the January 1954 color broadcast, the April 1956 Broadcast Center dedication, the channel 22 move of January 1958, and F.A. Miller's remembered line.
2. The Schurz sale record — the announcement of 14 September 2015, the Sinclair swap, FCC approval of 12 February 2016, and completion on 16 February 2016; the Producers chapter of this record — WNDU-TV's sign-on of 15 July 1955 and WNIT's of 31 January 1974 and the Center for Public Media of April 2010.
3. University of Notre Dame Archives blog — the first televised Notre Dame home game, against Iowa, 1947.
4. The Mishawaka record (producers chapter), this history — the Schurz building: ground broken 2007, the all-digital plant unveiled 16 November 2008; WSBT-TV station contact page, checked November 2026 — 1301 East Douglas Road, Mishawaka.