View source for WMSN-TV

{{Short description|Television station in Madison, Wisconsin}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2025}}
{{Infobox television station
| callsign               = WMSN-TV
| city                   =
| logo                   = WMSN 1.svg
| logo_upright           = 1
| logo_alt               = In a white rectangle with 3D effects, an older version of the Fox logo with a searchlight-like motif appears to the left of a numeral "47" in blue.
| branding               = Fox 47
| analog                 =
| digital                = 18 ([[UHF]])
| virtual                = 47
| translators            =
| subchannels            =
| affiliations           = {{ubl|'''47.1:''' [[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox]]|''for others, see {{section link||Subchannels}}''}}
| network                =
| owner                  = [[Sinclair Broadcast Group]]
| licensee               = WMSN Licensee, [[LLC]]
| location               = [[Madison, Wisconsin]]
| country                = United States
| founded                = December 8, 1983
| airdate                = {{start date and age|1986|06|08|p=y}}
| last_airdate           =
| callsign_meaning       = Madison (MSN is also the IATA code for [[Dane County Regional Airport]])
| sister_stations        =
| former_callsigns       =
| former_channel_numbers = {{ubl|'''Analog:''' 47 (UHF, 1986–2009)|'''Digital:''' 11 ([[VHF]], 2001–2010), 49 (UHF, 2010–2019)}}
| former_affiliations    = [[Independent station|Independent]] (June–October 1986)
| erp                    = 440 kW
| haat                   = {{convert|450|m|ft|0|abbr=on}}
| class                  =
| facility_id            = 10221
| coordinates            = {{coord|43|3|21|N|89|32|6|W|type:landmark_scale:2000}}
| licensing_authority    = [[FCC]]
| website                = {{Official}}
}}
'''WMSN-TV''' (channel 47) is a [[television station]] in [[Madison, Wisconsin]], United States, affiliated with the [[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox]] network. Owned by [[Sinclair Broadcast Group]], the station has studios on Big Sky Drive on the west side of Madison, and its transmitter is located on South Pleasant View Road in the Junction Ridge neighborhood also on Madison's west side.

==History==
[[File:WMSN-TV Studio.jpg|thumb|WMSN's studios in two photographs, featuring the frontage facing the [[U.S. Route 12 in Wisconsin|Madison Beltline]] on top, and its actual front on Big Sky Drive below, along with the station's first logo in 1986 on the building, and its current logo on a lit monument sign.]]
WMSN-TV commenced broadcasting on June 8, 1986, airing on analog UHF channel 47. It was the first new [[Commercial broadcasting|commercial station]] to launch in the Madison [[media market|market]] since [[WISC-TV]] signed on thirty years earlier. One of WMSN's earlier programs was ''Big Sky Theater'', a Saturday night presentation of classic [[feature film|movies]] (mostly [[westerns]]) from the [[Drive-in theater|drive-in]] era. The program's name was an acknowledgement to the Big Sky Drive-In Theater, which shared a street with the newly built studios for WMSN; its next-door neighbor remains a movie theater, the [[Marcus Corporation|Marcus Point Cinema]].

The station was originally owned by Channel 47 LP, a group of investors led by Ronald J. Koeppler. On April 1, 1996, Channel 47 LP filed to sell WMSN-TV to Sullivan Broadcasting, owners of the existing [[Act III Broadcasting]] stations, for $26.5&nbsp;million.<ref>{{Cite news|date=April 1, 1996|title=Changing Hands|page=38|work=[[Broadcasting & Cable|Broadcasting]]|url=https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Business/Magazines/Archive-BC-IDX/96-OCR/BC-1996-04-01-OCR-Page-0038.pdf|access-date=December 23, 2021}}</ref> Sullivan would later sell all of the stations to Sinclair Broadcast Group in a group deal two years later.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Morgan|first=Richard|date=February 25, 1998|title=Sinclair closes Sullivan buyout|url=https://variety.com/1998/biz/news/sinclair-closes-sullivan-buyout-1117468107/|access-date=December 23, 2021|website=Variety|language=en-US}}</ref>

After a few months as an [[Independent station|independent]], the station joined Fox as a charter affiliate on October 9, 1986. Since 1994, as a result of [[Fox NFL|Fox]]'s [[National Football Conference|NFC]] football package, WMSN has been Madison's primary home for the [[Green Bay Packers]]; these broadcasts are routinely the highest-rated programs in the market during football season.

==Newscasts==
In 1999, [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] affiliate [[WKOW]] (then owned by the Shockley Communications Corporation) entered into a news share agreement with WMSN, which resulted in Madison's first nightly prime time newscast, known as ''Fox 47 News at 9''. The newscast, initially 35 minutes in length on weeknights and 30 minutes on weekends, was originally produced from a secondary set at WKOW's studios on Tokay Boulevard in Madison. The newscasts employed no WKOW on-air branding, instead using Sinclair's standard music-and-graphics packages. Although the newscasts featured appearances from additional WKOW personnel, WMSN maintained separate weeknight anchors that normally did not appear on WKOW except to fill-in when needed.

On [[New Year's Day|January 1]], 2012, WMSN's news share agreement with WKOW expired after nearly 13 years (WMSN general manager Kerry Johnson termed the split as a "business decision"). On that same date, WMSN began a new news outsourcing agreement with WISC-TV, the [[Morgan Murphy Media]]–owned [[CBS]] affiliate in Madison; as a result, WISC cancelled its own 9 p.m. weeknight newscast it had produced for its subchannel [[TVW (WISC-TV)|TVW]],<ref>[http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/wisc-tv-now-providing-news-services-for-fox/article_c8d7ef2a-37f8-11e1-a868-0019bb2963f4.html "WISC-TV now providing news services for Fox 47,"] from ''Wisconsin State Journal'', May 1, 2012</ref>  making ''Fox 47 News at 9'' the only remaining prime time newscast in the Madison market until [[WMTV]] established its own 9 p.m. newscast on its [[The CW|CW]]-affiliated subchannel in November 2016. Mirroring its agreement with WKOW, ''Fox 47 News at 9'' originates not from WMSN's studios but from WISC's Raymond Road studios, uses WISC's news staff (except the main news anchors), and employs studio backdrops and Sinclair's standard news graphics that help differentiate the newscasts from those on WISC. It was also during this period with WISC (in February 2016) that ''Fox 47 News at 9'' would move to a full-hour time period each night.<ref>[https://changingnewscasts.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/newscasts-debuting-this-weekend-27/ Source: ChangingNewscasts.Wordpress.com], posted May 2, 2016</ref>

In 2018, Sinclair required all of its television stations to air a message that called out "biased and fake news" and says "national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first." However, because WMSN's newscast is produced by WISC-TV pursuant to the above-mentioned news-share agreement, no such segment was produced for WMSN, and was disclaimed as such on WMSN's social media channels.<ref name= anapol>Anapol, Avery (April 2, 2018). "[https://thehill.com/homenews/media/381352-sinclair-owned-tv-station-chooses-not-to-air-media-bias-promo/ Sinclair-owned TV station chooses not to air media bias promo]". ''[[The Hill (newspaper)|The Hill]]''.</ref> WMSN began to carry the second evening hour of Sinclair's ''[[The National News Desk]]'' upon its debut in 2021, and now also carries the three-hour morning block of that same program.

==Technical information==
===Subchannels===
The station's signal is [[Multiplex (TV)|multiplexed]]:
{| class="wikitable"
|+Subchannels of WMSN-TV<ref name="rei">{{cite web|title=Digital TV Market Listing for WMSN|url=http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_search&callsign=WMSN#station|website=[[RabbitEars]]|access-date=June 1, 2017}}</ref>
! scope = "col" | [[Digital subchannel#United States|Channel]]
! scope = "col" | [[Display resolution|Res.]]
! scope = "col" | [[Aspect ratio (image)|Aspect]]
! scope = "col" | Short name
! scope = "col" | Programming
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.1
| [[720p]] || rowspan=6|[[16:9]] || WMSNFOX || [[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox]]
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.2
| rowspan=5|[[480i]] || Comet || [[Comet TV]]
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.3
| Charge! || [[Charge! (TV network)|Charge!]]
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.4
| ROAR || [[Roar (TV network)|Roar]]
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.5
| NEST || [[The Nest (TV network)|The Nest]]
|-
! scope = "row" | 47.6
| Rewind || [[Rewind TV]]
|}

===Analog-to-digital conversion===
WMSN-TV shut down its analog signal, over [[UHF]] channel 47, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States [[Digital television transition in the United States|transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts]] under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition [[VHF]] channel 11, using [[virtual channel]] 47.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf |title=DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and the Second Rounds |format=PDF |access-date=March 24, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130829004251/http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf |archive-date=August 29, 2013 }}</ref> Since then, WMSN would relocate twice, to channel 49 in November 2010 and to channel 18 in October 2019.<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/foxmadison/photos/a.380896246321/10157600557376322/ Source: WMSN FOX 47 News on Facebook], posted October 16, 2019</ref>

In September 2010, WMSN-TV established its first [[digital subchannel]], adding [[TheCoolTV]] music video network to subchannel 47.2. The subchannel would go dark in September 2012 at the expiration of Sinclair's carriage agreement with TheCoolTV. In July 2014, the channel was reactivated as an affiliate of [[GetTV]], which would be replaced on [[Halloween|October 31]], 2015 by Sinclair-owned sci-fi network [[Comet (TV network)|Comet]].

When it relocated to physical channel 11 in 2010, WMSN would add a third subchannel, 47.3, with content from [[The Country Network]], later known as ZUUS Country. That network would be replaced in 2014 by the action-oriented [[Grit (TV network)|Grit]] network. Grit would be replaced on June 1, 2017, by another action network, Sinclair-owned [[Charge! (TV network)|Charge!]]. On that same date, a fourth subchannel, 47.4, was activated and affiliated with [[TBD (TV network)|TBD]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* {{Official}}

{{Madison TV}}
{{Wisconsin TV}}
{{SBGI}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wmsn-Tv}}
[[Category:1986 establishments in Wisconsin]]
[[Category:Charge! (TV network) affiliates]]
[[Category:Comet (TV network) affiliates]]
[[Category:Fox Broadcasting Company affiliates]]
[[Category:The Nest (TV network) affiliates]]
[[Category:Rewind TV affiliates]]
[[Category:Roar (TV network) affiliates]]
[[Category:Sinclair Broadcast Group]]
[[Category:Television channels and stations established in 1986]]
[[Category:Television stations in Madison, Wisconsin|MSN-TV]]