WLAJ

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WLAJ
Lansing / Jackson, Michigan
Branding	ABC 53
Channels	53 (UHF) analog, 51 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	ABC
Owner	Freedom Communications
Founded	October 13, 1990
Call letters meaning	We're Lansing And Jackson
Website	www.wlaj.com www.LansingsCW5.com

WLAJ is the ABC television affiliate serving the Lansing/Jackson, Michigan market of the United States. It broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 53, and its digital signal on UHF channel 51. The station's 981-foot transmitter is located in Tompkins Township, Michigan in the northern part of Jackson County.

WLAJ's digital signal also carries CW affiliate WBL.

[edit] History

WLAJ began broadcasting on October 13, 1990 from studios located at 5815 S. Pennsylvania Road in Lansing. The station was originally owned by Joel Ferguson, former owner of WSYM-TV. Before 1990, Lansing had been one of the biggest markets in the country without a full-time ABC affiliate. WJRT-TV in Flint served as the default ABC affiliate for the market from its 1958 sign-on until WLAJ debuted. Other parts of the market received ABC from WUHQ-TV in Battle Creek and WXYZ-TV in Detroit.

Ferguson eventually sold a 50% stake of the station to Granite Broadcasting Corporation. Granite had the option of buying out the rest of the station, which it exercised 6 months later after a brief court battle when the owners of the transmitter site tried to stop the sale from taking place.

The station was sold to its current owner, Freedom Broadcasting of Michigan, in 1999. In 2005, the station's master control operations were moved to sister station WWMT in Kalamazoo, leaving behind a skeleton crew of six people in Lansing.

WLAJ was also the home of a revival of Big Time Wrestling until summer 2005, when the program was cancelled for undisclosed reasons.

[edit] News operations and local programming

WLAJ launched its first newscast, called "53 Newsbeat", a month after it began operations. However, after 15 months, station management decided to pull the plug on the broadcast, and replaced it with a simulcast of Action News from Detroit's WXYZ-TV, along with a brief local sports show at 6:15pm. Due to low ratings, this in turn was eventually replaced by syndicated programming.

In 1996, WLAJ started their own news department after several years of rumors. Originally a traditionally formatted newscast, the station found itself with a fraction of the viewers of the established newscasts at WLNS and WILX. Unlike many new startups, WLAJ was itself beaten by a rival startup as their 11:00 p.m. newscast was often behind the 10:00 p.m. newscast on WSYM (whose newscast launched shortly after WLAJ's.

With the ownership change from Granite Broadcasting to Freedom Communications in 1999 came a change in how the station's newscasts were done. The newscasts rebranded as "ABC53 News Now" and went to a slightly-quirky hard news format which won several awards including Best Newscast from the Associated Press. Though doing well at the outset, the station began to struggle and when its lead anchor Joe Parker (today Joe Pagliarulo of WOAI radio in San Antonio) left in 2002, the station went into a free fall.

The newscast was rebranded as "53 News Express", with anchoring duties being taken up by Darcy Sullivan. The newscast featured a combination of a live 10 minute news segment and series of taped interview segments for the remaining 20 minutes (which has since been dropped for an extended sports,entertainment and Bloomberg stock reports). Ironically, the format to the station was brough to the station by former anchor Joe Parker who had done a similar newscast when he was at sister station WWMT. The late newscast is taped at 7pm to air at 11:30pm(a trend which is being duplicated in Bangor,Maine at the ABC/FOX station) As with its previous attempts, the station has yet to make any significant progress in the ratings.

The station also currently produces a sports show called "Hondo's House" which, like its newscasts, has yet to make a nudge in the ratings, despite having guests like Dustin "Screech" Diamond from "Saved by the Bell" as one of the contributors. The show airs Monday and Friday nights at 7:30pm, Hondo Carpenter also anchors the sports reports which are now LIVE on the 6pm "News Express" replacing K.P. Hayes and his taped sports reports.

[edit] External links

• ABC53.com
• LansingsCW5.com
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WLAJ

Broadcast Television in the Lansing/Jackson market  (Nielsen DMA #110)
WLNS 6 (CBS) - WILX 10 (NBC) - WHTV 18 (MyNetworkTV) - WKAR 23 (PBS) - W27CN 27 (TBN / TCT) - WPXD 31 (i) - WZPX 43 (i) - WSYM 47 (Fox) - WLAJ 53 (ABC/The CW on DT2)
Local cable television channels JTV (Jackson) - JTV 21 (Jackson) - WBL 5 (The CW)