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WFSB is an affiliate of the CBS television network serving most of the state of Connecticut. The station is owned by the Meredith Corporation. Licensed to the state capital of Hartford, WFSB's signal reaches as far away as southwest New Hampshire. WFSB's studios are located at 3 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, with transmitter on Avon Mountain.
History
The station first signed on September 21, 1957 as WTIC-TV, an independent station owned by the Hartford-based Travelers Insurance Company along with WTIC-AM (1080 kHz.).
By 1959, CBS was looking to move its programming from its owned and operated station in Hartford, WHCT-TV (channel 18, now WUVN). CBS' ratings had been astonishingly low in Hartford because television manufacturers were not required to have UHF tuners at the time. The network figured it was better to have its programming on a VHF station, even if it was merely an affiliate. When CBS began shopping around for a new affiliate, it was a foregone conclusion that WTIC-TV would get the affiliation, since WTIC-AM had long been Hartford's CBS Radio affiliate.
In early 1974, Travelers Insurance decided to sell the WTIC stations and sold WTIC-TV to the Washington Post Company in 1974 while keeping WTIC AM/FM in the interim. The Post's broadcasting division changed the calls to WFSB, after broadcasting division president Frederick S. Beebe; the broadcasting division was restructured into Post-Newsweek Stations in 1978. The WTIC-TV calls returned to air in 1984 when then-radio owner Arch Communications signed on a new television station on channel 61.
In the late 1980s, amid the Post wanting to give its subcorporations their own identity, Post-Newsweek moved its corporate offices from Washington, DC to office space located alongside WFSB, making that station the company's flagship. Initially this strategy worked well; however, by the mid 1990s, WFSB found itself in a shrinking market without any cluster opportunities around it. In June 1997, Post-Newsweek swapped WFSB to the Meredith Corporation for WCPX-TV (now WKMG-TV) in Orlando, Florida. The sale closed that October, although the Post-Newsweek group maintained its base in Hartford until 2000 when it relocated to the company's then-largest station, WDIV in Detroit, Michigan.
From 1965 until 2003, WFSB was also the default CBS affiliate for the Springfield, Massachusetts market. Seeing an opportunity to increase its presence in the northeast, at the start of 2004 WFSB began operating a low-power station in Springfield; WSHM-LP, on channel 67. WSHM can also be seen on WFSB's digital signal (33.2/3.2).