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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.

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. WLNS-TV and WILX-TV had shared ABC programming until at least the 1980s, while parts of the market got the full ABC schedule from WJRT-TV in Flint, WUHQ in Kalamazoo 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.

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.

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.

Later, WLAJ returned to news programming with "ABC53 News Now", a quirky type of newscast anchored by Joe Parker. The newscast won several awards, including Best Newscast from the Associated Press.

A change in management in 1999 brought with it a change in the newscast. 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. The format was based on a newscast done by Joe Parker when he was at sister station WWMT. The late newscast is taped at 7pm to air at 11:30pm. 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.

External links

• ABC53.com
• Template:TVQ

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