WTTV (channel 4), licensed to Bloomington, Indiana, United States, and WTTK (channel 29), licensed to Kokomo, Indiana, are television stations affiliated with CBS and serving the Indianapolis area. They are owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Fox affiliate WXIN (channel 59). The stations share studios on Network Place (near 71st Street and I-465) in northwestern Indianapolis. WTTV's transmitter is located on State Road 252 in Trafalgar, while WTTK's transmitter sits on West 73rd Street on the northern outskirts of Indianapolis.
WTTK operates as a full-time satellite of WTTV; it was originally used to bring WTTV's programming to areas of central Indiana that had marginal to non-existent reception of the main WTTV signal (including Kokomo, Muncie and Lafayette). However, post-digital transition with the transmitter's relocation into Marion County, it nearly duplicates the signal contours of ABC affiliate WRTV (channel 6), CW affiliate WISH-TV (channel 8), NBC affiliate WTHR (channel 13), MyNetworkTV affiliate WNDY-TV (channel 23), and WXIN; there is significant overlap between the coverage areas of both WTTV and WTTK's signals otherwise. WTTK is a straight simulcast of WTTV; on-air references to WTTK are limited to Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-mandated hourly station identifications during newscasts and other programming, along with tuning recommendations for over-the-air viewers to the north of Indianapolis. Despite Kokomo being WTTK's city of license, there has never been any physical office or employees located in that area.
History
Early history
WTTV first signed on the air on November 11, 1949, originally broadcasting on VHF channel 10. It was the second television station to sign on in the state of Indiana, debuting almost 6½ months after WFBM-TV (now WRTV) signed on in May 1949. It has made the claim to being Indiana's oldest "continuously operating" television station because WFBM-TV had experienced a transmitter failure which took it off the air for an extended period of time shortly after WTTV signed on. Owned by Sarkes Tarzian, a Bloomington-based radio manufacturer and broadcaster, the station originally operated as a primary NBC affiliate with secondary affiliations with ABC and the DuMont Television Network. It also aired programming from CBS on occasion.
WTTV originally transmitted its signal from its studio just south of downtown Bloomington, shared with sister station WTTS (1370 AM, now WGCL), which went on the air in March 1949. Sarkes Tarzian built a new studio and transmitter on the north end of the Tarzian factory property on Bloomington's south side in 1952. Also that same year the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order, which ended a four-year suspension of television station permit and license awards, also saw a reallocation of VHF channel assignments across the United States—including in Bloomington, where WTTV was forced to move from channel 10 to the newly assigned channel 4. The switch took effect on February 21, 1954, and as a result, WTTV's transmitter was moved to a tower near Cloverdale, and the power was increased to 100,000 watts. The station's former channel 10 allocation was moved to Terre Haute and awarded to WTHI-TV, which signed on in July 1954.
In its early years, instead of buying most of the expensive items needed to run a television station, Tarzian had his own engineers and technicians design and build the items needed. For example, an overhead microphone boom cost approximately $300. Tarzian employees built one for less than $30. When Tarzian decided to start broadcasting network programs, establishing a coaxial cable link from Cincinnati would prove impractical, so Tarzian built his own microwave relay system from Cincinnati to Bloomington.
The station lost the ABC affiliation after WISH-TV signed on in July 1954. In 1956, the station lost the NBC affiliation to WFBM-TV; WTTV rejoined ABC after WISH-TV took a primary affiliation with CBS. That same year, it relocated its studio facilities to a site at Bluff Road on the south side of Indianapolis, although the station retained its studios on the Tarzian property in Bloomington as an auxiliary site for many years afterward. In the late 1950s, the station began producing some of its local programs in color; WTTV would convert to full color broadcasts in the fall of 1965, after it purchased color-capable camera equipment.