WLAJ

Channel:

WikiReader

Subscribers:

9,190

Published on May 18, 2025 3:53:51 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-uq6sx_skg

Duration: 0:00

49 views

0

WLAJ (channel 53) is a television station in Lansing, Michigan, United States, affiliated with ABC. Its second digital subchannel serves as a de facto owned-and-operated station of The CW (via The CW Plus). WLAJ is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Nexstar Media Group, owner of CBS affiliate WLNS-TV (channel 6), for the provision of certain services. The stations share studios on East Saginaw Street on Lansing's Eastside and transmit using WLAJ's spectrum from a tower on Van Atta Road in Okemos, Michigan.
A construction permit was granted for channel 53 in 1981 but remained dormant for almost a decade. Joel Ferguson, a Lansing developer and politician who had previously started WFSL-TV (channel 47) in 1982, bought the dormant permit in 1989 and signed WLAJ on for the first time on October 13, 1990. Ferguson quickly landed an affiliation deal with ABC after conforming channel 53's signal to protect nearby ABC affiliates in Detroit, Flint, and Battle Creek. This issue had stymied Ferguson's attempts to win an ABC affiliation for WFSL, leaving Lansing as one of the largest markets without full service from the Big Three networks.
The station started airing local newscasts shortly after signing on, but the newscasts failed to attract viewers and were discontinued after 17 months. Under the management of Granite Broadcasting and for most of the ownership of Freedom Communications, WLAJ produced local newscasts featuring more unconventional formats but could not pull viewers from the dominant WLNS-TV and WILX-TV, and the last independent newscast effort was discontinued in September 2009. Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired Freedom in 2012 but spun WLAJ off to Shield Media, which in turn entered into the shared services agreement with WLNS-TV. Channel 53 began airing simulcasts of that station's morning and evening newscasts. Mission Broadcasting, a company known for operating stations on behalf of Nexstar, acquired WLAJ from Shield in 2020.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLAJ
Created with WikipediaReaderSentry (c) WikipediaReader
Images and videos sourced from Pexels (https://www.pexels.com/)