WVTV (channel 18) is a television station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with The CW and owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The station's studios are located on Calumet Road in the Park Place office park near the I-41/US 45 interchange on Milwaukee's northwest side; its transmitter is located on North Humboldt Boulevard in Milwaukee's Estabrook Park neighborhood as part of the Milwaukee PBS tower. WVTV operates a second digital subchannel affiliated with MyNetworkTV which brands as "My 24". It uses virtual channel 24.1, formerly utilized by separately-licensed WCGV-TV until January 2018, when Sinclair turned in WCGV-TV's license and merged its subchannels onto WVTV's spectrum after selling WCGV-TV's spectrum in the 2016 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) incentive auction. History Early years WVTV is the second-oldest continuously operating station in Milwaukee. The station first signed on the air on October 3, 1953 as WOKY-TV, broadcasting on UHF channel 19. It was owned by Bartell Broadcasters, along with WOKY radio (920 AM). The station originally operated as a primary ABC and secondary DuMont affiliate. On October 21, 1954, CBS purchased WOKY-TV for $335,000 and announced it was moving its programming there from its original affiliate in the city, WCAN-TV (channel 25, now defunct). The purchase resulted in a call letter change to WXIX (referencing the Roman numeral for 19) on February 27, 1955. It then moved into WCAN's former studio on North 27th Street, where it remained until being sold by CBS less than four years later. This made the station the first network owned-and-operated station in the Milwaukee market. WXIX's tenure as a CBS O&O, however, was not successful. Only a small percentage of television sets in the Milwaukee area were even capable of receiving UHF stations at the time, as set manufacturers were not required to equip televisions with UHF tuners until 1964 as a result of the 1961 passage of the All-Channel Receiver Act. Those viewers not lucky enough to get a signal from WBBM-TV in Chicago, WISC-TV in Madison, or WBAY-TV in Green Bay were forced to rely on expensive UHF converters to watch channel 19, and even then the picture quality left a lot to be desired. However, unlike many early UHF stations, it managed to survive into the All-Channel era. The station moved to channel 18 in 1958 in a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) channel alignment change. However, this saw little improvement in the ratings. CBS