the lead in local news ratings, finding stronger acceptance in Dane County itself. However, the station was hit by cutbacks in the newsroom, as well as in the production of non-news local programming, and declining news ratings. The departures of sports director Jack Eich, who was fired, and Paula Dilworth, who was passed over for a promotion and bolted for Las Vegas, made headlines and put general manager Leslie Leonard in the news. Since 1988 Wesray sold its TV stations to Adams Communications in 1988, but the deal left Adams highly leveraged and ill-prepared to confront declines in the value of broadcast properties, prompting it to default on $283 million of debt in 1991; that same year, WMTV debuted its first morning newscast, Wisconsin Today. Brissette Broadcasting was formed the next year when Paul Brissette, who had been the vice president of Adams Communications's television stations division, bought out the business for $257 million. Four years later, in a $270 million merger, Brissette was folded into Benedek Broadcasting after the company was unable to expand by adding stations. By that time, WMTV had slumped to third in local news ratings; later in 1996, it adopted the current NBC 15 station brand. The retirement of longtime weatherman Elmer Childress in 1997 also paved the way for the station to take a more aggressive approach to weather coverage, including adding its own Doppler weather radar. Financial problems developed at Benedek at the start of the new millennium. The early 2000s recession reduced ad sales and caused the company to be unable to pay interest on a set of bonds issued in 1996, prompting a filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Most of the Benedek stations, including WMTV, were sold to Gray Television in 2002. The station discontinued analog broadcasting on February 17, 2009. In 2016, Gray built new studios for WMTV adjacent to the original facility, with twice the square footage; the old studios were demolished for parking. That same year, a new affiliation agreement between The CW and Gray resulted in the network affiliation in Madison moving to a subchannel of WMTV from WBUW. Subchannels The station's digital signal is multiplexed: Notes References External links Official website MTV NBC network affiliates The CW affiliates Antenna TV affiliates MeTV affiliates Start TV affiliates WeatherNation TV affiliates Gray Television Television channels and stations established in 1953 1953 establishments in Wisconsin