WCMZ-TV

WCMZ-TV, virtual and UHF digital channel 28, was a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television station licensed to Flint, Michigan, United States. It was a satellite station of Mount Pleasant-licensed WCMU-TV (channel 14) which is owned by Central Michigan University (CMU). WCMZ-TV's transmitter was located off Kipp Road near M-15 (South State Road), just south east of the village of Goodrich in southeastern Genesee County, which is now used by former sister radio station WFUM. Channel 28 was built as WFUM by the University of Michigan–Flint in 1980 and filled a gap in public television coverage in the central part of the state. UM–Flint sold the station in 2010 to CMU, which converted it to repeat the programs of WCMU-TV in Mount Pleasant. Citing the availability of other stations on cable and over-the-air in its service area, WCMZ-TV was sold in the FCC spectrum auction in February 2017 and closed on April 23, 2018. The station first signed on the air on August 23, 1980, as WFUM under the ownership of the University of Michigan–Flint with coverage of the Crim race. Initially promoted using its WFUM call letters, the station eventually began to brand itself as "Michigan Television". Prior to WFUM's sign-on, Flint had been one of the few areas of Michigan that was not served by an over-the-air PBS station. Most cable providers in the area (then as now) piped in WCMU-TV, WDCQ-TV in Bay City, WTVS in Detroit, WKAR-TV in East Lansing or WGTE-TV in Toledo. In 2002, the University of Michigan moved all media assets including WFUM into Michigan Public Media, which reported to the main UM Ann Arbor campus. In 2007, the station broadcast the Crim Festival of Races for the last time as its producer had retired the year before and costs were too high to produce. WFUM was the first PBS member station in Michigan and the first television station in the Flint/Tri-Cities market to broadcast exclusively in digital. The station discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 28, on November 19, 2008, and signed back on by November 24, 2008.