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WTOL

CBS television affiliate in Toledo, Ohio, United States

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ7956337 ↗
Source-derived summary

WTOL (channel 11) is a television station in Toledo, Ohio, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group and co-managed with Fox affiliate WUPW (channel 36). The two stations share studios on North Summit Street in downtown Toledo; WTOL's transmitter is located on Cedar Point Road in Oregon, Ohio.

History

WTOL-TV began broadcasting on December 5, 1958, as a CBS affiliate with a secondary NBC affiliation, sharing it with then-ABC affiliate WSPD-TV (channel 13, now WTVG) until 1969 when WDHO-TV (channel 24, now WNWO-TV) replaced WSPD-TV as the ABC affiliate. WTOL then became exclusively affiliated with CBS. WTOL is also the only station in Toledo to never change its primary affiliation.

The station was originally owned by the family of former area prosecutor and congressman Frazier Reams along with WTOL radio (AM 1230, now WCWA; and FM 104.7, now WIOT). It was sold to Filmways (now part of Amazon MGM Studios) in 1962. The Broadcasting Company of the South, a subsidiary of South Carolina insurer Liberty Life Insurance Company, bought WTOL in 1965 and later changed its name to Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation; WTOL was that company's only station located outside the Southern United States. Liberty reorganized itself as a holding company, the Liberty Corporation, in 1974, and WTOL came directly under the Liberty banner after Liberty sold off its insurance business in 2003.

From the mid-1970s to 2003, WTOL was known on-air as "Toledo 11" (sometimes spelled out as "Toledo Eleven").

In December 1994, WTOL replaced Detroit's WJBK on the lineup of Cancom (later Shaw Broadcast Services), which provided American networks to cable and satellite viewers in many areas across Canada (particularly Atlantic Canada and the Prairies).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “WTOL” is cBS television affiliate in Toledo, Ohio, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through WTOL, television and affiliate, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 1969, 1230, 1962—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1958-01-01. For this dossier, WTOL, television and affiliate is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “cBS television affiliate in Toledo, Ohio, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7956337. Authority coordinates are 41.673, -83.380. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1969, 1230 and 1962.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “WTOL”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow WTOL primary sources, WTOL archive and WTOL research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “WTOL”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “WTOL” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.