Gray's purchase of WCTV forced the company to sell WALB, its flagship station in nearby Albany, because WALB's signal has city-grade quality in most of the Georgia side of the market (including Thomasville and Valdosta). It was owned by the Phipps family until being sold to Gray Communications, now Gray Television, in 1996. It was the only commercial station in the area until WECA-TV (now WTXL-TV) began operations in 1976 and took the ABC affiliation. It is still the only commercial VHF station in the market (the only other VHF stations are PBS members WFSU-TV, still on channel 11, and Georgia Public Broadcasting's WXGA-TV on channel 8). However, it carried a secondary ABC affiliation. After only a year on the air, it switched to CBS and has been affiliated with that network ever since. The station originally carried programming from all three networks, but was a primarily an NBC affiliate. However, it has always identified as serving "Thomasville/Tallahassee," and has operated a live studio/bureau in Thomasville for many years.
As a result, WCTV has been a Tallahassee station from the very beginning. By this time, the FCC had changed its regulations to allow a station to operate its main studio outside its city of license.
This could provide city-grade coverage of Tallahassee and north central Florida as well as southwestern Georgia.
#Wctv image viewer license
Hoyt Wimpy, owner and founder of WPAX radio in Thomasville, persuaded the FCC to grant the Phipps family a license for channel 6 in Thomasville, the nearest city to Tallahassee that had a VHF allocation available. Additionally, the FCC had just collapsed a large portion of southwest Georgia into the Tallahassee market, and UHF stations have never carried well across large areas. Until the 1964 FCC requirement that all new sets have all-channel capability, UHF stations were un-viewable without a converter, and even with one, the picture quality was marginal at best. UHF was not considered viable at the time. Although it has always considered itself a Tallahassee station, it was licensed to Thomasville because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had allocated only one VHF channel to Tallahassee, channel 11.įlorida State University had managed to have the FCC reserve channel 11 for noncommercial use so it could put WFSU-TV on the air. The station first signed on the air on September 15, 1955, using channel 6, from studios on North Monroe Street in Tallahassee. On August 29, 1955, the station began airing a test pattern as its test broadcast. The station held the call letters WCTV beginning on January 25, 1955, the same time WCTV's studios were constructed in Thomasville. On October 13, 1954, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that plans of a new television station and the first television station in the Tallahassee market was introduced to viewers in North Florida and South Georgia. WCTV was Tallahassee and southwest Georgia's first television station. Both stations share studios on Halstead Boulevard in Tallahassee (along I-10), while WCTV's transmitter is located in unincorporated Thomas County, Georgia, southeast of Metcalf, along the Florida state line.
It is owned by Gray Television alongside Live Oak, Florida–licensed MeTV affiliate WFXU (channel 57). WCTV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Thomasville, Georgia, United States, serving the Tallahassee, Florida market as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV.
0 kommentar(er)
