WCNC-TV
WCNC-TV is a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. WCNC-TV's studios are located in the Wood Ridge Center office complex off Billy Graham Parkway, just east of the Billy Graham Library in south Charlotte, and its transmitter is located in north-central Gaston County.
Channel 36 was established as WCTU-TV, an independent television station, in 1967. After falling into receivership brought on by severe economic hardship, WCTU was purchased by Atlanta broadcast pioneer Ted Turner. Renamed WRET-TV, the station's fortunes turned around and thrived throughout the 1970s. WRET became Charlotte's NBC affiliate in 1978 following WSOC-TV's switch from NBC to ABC, launching local newscasts. Turner sold WRET to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1979 to raise capital for his new venture CNN; as WPCQ-TV, the station struggled with limited resources, frequently preempting NBC fare—including the NBC Nightly News—and was used to develop talent for other stations in the Group W chain. Spun off to local ownership in 1984, WPCQ's status with NBC remained uncertain despite substantial technical upgrades and a reinvestment in local news. Purchased by The Providence Journal Company in 1988, the Belo Corporation in 1996, and Tegna Inc. predecessor Gannett in 2013, the station was renamed WCNC-TV in 1989 and has generally been Charlotte's third-rated television station since.
History
Prior use of channel 36 in Charlotte
The first station to operate on UHF channel 36 in Charlotte signed on the air January 5, 1954, as WAYS-TV; that station was sold and changed its call letters to WQMC-TV on January 24, 1955. Charlotte's second television station, WAYS-TV/WQMC-TV did not make any headway against WBTV because television set manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability at the time; this would not change until Congress passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1961. It ceased operations in March 1955. A plan to return it to the air as WUTV under reconstituted ownership in 1957 was unsuccessful, but it aired educational programming from 1961 to 1963. Cy Bahakel bought the station in 1964 and returned it to the air as WCCB, which broadcast on channel 36 before moving to UHF channel 18 in November 1966.Charlotte Telecasters era
The current incarnation of channel 36 signed on the air on July 9, 1967, as WCTU-TV. Dr. Harold W. Twisdale, a dentist from Charlotte, and Washington, D.C.–based engineer David L. Steel were the leaders of the original ownership group, operating as Charlotte Telecasters Inc. WCTU was North Carolina's first independent station, beating Hickory-based WHKY-TV to the air by eight months.Twisdale and Steel were the lead investors in other planned UHF stations; though construction permits were never built for stations in Memphis and Richmond and the group lost out on channel 28 in Durham, WCTU-TV and WATU-TV in Augusta, Georgia, made it to air. WATU-TV was a profitable operation; in comparison, debts incurred in starting WCTU-TV would prompt Twisdale to shelve his Memphis and Richmond plans.
WCTU was initially a low-budget independent station operating about eight hours a day from 3 to 11 p.m. It ran a lineup of some very old movies, westerns, some comedy shows from the early 1950s, and public affairs shows. The station, which operated from studios on Hood Road in the Hickory Grove neighborhood of Charlotte, had very modern equipment for the time and broadcast some shows and movies in color, as well as all of its local programming in color.
The station hit hard times financially in 1969. In July, equipment supplier Ampex filed two lawsuits seeking $1.3 million from WCTU-TV for failing to pay for products it had purchased from them. Film distributor National Telefilm Associates had also sued channel 36 for $80,000 for breaching a film rental contract. That September, a court placed WCTU into receivership, though it continued to broadcast. Stating that "we feel there have been combined forces which hinder our operation", Twisdale foreshadowed a years-long antitrust case against the Jefferson-Pilot Corporation, owner of WBTV, which was not fully dismissed until 1977.
The Turner turnaround
Channel 36 found a buyer in February 1970: Atlanta broadcasting mogul Ted Turner, who purchased WCTU through Turner Broadcasting of North Carolina for $1.25 million. Turner had scouted out buying equipment from the bankrupt station but decided instead to buy the whole operation. At the time, he owned just one other television property, WJRJ-TV in his hometown Atlanta, as well as three radio stations in other southeastern cities. Turner renamed the station WRET-TV—using the initials of his full name, Robert Edward Turner III—in July and instituted a new and expanded program lineup in August. Just two programs, wrestling and the music video program The Now Explosion, were retained.Turner's new Charlotte station was not an immediate success. Programming costs were high relative to ratings. The station had just one on-air personality: announcer Bob Chesson, who as "Dead Ernest" hosted the station's block of horror films. One Saturday morning in February 1972, Turner appeared on the station to appeal for contributions from viewers, saying that channel 36 had not broken even since he had purchased it. The station drew $53,000 in donations, enough to help pay its bills, and also received interest from several new advertisers. WRET-TV became a typical UHF independent, airing a lineup of cartoons, sitcoms, older movies, and a heavy slate of sporting events. It was among the early carriers of The 700 Club, produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network ; CBN founder Pat Robertson, who like Turner had gone to Brown University, read about the appeal for donations in The Wall Street Journal and placed his programs on the station. At one point, the Charlotte area accounted for 15 percent of CBN's pledge contributions. CBN programming was dropped by WRET in 1973 and replaced with programs of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, headed locally by Jim Bakker; the shows included The PTL Club. Bakker split from TBN in 1974 and moved his staff to Charlotte.
By 1975, buoyed by a stronger film library, WRET-TV had emerged as the country's fifth-best independent station of 65 nationwide in audience share, per an analysis by Television/Radio Age, and was making a profit. After five years of being independently operated from the rest of his Turner Communications Group, that company absorbed WRET-TV and its parent company later that year. Late that year, Turner was making plans to uplink one of its two stations nationwide for distribution to cable providers. While Turner preferred to uplink his Atlanta flagship, by then renamed, WRET-TV was a backup in the event that the Federal Communications Commission did not relax rules that prevented the existence of superstations in top-25 television markets. Channel 36 ended the year by announcing plans to repay the viewers whose contributions had saved it four years prior, doing so in February 1976. Each of the 3,600 contributors, who had sent in from 25 cents to $200, received checks returning their money—with interest—from Turner.
In 1976 and 1977, channel 36 became an even more aggressive buyer of programming, grabbing local rights to Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman from WSOC-TV and stepping in to run CBS coverage of NBA basketball when WBTV passed on the package; it also aired other network shows that Charlotte's affiliates preempted. It was airing on 148 cable systems in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia. However, WRET-TV remained a laggard in news and public affairs programming. Its 15-minute sign-off newscast—the only such program on the station as an independent—was read by Bill Tush from Turner's headquarters in Atlanta and fed to Charlotte by telephone.
From independent to NBC affiliate
In 1977, ABC announced that it had lured longtime NBC affiliate WSOC-TV to be its new outlet in the Charlotte market beginning July 1, 1978, replacing WCCB-TV. That decision set off a two-station showdown between WCCB and WRET for the NBC affiliation in Charlotte. WCCB was seen as the favorite; unlike WRET, it had a functioning news department. Sources at NBC were said to see channel 36 as their last option behind WCCB, with its stronger signal, and long-dominant WBTV, which the network was trying to woo from CBS to no avail.Turner, however, promised NBC that he would spend $2.5 million on station improvements if the network moved its programming to WRET. Of that total, $1 million would go towards starting a full scale news department within one year; the proposed expansion would employ 22 people, compared to 26 at WSOC and 12 at WCCB. On April 29, news broke that channel 36 had been selected for the NBC affiliation, with the network preferring it over WCCB based on Turner's turnaround record with the station and his ownership of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks. With the decision, WCCB became an independent station.
Two months after assuming the NBC affiliation, WRET launched its first newscasts in September, under the banner of "Action News"; Robert D. Raiford was the station's first news anchor. The main news was presented at 7 p.m., but the different time slot failed to attract viewers. Where WBTV had a 52 share and WSOC a 23 for their 6 p.m. newscasts, WRET could only pull a 5. Bob Wisehart of the Charlotte News described WRET's news operation as "spend a great deal of effort going no place at all". The same could have been said of the station, which was said to be barely breaking even after the switch.
Group W era
Turner's ambitious and mostly successful ownership of the station would not last much longer after obtaining the NBC affiliation. By 1979, Turner was in the process of starting CNN, and he announced he would sell channel 36 to help raise the capital needed for the new venture. On May 16, 1979, the sale of WRET-TV to Westinghouse Broadcasting was announced for $20 million, setting a then-record for a single UHF television station. The news of a purchase by Group W, owner of regarded television and radio stations in other cities, was initially met with glee by the WRET-TV staff. Two station employees who had been looking for new jobs elsewhere decided to stay when the sale was announced. In 1984, Reese Schonfeld, who co-founded CNN with Turner, would note that by providing the collateral against which Turner obtained money for CNN in the WRET-TV purchase, Westinghouse financed the start of CNN and then of its own short-lived Satellite News Channel two years later.Final approval of the sale was secured at the end of April 1980, when Westinghouse agreed to furnish $400,000 in grants and affirmative action programs in exchange for the withdrawal of a license renewal challenge by local civil rights groups; the Federal Communications Commission did find in their favor when it said the station did not employ enough minorities, renewing WRET-TV's license for a half-term of 18 months. Some of the funds went to improve the journalism school at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University.
Westinghouse changed the station's call letters to WPCQ-TV, representing "People of the Carolinas and Queen City", on September 29; the station rebranded as "Q36" to go with the callsign change. The move came alongside a major programming reshuffle and an increase in effective radiated power from 1.3 to 2.5 million watts. The newscasts were moved from 6 and 11 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., and several new magazine shows were added, as was a Friday night public service-concept game show called Quibble, which was soon demoted to Saturdays. The early newscast was then moved back to 6 p.m., but WCCB, airing reruns of Good Times, drew 13 percent of the audience in May 1982 compared to the 2 percent that watched the WPCQ-TV newscast; the station was, again, losing money. Westinghouse's inability to make channel 36 more competitive surprised even local rivals, who had expected the company to do more with the station.
In August 1982, the station made another programming change, this time attracting considerable national attention: it dropped its low-rated early evening newscast. When it axed that program, it also decided to cease carrying the NBC Nightly News. This prompted NBC officials to shop the Nightly News to Charlotte's other stations, including WBTV. The station continued with its noon newscast, as well as short news capsules throughout the day and occasional news specials. Station officials blamed WPCQ-TV's signal, which—despite the power increase—was not strong enough to reach outer areas of the market that got better signals from WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina. John J. Spinola, the general manager of the station, admitted that he was "pretty well encircled by NBC affiliates".
"Q36" became known for frequent preemptions of NBC network fare, including the soap opera Texas, coverage of the 1984 Democratic National Convention, and network sporting events. It also delayed the David Brinkley-hosted NBC Magazine to midnight to air its own Action News Magazine. Even Westinghouse's own productions were not guaranteed an audience on the station; after two years of WPCQ-TV airing Hour Magazine, it moved to WBTV in 1982.
Seeing little positive progress with WPCQ-TV, Westinghouse soon chose to use the station's low expectations to their advantage elsewhere in the company. Westinghouse had long extensively promoted from within and thus used WPCQ as the equivalent of a "farm team" for its larger stations. Its more promising on-air personalities merely treated WPCQ as a stepping stone towards promotion to Group W's well-regarded heritage radio and television stations outside Charlotte, such as when sports director Lou Tilley moved to Boston to become the weekend sports anchor at WBZ-TV. Amanda Davis, who had anchored the news three years for WPCQ-TV, became a correspondent for Group W's Satellite News Channel after turning down an offer to report for its Baltimore station, WJZ-TV. When a union strike at the company's New York City all-news station, WINS, left it without announcers, Westinghouse sent WPCQ anchor Raiford there as part of a team of 20 employees from other Group W stations to keep it running.