WHBQ-TV
WHBQ-TV is a television station in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with the Fox network and owned by Rincon Broadcasting Group. The station's studios are located on South Highland Street in East Memphis, and its transmitter is located on Raleigh-LaGrange Road on the city's northeast side.
History
Under RKO General
The station first signed on the air on September 27, 1953. It was owned by Harding College of Searcy, Arkansas, along with WHBQ radio. It originally operated as a primary CBS and secondary ABC affiliate, sharing the latter network's programming with NBC affiliate WMCT. Channel 13 lost the CBS affiliation when WREC-TV signed on in January 1956, assuming the affiliation through the CBS Radio Network's longtime affiliation with radio station WREC ; WHBQ-TV then became an exclusive ABC affiliate. General Teleradio, the broadcasting arm of the General Tire and Rubber Company, purchased the WHBQ stations in March 1954. In 1955, General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures in order to give its television stations a film and program library to draw from outside of network and local programming. RKO was merged into General Teleradio; General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were later renamed RKO General in 1957.RKO General was under nearly continuous investigation from the 1960s onward due to a long history of lying to advertisers and regulators. For example, it was nearly forced out of broadcasting in 1980 after misleading the Federal Communications Commission about corporate misconduct at parent General Tire. Under the guidance of longtime general manager Alex Bonner, WHBQ-AM-FM-TV avoided the issues and scrutiny seen in the company's larger markets of New York, Boston and Los Angeles, with WHBQ-FM sold to Barnstable Communications in 1983. The regulatory pressure on RKO General continued unabated until 1987, when an FCC administrative law judge ruled the company unfit to be a broadcast licensee due to its rampant dishonesty. After the FCC advised RKO that appealing the decision was not worth the effort, RKO began unwinding its broadcast operations. The WHBQ stations were the next-to-last to be sold, with WHBQ-TV only being sold after Bonner's retirement in 1990 to Adams Communications, with its AM sister station sold to local businessperson George Flinn's Flinn Broadcasting shortly thereafter.
Transition to Fox
Adams was in severe financial straits by 1994, and sold the station to the Communications Corporation of America; the sale was finalized on August 17 of that year. Only a short time later, ComCorp sold WHBQ-TV to the News Corporation, then-owner of the Fox network ; the sale closed on July 5, 1995. After the sale was closed, News Corporation had to run the station for over five months as an ABC affiliate, as the affiliation contract with then-Fox affiliate WPTY-TV did not expire until November 30. Fox had signed a deal with New World Communications the year prior to switch the network affiliations of most of its "Big Three"-affiliated stations to the network. News Corporation's purchase of channel 13 built on this, and was in part positioning to have a station in a market that was, at the time, in contention for landing an NFL team, as Fox had just gained the broadcast rights to the league's National Football Conference division in 1994, although the NFL spent only one year in Memphis when the then-Tennessee Oilers moved from Houston to the Liberty Bowl before settling in Nashville and becoming the Titans.When the station's affiliation agreement with ABC ended on December 1, 1995, Fox programming moved to WHBQ-TV, becoming the third Memphis station to affiliate with the network, as WMKW-TV was the area's original Fox affiliate from the network's October 1986 launch until it moved to WPTY in 1990. The ABC affiliation moved to WPTY. WHBQ is the only television station in the Memphis market that has never changed its call letters or channel allocation, and the only one to have been an owned-and-operated station of any major network. It was also the smallest Fox O&O by market size. In addition, WHBQ-TV was the only new Fox O&O not to be directly involved in the network's deal with New World in the midst of the affiliation switches, yet it was the first of three new Fox O&Os alongside stations in Greensboro–Winston Salem and Birmingham, predating New World merging with Fox Television Stations in January 1997.
On June 13, 2007, News Corporation placed WHBQ-TV and eight other stations up for sale. Local TV, a broadcast holding company controlled by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, purchased the other eight stations on December 22; WHBQ-TV was not included in the sale as Local TV already owned CBS affiliate WREG-TV—FCC rules prohibit duopolies between two of the four highest-rated television stations in a media market, and the station remained owned by Fox Television Stations. On June 6, 2012, WHBQ-TV became the last Fox-owned station outside of its MyNetworkTV sister stations to switch from the EndPlay CMS platform to a new Worldnow-hosted platform now used by all of the other Fox-owned stations.
Trade to Cox Media Group
On June 24, 2014, Fox Television Stations announced that it would trade WHBQ-TV and Boston sister station WFXT to the Cox Media Group in exchange for acquiring Cox's San Francisco duopoly of Fox affiliate KTVU and independent station KICU-TV. WHBQ remains a Fox affiliate through a long-term affiliation agreement with the network. The trade was completed on October 8, 2014.In February 2019, it was announced that Apollo Global Management would acquire Cox Media Group and Northwest Broadcasting's stations. Although the group planned to operate under the name Terrier Media, it was later announced in June 2019 that Apollo would also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses, and retain the Cox Media Group name. The sale was completed on December 17, 2019.
Imagicomm and Rincon ownership
On March 29, 2022, Cox Media Group announced it would sell WHBQ-TV and 17 other stations to Imagicomm Communications, an affiliate of the parent company of the INSP cable channel, for $488 million; the sale was completed on August 1. On April 3, 2025, Imagicomm announced that it would sell seven stations, including WHBQ-TV, to Todd Parkin's Rincon Broadcasting Group; the deal was consummated on July 18.Programming
Past programming preemptions and deferrals
Despite being one of ABC's stronger affiliates during the 1960s and 1970s, WHBQ-TV often did not air some ABC programs in pattern, particularly those on the network's daytime lineup. Many of these programs were preempted outright or aired on a delay during the overnight hours. As with many southern and conservative markets, RKO General had to balance the network's programming with the rural and suburban audience surrounding Memphis, and its program director, Lance Russell, programmed the station conservatively, preempting shows based on his own tastes. For example, it was one of several ABC affiliates that did not clear Hot l Baltimore, which featured one of the first openly gay couples featured on American television, with Russell personally stating why the program would not be seen before leading into WHBQ's replacement programming. In September 1977, WHBQ-TV was one of eight ABC affiliates that refused to carry the controversial sitcom Soap, replacing it with repeats of My Three Sons. When Soap proved to be a runaway hit for the network, channel 13 and Russell acquiesced and allowed the series' summer reruns to air in late night, leading to it airing in its regular prime time slot from the start of the 1978–79 television season.Other preemptions of the ABC schedule were more driven by the lure of local advertising revenue for an entire time slot, rather than content. For instance, in 1972, WHBQ-TV stunned viewers in the Mid-South by dropping American Bandstand in favor of airing a 90-minute live professional wrestling program from the Continental Wrestling Association circuit, hosted by Russell, that was previously a fixture on late Saturday afternoons when it first premiered in 1958, until it moved to the Saturday 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. slot. While that program moved to WMC-TV in 1977, channel 13 continued to preempt Bandstand until 1984, three years before ABC canceled the long-running series. The preemption kept Memphians from seeing homegrown talent perform on the show, such as The Sylvers, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Anita Ward, The Staple Singers, and even WHBQ radio's own Rick Dees, who was hired as the station's new morning host during his "Disco Duck" days in late 1976; that song failed to garner any airplay on any of the radio stations in Memphis, including WHBQ-AM, because Dees was still employed at rival WMPS at the time.
Channel 13 made up for the preemption by airing Bandstands syndicated rival, Soul Train, on Saturday nights until independent station WPTY-TV purchased the local rights to that program in 1983. It was one of the largest ABC affiliates to decline to air AM America when it debuted in 1975 and the station also initially didn't clear its successor Good Morning America; the latter program would not air on the station until 1977, initially for only an hour, and only when it proved to be at ratings parity nationally with Today. Other popular shows that WHBQ-TV held out until later included Dark Shadows, S.W.A.T., Kids Are People Too, and The Bionic Woman. In 1980, the station was criticized for carrying paid religious programming instead of ABC's coverage of the United States men's hockey team's gold medal victory over Finland in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
Locally, the station had a rivalry with WREC/WREG-TV over bragging rights for the largest movie library in the market. Through its ownership by RKO General, channel 13 had rights to the entire RKO Pictures film catalog. The station's reliance on classic and public domain films during the 1960s and 1970s was evidenced in its daily noon to 2 p.m. airing of RKO General's Million Dollar Movie franchise, which the station ran instead of popular daytime soap operas All My Children and Ryan's Hope, or in some cases, reruns of ABC prime time sitcoms that aired in the late morning hours. In September 1978, channel 13 finally began clearing the full ABC daytime lineup, though until its ABC affiliation ended, All My Children aired in the morning on a one-day delay due to its noontime newscast.