WIS (TV)
WIS is a television station in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW. The station is owned by Gray Media alongside low-power Telemundo affiliate WTES-LD. The two stations share studios on Bull and Gervais Streets in downtown Columbia and a transmitter on Rush Road in rural southwestern Kershaw County, outside Lugoff.
History
The station first signed on the air on November 7, 1953. The station's first telecast was a college football game between the University of South Carolina and the University of North Carolina. The Liberty Life Insurance Company, owners of WIS radio through its Broadcasting Company of the South subsidiary, and the Maresco Corporation, owners of WMSC merged their competing applications to avoid what could have been years of hearings and delays. Seven of WMSC's stockholders sold their shares in Maresco and joined the board of the television station, which was initially operated separately from WIS radio. However, the station was based alongside WIS radio at a new facility on Bull Street, where channel 10 is still headquartered today.Charles Batson signed the station on the air, and remained the station's president and general manager until his retirement in 1983. It was the fourth television station to sign on in South Carolina and the third in the Columbia market, signing on just four months after WCOS-TV —which ceased operations in 1956—and two months after WNOK-TV. WIS is the third-longest continuously operating station in the state, behind WCSC-TV in Charleston and WNOK/WLTX.
WIS radio received the last new three-letter call sign in the U.S. on January 23, 1930, and the call sign was later shared with its television sibling. The station has been an NBC affiliate since its inception, owing to its radio sister's longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network. However, until 1961, when a new channel 25 signed on as WCCA-TV, it maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC, airing its programming outside of NBC network timeslots.
WIS-TV was a major beneficiary of an exception to the Federal Communications Commission 's " + 1" plan for allocating VHF television bandwidth. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available, and 69 UHF channels. The VHF bands were more desirable because signals broadcasting on that band traveled a longer distance. Because there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced. With the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order in 1952, the Commission outlined a new allocation table for VHF licenses and opened up the UHF band. Through these initiatives, almost all of the United States would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one non-commercial allocation. Most of the rest of the country would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas of the country would be designated as "UHF islands", since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" represented non-commercial educational stations, and "1/2" became ABC, which, as the smallest and weakest network then, usually wound up with the UHF allocation where no VHF allocation was available.
Originally, Columbia was assigned two VHF licenses, channels 7 and 10. This did not sit well with Walter J. Brown, owner of WSPA and WSPA-FM in Spartanburg. He pressed Governor and fellow Spartanburg resident James F. Byrnes to use his influence with the FCC to move channel 7 from Columbia to Spartanburg, allowing him to launch WSPA-TV in 1956.
With this move, Columbia was now sandwiched between Charlotte to the north, Florence–Myrtle Beach to the east, Charleston and Savannah to the south, Augusta to the west, and Greenville–Spartanburg–Asheville to the northwest. This created a huge "doughnut" in central South Carolina where there could be only one VHF license.
WIS-TV was fortunate to gain that license, providing many people in that part of South Carolina with their first clear reception of a television signal. Until the FCC mandated all-channel tuning in 1964, viewers needed a converter to watch UHF stations, and picture quality was marginal at best even with a converter. This allowed channel 10 to become one of the most dominant television stations in the country; it has been the far-and-away market leader for most of its history.
Channel 10 originally broadcast from a self-supporting tower atop its studios on Bull Street. In 1959, WIS-TV activated its current transmitter tower in Lugoff; the tallest structure located east of the Mississippi River at the time, it more than doubled the station's coverage area and provided at least secondary coverage as far north as Charlotte, as far south as Augusta, as far west as Greenwood and as far east as Florence. This included all but five of the state's 46 counties; in fact, until the arrival of cable television in the market in the late 1970s, channel 10 was one of only two stations that brought a clear signal to much of the outlying portions of the market—the other being WRLK-TV, one of the two South Carolina Educational Television stations that serve the area. It would remain the tallest structure in South Carolina until Florence's WPDE-TV activated its signal in 1981. The station's original tower is still used as a backup; it is a longtime fixture of Columbia's skyline and is turned into a "Christmas tree of lights" during the holiday season.
For many years, WIS was one of two NBC affiliates that served the Florence–Myrtle Beach market, since that market was one of the few areas on the East Coast without its own NBC affiliate. It was the NBC affiliate of record for the Pee Dee side of the market while Wilmington's WECT was the affiliate of record for Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand. However, most cable systems on the Myrtle Beach side of the market began carrying WIS in the mid-1980s. After the FCC passed the syndication exclusivity rule in 1989, WIS set up a "virtual station" for cable systems in the Florence–Myrtle Beach market that aired separate syndicated programming for the area. It also began selling advertising specific to the market as well, mostly on the Pee Dee side. This ended when Raycom Media signed on an NBC affiliate within that market, WMBF-TV, in August 2008.
WIS had modest viewership on the South Carolina side of the Charlotte market for several years, especially after that city's NBC affiliation moved to WRET in 1978. WRET's UHF signal did not have nearly as much penetration as the VHF signal of former NBC affiliate WSOC-TV. Even after new owner Westinghouse Broadcasting doubled channel 36's transmitter power in 1979, many viewers on the South Carolina side of the market got a better signal from WIS even though its transmitter was south of Charlotte. WIS appeared in The Charlotte Observer television listings well into the 1990s, and was carried on many cable systems on the South Carolina side of the Charlotte market well into the 21st century. A similar situation prevailed in Augusta, where WIS provided a stronger signal than WATU/WAGT even though its transmitter was north of Augusta. It remained on most Augusta-area cable systems, including in Augusta itself, well into the new millennium.
The Broadcasting Company of the South acquired several other television stations over the years. It was renamed as the Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation in 1965, with WIS radio and television serving as its flagship stations. Later in the decade, Liberty Life reorganized itself as the Liberty Corporation, with Liberty Life and Cosmos as subsidiaries. Cosmos sold WIS radio in 1986, but kept the WIS calls for channel 10. Liberty sold off its insurance businesses in 2000, bringing channel 10 directly under the Liberty Corporation banner. In 1991, after being known on-air as "TV 10" for most of its history, the station began branding itself as simply "WIS" ; this lasted until 2003, when it branded as WIS News 10 for both general and newscast branding purposes.
On August 25, 2005, Liberty agreed to merge with Montgomery, Alabama–based Raycom Media. At the time, Raycom had already owned Fox affiliate WACH. Raycom could not keep both stations as FCC duopoly rules forbid common ownership of two of the four highest-rated television stations in a single market based on Nielsen total-day ratings data for a given calendar month. Additionally, Columbia has only eight full-power stations, one fewer than what ownership rules allow to legally permit a duopoly in any case. Raycom opted to keep WIS and sold WACH to Barrington Broadcasting.
In February 2003, the station signed on its digital signal, becoming the last "Big Three"-affiliated station in the Columbia market to broadcast a digital signal. WIS' broadcasts became digital-only, effective June 12, 2009. For a week after the transition, some viewers lost access to NBC programming because WIS used its backup transmitter, which was not operating at full power. The station signed on a full-time digital transmitter from its Lugoff tower on June 19.
On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets under Gray's corporate umbrella. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom—resulted in WIS gaining new sister stations in nearby markets, including CBS affiliate WRDW-TV and NBC affiliate WAGT-CD in Augusta in addition to its current Raycom sister stations. The sale was approved on December 20, and was completed on January 2, 2019.
On May 29, 2019, Gray announced that WIS' second digital subchannel would become Columbia's CW affiliate effective September 30, 2019, with "Columbia's CW" replacing WKTC. As part of the new affiliation, Bounce TV was moved to WIS-DT3, with Grit moving to WKTC-DT7.