WPCH-TV
WPCH-TV, branded as Peachtree TV, is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by locally based Gray Media alongside independent station and company flagship WANF, and low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD. WPCH-TV and WANF share studios on 14th Street Northwest in Atlanta's Home Park neighborhood; WPCH-TV's transmitter is located in the Woodland Hills section of northeastern Atlanta.
During its ownership under the Turner Broadcasting System, WPCH-TV—then using the WTCG call letters—pioneered the distribution of broadcast television stations retransmitted by communications satellite to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States, expanding the small independent station into the first national "superstation" on December 17, 1976.
The former superstation feed—which eventually became known as simply TBS, and had maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the local Atlanta feed—was converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network on October 1, 2007, at which time it was concurrently added to cable providers within the Atlanta market alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. Channel 17—which had used the WTBS callsign since 1979—was concurrently relaunched as WPCH and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule exclusively catering to the Atlanta market. Although the Atlanta station is no longer carried on American multichannel television providers outside of its home market, WPCH-TV continues to be available as a de facto superstation on most Canadian cable and satellite providers.
As of September 2024, WPCH-TV is the largest CW affiliate that is neither owned nor operated by the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group.
History
As WJRJ-TV
On October 20, 1965, Rice Broadcasting Inc.—owned by Atlanta entrepreneur Jack M. Rice, Jr., owner of locally based pay television firms Atlanta Telemeter Inc. and Home Theaters of Georgia Inc.—filed a permit application with the Federal Communications Commission to be the holder of the construction permit to build and license to operate a new television station on UHF channel 46, the third commercial UHF allocation to be assigned to Atlanta. The FCC granted the permit to Rice Broadcasting on October 20, 1965. In January 1966, Rice Broadcasting chose the call letters WJRJ-TV, in honor of its owner. On February 21, 1966, Rice subsequently filed to modify the permit to re-allocate the proposed station to UHF channel 17; the FCC granted the frequency reallocation to channel 17 five weeks later on March 31.Channel 17 first signed on the air on September 1, 1967. WJRJ-TV was the first commercial television station to sign on in the Atlanta market since the short-lived WQXI-TV signed on 13 years earlier on December 18, 1954; it was also the second independent station to begin operation in the market—the first since WQXI-TV ceased operations on May 31, 1955-and one of the first independent stations in the Southeastern United States. Atlanta had a long wait for an independent station even though on paper the market was large enough to provide suitable viewership for one since the mid-1960s. The station's original studio and transmitter facility was located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest, which had formerly served as the studios of then-CBS affiliate WAGA-TV. At, the tower near the Peachtree Street studio building became the third-tallest free-standing broadcast transmission tower in the United States at that time.
WJRJ was launched on a shoestring budget, with an afternoon and evening schedule—running from 4 to 11 p.m.—filled with older movies and a few off-network reruns, as well as a 15-minute-long news program. In addition to placing daily ads in the Atlanta Journal-Constitutions television listings page, WJRJ-TV ran exactly one TV Guide advertisement: a half-page ad in a September 1967 issue of the magazine's Georgia edition with the headline, "Yes, Atlanta, there is a channel 17." Despite the fact that WJRJ had billed itself as "Good-looking Channel 17," technical snafus were the norm during the station's early months: film broke down, station identification, advertising and program promotion slides frequently appeared backwards, and there were often long pauses when nothing appeared on screen. The station did carry a top-rated show for a few weeks: WAGA-TV preempted CBS network programming to run a movie on Wednesday nights, and channel 17 stepped in to run the drama series Medical Center for a time. On June 5, 1968, Rice requested to transfer majority control of the station to Rice Broadcasting president W. R. McKinsey via stock delivery through conversion of 130,000 shares in debentures at $4.75 per share; the FCC granted the transfer on September 5.
Arrival of Ted Turner
In July 1969, Rice Broadcasting announced an agreement to merge with the Turner Communications Corporation—an Atlanta-based group owned by entrepreneur Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who ran the billboard advertising business founded by his deceased father and had also owned radio stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee ; Charleston, South Carolina ; and Jacksonville, Florida —in an all-stock transaction. Under the terms of the deal, Rice would acquire Turner in an exchange of stock and adopt the Turner Communications name; however, Turner would acquire about 75% of the merged company and own 48.2% of its stock, receiving 1.2 million shares of Rice stock worth an estimated $3 million. The FCC granted approval of the acquisition on December 10, 1969, giving Turner its first television property. In January 1970, soon after Turner received approval of its purchase of the low-rated UHF outlet, Turner changed the station's call letters to WTCG, which reportedly stood for "Watch This Channel Grow". The sale was formally completed four months later on April 6, at which time Turner was assigned as licensee of WJRJ-TV.Upon becoming owned by Turner, WTCG initially retained its original programming format. It also moved its operations in 1980 to new studio facilities located a few blocks west of the original Peachtree Street facility, to the former site of the Progressive Club. During an interview in 2004, Turner revealed that some of the problems that had dogged WJRJ were present during the early days at WTCG. First, when Turner bought the station, it was the only one in the Atlanta market that was still broadcasting exclusively in black-and-white because the previous owners had not made the necessary technical upgrades to allow the transmission of color programming. Secondly, money was still very tight during the first couple of years that Turner owned the station. However, some months had passed and Turner found himself unable to make the payments on the equipment. As a last resort, Turner held an on-air telethon—much in the manner of the pledge drives seen on public television—to raise the money needed to pay the station's bills. Third, as it began operations in 1970, there was new competition in the form of upstart UHF station WATL. Once the financial problems were settled, WTCG eventually drove WATL off the air in April 1971, as channel 17 ate significantly into that station's advertising revenue; channel 36 would remain dark for five years and never became a major player until it became the market's original Fox station in October 1986.
WTCG threw an on-air party in celebration, but it would soon have a new competitor when WHAE-TV took to the air on channel 46 in June 1971; that station originally maintained a six-hour-a-day program schedule, with Christian programs filling four hours of its schedule and low-budget secular shows filling the remaining airtime. Channel 46 gradually expanded its broadcast day, running programs for 20 hours daily by 1976. By 1974, the station had a conventional general entertainment format, with religious programs mixed in among its secular shows during morning and prime time slots. WHAE was a very competitive station, but could not beat WTCG, which remained the leading independent in Atlanta.
Turner had a low budget in terms of programming purchases, and would bid very low on new shows offered in syndication; network-affiliated stations WAGA-TV, WSB-TV and WXIA-TV would get the best product. But due to network commitments, the three major affiliates could keep programs for only a few years at a time. Turner would then buy the rights to the shows that the major affiliates did not renew for nearly half the price of the original purchase. Turner also bought most of the movie packages in this manner. The station's schedule placed an emphasis on its movie library; one notable program was Academy Award Theatre, which showcased films that had won or have been nominated for Academy Awards. Classic films from the 1930s through the 1950s were shown every day as part of the regular schedule. Many older films that had either never been telecast in the Atlanta area or had not been seen on television for a long time, made their local television debut or "comeback" on WTCG.
Channel 17's sports programming grew to include game telecasts from the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks and Atlanta Flames, as well as Georgia Championship Wrestling, one of the roots of the later World Championship Wrestling. The sports and wrestling would become foundation blocks during the early satellite years. Programs carried by WTCG during the period included a mix of sitcoms, cartoons and drama series. Another show on WTCG's lineup was Future Shock, a music program hosted by R&B singer James Brown. The show, which bore similarities to American Bandstand and Soul Train, aired in late night each Friday from 1976 to 1979.
First "Superstation"
Beginning in the early 1970s, many cable systems in middle and southern Georgia and surrounding states—namely Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina—began receiving the WTCG signal via microwave relay, enabling the station to reach far beyond the Atlanta television market. By June 1976, the WTCG signal was relayed to 95 cable systems in six Southeastern U.S. states, with an estimated reach of 440,000 households. Still, many places were located far enough away from the signal of an independent television station that this was not an option. There were cable systems that carried three stations affiliated with each of the major commercial networks and three PBS stations.To serve such areas lacking an independent station, Ted Turner decided to negotiate an agreement with Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Southern Satellite Systems —a common-carry uplink firm founded by Turner Communications, which sold the firm to Edward L. Taylor for $1 in December 1975 to comply with FCC rules prohibiting a common carrier from having involvement in program origination—to uplink the WTCG signal to the Satcom 1 communications satellite to distribute the station's programming to cable and C-band satellite subscribers throughout the United States. With this move, WTCG would become one of the first television stations, and only the second U.S. broadcaster—following premium cable network Home Box Office , which began to transmit its signal nationally via satellite on September 30, 1975—to be transmitted via satellite, instead of the then-standard method of using microwave relay to distribute a programming feed.
At 1 p.m. Eastern Time on December 17, 1976, WTCG became America's first "superstation"—independent stations distributed to cable providers throughout their respective regions, or the entire country—when its signal was beamed via Satcom 1 to four cable television providers in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States: Multi-Vue TV's Grand Island, Nebraska, system; Hampton Roads Cablevision in Newport News, Virginia; Troy Cablevision in Troy, Alabama, and Newton Cable TV in Newton, Kansas. All four cable systems started receiving Deep Waters, a 1948 drama film starring Dana Andrews and Cesar Romero, which was already airing in progress for 30 minutes on channel 17 in Atlanta.
Instantly, WTCG increased its available viewing audience by 24,000 additional households, a reach which already included 675,000 households in metropolitan Atlanta and existing subscribers who received the station in Georgia and adjacent states. That number would grow in the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the Southern United States, with its cable coverage eventually encompassing the nation. SSS initially charged prospective cable systems 10 cents per subscriber to receive the WTCG signal as a 24-hour-a-day service and 2 cents per subscriber to receive it as an overnight-only timeshare feed. The station, and Turner's innovation, pioneered the distribution of broadcast television stations via satellite transmission to pay television subscribers nationwide, leading United Video Inc. and Eastern Microwave Inc., respectively, to uplink fellow independent stations WGN-TV in Chicago and WOR-TV in New York City to satellite for distribution as national superstations by the spring of 1979. Eventually, other independent stations such as KTVU in San Francisco, KTVT in Dallas–Fort Worth, WPIX in New York City and KTLA in Los Angeles were uplinked to satellite as well, with their distribution either being purposefully limited to a regional basis or intended for national distribution only to have its reach concentrated primarily within their home regions.
Turner's move to uplink WTCG to satellite also signaled the start of the basic cable revolution, inspiring the concept of cable-originated channels that were available to subscribers without an additional fee including, among others in the early days of basic cable, the CBN Satellite Network, the "original" Madison Square Garden Network, the Alpha Repertory Television Service, Nickelodeon and ESPN as well as Turner's later cable programming ventures, including Cable News Network, CNN2, Turner Network Television, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies. By 1978, WTCG was carried by cable providers in all 50 states, many of which lacked access to a local commercial independent station and, in some cases, even a distant one. Programming stayed pretty similar as shows such as The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Hogan's Heroes, made-for-TV Popeye cartoons and other vintage shows would be purchased second and even third hand; All in the Family and Sanford and Son, however, were bid for and acquired by WTCG.
Management with Turner and Channel 17 treated WTCG as an "active" superstation; Turner directly asserted national promotional responsibilities for the station, made investments in programming, and charged both national and local advertising rates. This resulted in the station paying for syndicated programs at rates comparable to other national networks, rather than merely receiving royalty payments from cable systems for programs to which it held the copyright as "passive" superstations—like WGN and WOR, which opted to take a neutral position on their national distribution and left national promotional duties to the satellite carriers that retransmitted their signals and, comparatively, had their signals redistributed without their owner's express permission under a provision in Section 111 of the Copyright Act of 1976—did. Initially, WTCG was identified as "Channel 17" or "Super 17" both locally in Atlanta and on cable providers outside of that area; by 1979, the station identified primarily by its call letters locally and nationally. By 1978, WTCG was carried on cable providers in all 50 U.S. states, reaching over 2.3 million subscribers.