WVTM-TV
This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2009) |
FCC | |
Facility ID | 74173 |
---|---|
ERP | 47.6 kW |
HAAT | 400.3 m (1,313 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 33°29′26″N 86°47′48″W / 33.49056°N 86.79667°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
WVTM-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Hearst Television,[2] the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities atop Red Mountain, between Vulcan Trail and Valley View Drive in southeastern Birmingham, adjacent to the Vulcan Statue and next to the studios of Fox affiliate WBRC (channel 6).
History
Early history
The station first signed on the air on May 29, 1949, as WAFM-TV, originally carrying a limited schedule of local programming. The station began carrying select network programming on July 1, operating as a primary CBS and secondary ABC affiliate; channel 13 began carrying an expanded schedule of programming from ABC and CBS on October 1. It was originally owned by The Voice of Alabama, Inc., along with radio stations WAPI (1070 AM), and WAFM (then at 93.3, now WJOX-FM at 94.5 FM).[3] It is the longest continuously operating television station in Alabama. During the summer of 1949, most programs aired by WAFM-TV aired during the daytime hours, allowing radio electronics and department stores to demonstrate television set receivers to potential customers. In January 1953, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved an application to increase the station's transmitter power from 26,000 to 316,000 watts.[4]
In July 1953,
Channel 13 also became known for its heavy schedule of local programs during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably two popular shows aimed at younger audiences hosted by two early staples of Birmingham television. Magician
WBRC-TV became a full-time ABC affiliate on September 7, 1961, although it continued to occasionally carry certain CBS shows that WAPI chose not to carry until 1965. The WBRC deal with ABC—which was also a result of the strong relations between the network and WBRC's owner,
The Birmingham market would not get a third commercial broadcast television outlet until WBMG-TV (channel 42, now WIAT) began in October 1965. Although WBMG nominally had a CBS affiliation, the network allowed WAPI-TV to continue airing its higher-rated programs. This was largely because WBMG had launched only one year after the FCC's All-Channel Receiver Act went into law, requiring that television sets manufactured from 1964 onward include all-channel tuning; relatively few households in the area at the time had sets with built-in UHF tuning capability, or expensive converter boxes that enabled older television sets to pick up UHF signals. Compounding things, channel 42 operated at a comparatively low effective radiated power, producing a signal that was considerably weaker than that of either WAPI-TV or WBRC-TV. To fill out its schedule, WBMG aired some NBC programs that WAPI-TV turned down or otherwise had no room to broadcast on its schedule (such as The Tonight Show). Both stations listed "CBS/NBC" as their affiliation, as WBMG maintained a nominal secondary affiliation with the latter network. On April 3, 1967, WAPI-TV became the first television station in Birmingham to broadcast all of its programming in color, having acquired camera, projection and slide equipment to broadcast local and acquired programming in the format, in addition to carrying NBC and CBS programs available in color.[citation needed]
In May 1970, WAPI-TV became the exclusive NBC affiliate for Birmingham, simultaneously resulting in the CBS programs not already carried by that station moving to WBMG. The switch to an exclusive NBC affiliation was because two of Newhouse Broadcasting's other stations,
Newhouse exited the broadcasting industry in the early 1980s to focus exclusively on its newspaper holdings. In 1979, the company sold its television stations, including WAPI-TV, to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company; the WAPI radio stations were sold to Dittman Broadcasting. Following the completion of the sale, the station, due to an FCC rule in place at the time that stated that TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership had to have differing call letters, changed its call letters to WVTM-TV (for "Vulcan Times Mirror"; the "V" referencing both the cast-iron statue in Vulcan Statue as well as its location atop Red Mountain at Vulcan Park, where WVTM's transmitter tower was located) on March 28, 1980.
New World Communications and NBC ownership
In March 1993, Times Mirror sold WVTM, along with its three sister stations (ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis, and CBS affiliates KDFW in Dallas and KTBC in Austin, Texas) to Argyle Television Holdings in a two-part deal. Under the structure, WVTM and KTVI were the first two stations to be sold to New World, which respectively bought the stations for $45 million and $35 million;[5][6] the purchase of the entire group was completed in December of that year following securement of financing for the deal.[7]
In May 1994,
New World was able to finalize its purchase of WBRC on October 12, 1994, because the transfer applications for the Argyle stations were not submitted to the FCC until after those involved in the purchase of the Citicasters (to which Great American Communications was subsequently renamed) stations was already finalized.However, WBRC and fellow ABC affiliate WGHP in High Point, North Carolina were immediately placed in an outside trust company as Citicasters restructured its plans for both stations and decided to sell them directly to Fox's owned-and-operated station group, Fox Television Stations, once it discovered New World's plan to purchase the Argyle stations (both purchases conflicted with two aspects of the FCC's media ownership regulations; the purchases of WBRC and WVTM would have violated rules that prohibited a single company from owning both the #1 and the #2 television stations in the same market, plus both group deals would have given New World three more stations than the agency allowed at the time under its 12-station national television ownership limit). In January 1995, while the group awaited the Argyle purchase to receive approval by the FCC, New World took over the operations of the Argyle stations, including WVTM, through time brokerage agreements. The transfers of WBRC and WGHP to the trust were completed on April 3, 1995, while the New World purchase of the Argyle stations closed on April 14.[11] New World's purchase of the remaining three Argyle stations was finalized on April 18, 1995.[12]
As a result of New World's option to sell WBRC to Fox, WVTM retained its NBC affiliation (
On May 22, 1996, New World Communications announced that it would sell WVTM and KNSD to NBC's owned-and-operated station group, NBC Television Stations, for $425 million.[13] This deal came two months prior to then-Fox parent News Corporation's acquisition of New World on July 17, in an all-stock transaction worth $2.48 billion, in which it would acquire New World's remaining twelve Fox-affiliated stations (which would also become owned-and-operated stations of the network);[14][15] The sale of WVTM and KNSD to NBC was finalized in July 1996.[16] In November 1996, the station changed its on-air branding from "Alabama's 13" (which it adopted in 1991) to "NBC 13".
Media General ownership
On January 9, 2006, NBC Television Stations announced that it would place four of its smaller-market owned-and-operated stations—WVTM,
The FCC subsequently granted the company a temporary waiver of its ownership rules that allowed it to keep both WVTM and WIAT for six months after the purchase of the former was completed; Media General's purchase of all four stations was finalized on June 26, 2006.[21] On August 2, Media General announced that it had sold WIAT and fellow CBS affiliate KIMT in Mason City, Iowa, to New Vision Television for $35 million; that sale was finalized on October 12, 2006.[22] Under Media General, WVTM retained its existing "NBC 13" branding until 2009, when it restored "Alabama's 13" as its on-air branding.
Hearst Television ownership
On March 21, 2014, LIN Media entered into an agreement to merge with Media General in a $1.6 billion deal. Because LIN already owned CBS affiliate WIAT, due to the same FCC duopoly restrictions based on total day viewership that prompted Media General to sell WIAT to New Vision eight years earlier, the companies were required to sell either WVTM-TV or WIAT to another station owner in order to comply with the agency's ownership rules; the sales that Media General and LIN voluntarily chose to conduct in that situation were also in response to planned changes to the FCC's media ownership regulations, which would prohibit sharing agreements involving two or more television stations in the same market.[23][24][25][26]
On August 20, 2014, Media General announced that it would reacquire WIAT and sell WVTM, along with WJCL in Savannah, Georgia, to Hearst Television.[27][28] Media General completed its merger with LIN on December 19; Hearst closed on its purchase of WVTM and WJCL three days later on December 22.[29] In March 2015, WVTM phased in Hearst's standardized station imaging, and dropped the "Alabama's 13" brand for the second time, in favor of branding by its call letters as "WVTM 13", similar to other Hearst-owned stations.
Programming
WVTM-TV carries the entire NBC programming schedule, although it airs the network's weekend overnight lineup on a one-hour tape delay due to paid and syndicated programming. Syndicated programming broadcast by WVTM-TV (as of September 2022[update]) includes Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien (which is produced by parent company Hearst Television), Tamron Hall, The Jennifer Hudson Show and The Kelly Clarkson Show.[30]
While channel 13 tried to carry the most popular NBC and CBS shows, a lot of fairly popular programs aired by either network were never seen in the Birmingham market because of this arrangement (even though WAPI carried selected CBS and NBC network programs in a 4½-hour block preceding its late-evening newscast, which then aired at 11 p.m.), and the lack of a third station to carry the remaining programs. One of the more popular CBS shows that WAPI-TV did not air was
WAPI-TV strongly favored NBC for national news programming; as a byproduct of this, when CBS and NBC expanded their early-evening news programs to 30 minutes in 1963, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite did not air in Birmingham for the next two years. This was due, of course, to the fact that both networks fed their newscasts to their affiliates at 5:30 p.m. Central Time (as they continue to do today). Channel 13 aired its local newscast at 6 p.m., and prior to the passage of the Prime Time Access Rule by the FCC in 1971, prime time network programming began at 6:30 p.m. Central Time. This left no available room on WAPI's schedule to allow it to air the CBS Evening News, even if station management had wanted to broadcast it, clearing only The Huntley–Brinkley Report in its normal time slot (Huntley–Brinkley was the only network evening newscast that was televised in Birmingham from 1963 to 1965, as WBRC-TV did not carry ABC's evening newscasts during that period).
During the 1970s, WAPI ran a distant second to WBRC in local news and general viewership, but was far ahead of WBMG, which was one of the lowest-rated commercial television stations in the U.S. at the time. It was only in western and eastern Alabama that the CBS affiliates, WCFT and WHMA, were competitive against WBRC and WAPI, particularly in local newscasts designed specifically for those areas of the state. After it exclusively aligned with NBC, channel 13 chose to fill the now-vacated 10 p.m. hour with off-network syndicated reruns to serve as a lead-in to its late newscast, which itself would move to 10 p.m. in 1977; however, the station continued to delay The Tonight Show by one hour in favor of running syndicated programming until September 1993, when it moved the program to its network-standard 10:35 slot.
News operation
WVTM-TV presently broadcasts 44+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and 5+1⁄2 hours on Sundays).
News department history
Channel 13 launched the first full-scale television news department in Alabama in 1951. For most of the last half of the 20th century, channel 13's newscasts were a solid, if usually distant, runner-up to long-dominant WBRC. This remained the case even during the second half of the 1980s, despite having the benefit of NBC's powerful prime time programming lineup of that period (which included such series as Hill Street Blues, The Cosby Show and The A-Team) as a lead-in to its 10 p.m. newscast.
However, after WBMA-LP replaced WBRC as the market's ABC affiliate in September 1996, WVTM had to fend off a spirited challenge from the upstart station (to which it lost two of its well-known anchors, Pam Huff and Tracy Haynes, who were later hired to anchor that station's morning newscasts). Since the start of the new millennium, it has also had to contend with a resurgent WIAT, whose news ratings prior to the February 1998 relaunch of its news department had generally languished at a very distant fourth place for much of its history up to that point. Indeed, since 2006, WIAT has consistently beaten WVTM in the late news ratings. In contrast to WIAT's renewed performance under Media General ownership, ratings averages for WVTM's newscasts slipped to fourth place among the market's five major television news operations (ahead of WVUA-CD (channel 7) and behind WBMA-LD and WIAT) during the company's ownership of channel 13, where it remains to this day.
In 2004, WVTM began utilizing a
After Hearst Television purchased the station in 2014, WVTM-TV has shifted its programming focus more heavily towards local news. First on August 18, 2014, the station expanded its weekday morning newscast to 4 a.m. and expanded its 11 a.m. newscast to one hour, with the latter expansion replacing Daytime Alabama (a locally produced version of the syndicated morning talk show Daytime, produced by former
Notable former on-air staff
- Sophia Choi – weekend morning anchor (1991–1996; now at WSB-TV in Atlanta)
- Cliff Holman ("Cousin Cliff") – children's program host (1954–1969; later at WJSU-TV; deceased)
- James Spann – meteorologist (1979–1983; now at WBMA-LD)
- Fort Worth then at CBS as host of The Early Show)
- Charlie Van Dyke – station announcer (now announcer for rival WBRC)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
13.1 | 1080i | 16:9 |
WVTM-HD | Main WVTM-TV programming / NBC |
13.2 | 480i | MeTV | MeTV[32] | |
13.3 | STORYTV | Story Television[33] | ||
13.4 | TheGrio | TheGrio | ||
13.5 | 4:3 |
GetTV | Get | |
21.3 | 480i | 16:9 | Comet | Comet (WTTO-DT3) |
In September 2004, WVTM-TV launched a
Analog-to-digital conversion
In November 2002, WVTM-TV signed on its digital television signal on
References
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WVTM-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ "Alabama Broadcast Media Page". Alabama Broadcast Media. Retrieved December 19, 2014.
- ^ Caldwell, Lily May (June 18, 1949). "Birmingham Joins Television World". The Birmingham News.
- ^ "Channel 13 to hike its power 12 times to increase range". The Birmingham News. January 29, 1953 – via Birmingham Rewound.
- ^ Flint, Joe (March 22, 1993). "Times Mirror set to sell four TVs. (television stations)". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on February 20, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Foisie, Geoffrey (May 3, 1993). "Times Mirror sells stations, part 1. (Times Mirror Co. to sell four stations to Argyle Communications Inc.)". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ Flint, Joe (December 20, 1993). "Argyle acquires Times Mirror stations. (Argyle Television Holding Inc.)". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on February 20, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- Cahners Business Information. May 23, 1994. Archived from the originalon October 11, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2013.
- ^ a b Foisie, Geoffrey (May 30, 1994). "Argyle socks away profit. (New World Communications Group Inc. acquires Argyle Television Holdings)". Broadcasting & Cable. Cahners Business Information. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ "Company News; Great American Selling Four Television Stations". The New York Times. The Associated Press. May 6, 1994. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- Cahners Business Information. Archived from the originalon October 16, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ "New World acquires four TV stations". United Press International. April 18, 1995. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
- ^ "COMPANY NEWS;NEW WORLD COMMUNICATIONS TO SELL 2 STATIONS". The New York Times. Dow Jones. May 23, 1996. p. 4.
- ^ Lowry, Brian (July 18, 1996). "New World Vision : Murdoch's News Corp. to Buy Broadcast Group". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 22, 2012.
- ^ "THE MEDIA BUSINESS;Murdoch's News Corp. Buying New World". The New York Times. Reuters. July 18, 1996. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ^ "NBC and New World Announce Closing of Sale of Birmingham TV Station to NBC". PR Newswire. January 22, 1997 – via The Free Library.
- ^ "NBC Universal begins to sell TV stations". The Tuscaloosa News. The New York Times Company. January 11, 2006.
- ^ "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Media General to Acquire Four NBC Owned and Operated Television Stations" (Press release). Media General. April 6, 2006. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ^ "Media General to Buy NBC Affiliates for $600 Million". The New York Times. April 6, 2006.
- ^ "Media General buying WVTM-NBC13, selling WIAT-CBS". Birmingham Business Journal. American City Business Journals. April 6, 2006.
- ^ "Media General Completes Purchase of Four NBC Television Stations". Media General (Press release). June 26, 2006. Archived from the original on September 5, 2012. Retrieved June 14, 2015.
- ^ "Media General Completes Sale of Iowa, Alabama Stations to New Vision". Media General (Press release). June 26, 2006. Archived from the original on September 10, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
- ^ Ramakrishnan, Sruthi (March 21, 2014). "Media General to buy LIN Media for $1.6 billion". Reuters. Retrieved March 21, 2014.
- ^ Littleton, Cynthia (March 21, 2014). "TV Station Mega Merger: Media General, LIN Set $1.6 Billion Deal". Variety. Prometheus Global Media.
- ^ Flint, Joe (March 21, 2014). "Media General acquiring LIN Media for $1.6 billion". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ Jessell, Harry A. (March 21, 2014). "Media Gen/LIN To Sell/Swap In Five Markets". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheck Media.
- ^ "Media General, LIN Sell Stations In 5 Markets". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheck Media. August 20, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2014.
- ^ Malone, Michael (August 20, 2014). "Media General, LIN Divest Stations in Five Markets". Broadcasting & Cable. NewBay Media. Retrieved August 20, 2014.
- ^ "Hearst Closes on WVTM and WJCL, Names GMs". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheck Media. December 22, 2014.
- ^ "WVTMDT – TV Listings". Zap2It. Tribune Digital Ventures. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
- ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WVTM". RabbitEars. Retrieved December 10, 2015.
- ^ "Where to watch MeTV: WVTM". MeTV. Weigel Broadcasting.
- ^ "WYFF Greenville, SC".
- ^ "Equity Media's RTN Adds Birmingham Affiliate". Reuters (Press release). Equity Media Holdings. January 7, 2008. Archived from the original on September 10, 2012.
- ^ "Me-TV Beefs Up Roster With 10 New Stations". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheck Media. September 15, 2011.
- ^ "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 29, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2012.
- Cahners Business Information. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
- ^ "CDBS Print". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ per WVTM Engineer Chuck Blackwood, June 15, 2020.
External links
- Official website
- MeTVBirmingham.com – WVTM-DT2 ("Me-TV Birmingham") official website
- Birmingham TV News: Station Histories
- Birmingham Rewound-Birmingham TV Memories
- Huntsville Rewound-Huntsville AL TV Memories