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WCCB
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WCCB | |
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| Charlotte, North Carolina | |
| Branding | Fox Charlotte (general) Fox News (news; not to be confused with Fox News Channel) |
| Channels | Analog: 18 (UHF) Digital: 27 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Fox |
| Owner | Bahakel Communications |
| Founded | December 7, 1953 (original incarnation) August 15, 1964 (current incarnation) |
| Call letters meaning | W Charlotte Cy Bahakel, the station's founder and owner |
| Former callsigns | WQMC-TV (1953-54) WAYS-TV (1954-57) WUTV (1957-59) |
| Former channel number(s) | 36 (1953-1959, 1964-1966) |
| Former affiliations | NBC (1953-57) ABC (secondary 1953-57, primary 1957-59 and 1964-78) NBC (secondary, 1964-67) CBS (secondary, 1964-67)Independent (1978-87) |
| Website | www.myfoxcharlotte.com |
WCCB is the Fox affiliate in Charlotte, North Carolina. The station's headquarters are located just outside Uptown, off Independence Boulevard across from Cricket Arena at . It is the flagship station of its owner and operator, Bahakel Communications. WCCB is carried on channel 11 on most cable systems. Its transmitter is located in Charlotte.
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WCCB traces its roots to WQMC-TV, which signed on December 7, 1953. It broadcast on channel 36, and was an NBC affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliation. It was North Carolina's second UHF station, after WNAO-TV in Raleigh, as well as the second station in Charlotte. The original owners were George Dowdy and Hugh Deadwyler. In 1954, Deadwyler became the sole owner of the station. Deadwyler already owned WAYS-AM 610 (now WFNZ), so he changed channel 36's call letters to WAYS-TV.
The station went into receivership for a brief period in 1956, in part because it was virtually unviewable without an expensive converter. Television set manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability at the time. Even with a converter, UHF pictures were marginal at best. As a result, it made almost no headway against CBS affiliate WBTV. In 1957, Century Advertising bought the station and changed the call letters to WUTV. However, soon after Century took over, WSOC-TV signed on and took the NBC affiliation, leaving WUTV with struggling ABC. At that time, ABC was not nearly on the same footing as CBS and NBC (and wouldn't be until the 1970s). It was further hampered by ABC's decision to permit WBTV and WSOC to cherry-pick its more popular shows. Additionally, WLOS-TV in Asheville put a fairly decent signal into much of the western part of the Charlotte market, and could even be seen in Charlotte itself under the right conditions. Without the stronger ABC shows to sustain it, WUTV finally went dark in 1959.
In 1964, Charlotte businessman Cy Bahakel bought the dormant channel 36 license. He returned the station to air on August 15 as WCCB-TV (for Charlotte Cy Bahakel). The station was nominally an ABC affiliate. However, the FCC had only required television sets to have all-channel tuning just a few months before, and most Charlotte homes did not have UHF-capable sets. The more popular ABC shows continued to be seen on WBTV or WSOC, while WCCB picked up some of the CBS and NBC shows that the stronger stations turned down.
In November of 1966, WCCB moved from channel 36 to channel 18, broadcasting from a new tower located on Newell Hickory Grove Road in northeast Charlotte. The new tower gave WCCB a coverage area comparable to those of WBTV and WSOC-TV. The station's former tower was located adjacent to the studio in the parking lot of the old Charlotte Coliseum, now Cricket Arena. In 1967, NBC informed WSOC-TV that it wanted a full time affiliate in the Charlotte market. NBC's ratings were higher than ABC's, so WSOC dropped its secondary affiliation with ABC. Beginning in the fall of 1967, WCCB was a full-time affiliate of ABC.
By 1978, ABC had become the nation's most watched network and wanted a stronger Charlotte outlet than WCCB. ABC took its programming to WSOC. Conventional wisdom suggested WCCB would simply take the NBC affiliation. However, Ted Turner, who owned WRET (which had been on the verge of closing down a few years earlier), came in from out of nowhere to take the NBC affiliation, leaving WCCB as an independent. There are conflicting reports for why this happened. Some accounts say that Bahakel approached NBC, only to have the network turn down the offer because it didn't want ABC's "leftovers." Others say that NBC made the initial offer, only to have Bahakel turn it down due to NBC's ratings struggles of the time.
With WCCB left to fend for itself as an independent station, it bought a large chunk of programming from WRET, including cartoons and older sitcoms. For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after-school cartoons were hosted by the costumed Sonic Man space alien character.
WCCB carried on for almost a decade as a typical UHF general entertainment independent station. In 1986, WCCB became the last top-50 market station to join the newly-launched Fox network as one of its charter affiliates. Since then, WCCB has been one of the strongest Fox stations in the country, particularly since the National Football Conference of the NFL moved its television package from CBS to Fox in 1994. By a lucky coincidence, this made WCCB the unofficial "home" station of the Carolina Panthers upon their debut in 1995. WCCB has carried most Panthers regular season games since then, and has since added preseason games. Panthers games are generally the most-watched programs in the market during each week of the football season.
For much of 2007, WCCB has claimed to be the number-one Fox affiliate in the country. This claim is likely false, however, as Miami's WSVN has spent most of the first half of the new millennium in either first or second place among that area's stations.
In mid-2007, WCCB moved its Website to the "MyFox" platform. This design was originally intended for Fox owned and operated stations, but has gained increasing popularity among affiliates as well. The station's old Web address, www.foxcharlotte.tv, now redirects to the new site.
The station's early-morning newscast, "Fox News Rising," places a distant fourth behind WSOC, WBTV and WCNC, while its 10 PM newscast beats its direct competition on WJZY and WAXN and also draws a larger audience than WCNC's at 11 PM.[1] WCCB closed its news department when it lost its ABC affiliation in 1978, and did not carry local news again until 1994, when it began airing a nightly 10 PM newscast. Until 1999, this program was produced by WSOC, which then relocated its shared production to its new sister station, WAXN. It was produced by WCNC for several months between the WSOC-produced program's departure and the launch of WCCB's in-house news department on January 1, 2000. Ironically, WCNC's news on WCCB drew a larger audience at the time than the newscasts which actually aired on WCNC.
In addition to all of Fox's national programming, Fox Charlotte airs the following programs:
After being known as "TV18" since sign-on, it was rebranded as "Fox 18" in 1988 and as "Fox Charlotte" in 2002. Since WLFL in the Triangle switched to The WB in 1998, WCCB has been the only remaining original Fox affiliate in North Carolina.
Cy Bahakel owned WCCB from 1964 until his death on April 20, 2006. Bahakel was an original partner in the Charlotte Hornets, and WCCB was the flagship station of the Hornets television network for the team's first four seasons.
In 2002, Bahakel Communications moved the operations of its ABC affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina (two hours south of Charlotte), WOLO-TV to WCCB, where they stayed for three years. During that time, WCCB's studios played host to WOLO's newscasts. This was one of the first instances of "central casting," in which several stations' operations are hosted by one station. The practice of producing a local newscast in a different market was roundly criticized. WOLO's ratings, already dead last in the Columbia market, plunged even further and have never recovered, even after news production moved back to Columbia in 2005. WOLO and WCCB continue to share some operations and personnel.
- ^ Mark Washburn, The Charlotte Observer, May 26, 2007, p. 1E.
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| Television Stations | WAKA · WBBJ · WCCB · WFXB · WOLO |
| Radio Stations | KFMW · KILO · KOKZ · KWLO · KXEL · WDEF-AM · WDEF-FM · WDOD · WDOD-FM |
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WBTV 3 (CBS) - WSOC 9 (ABC) - WHKY 14 (Ind) - W16CF 16 / W38CN 38 / W66ST 66 (TBN) - WCCB 18 (Fox) - WLNN-LP 24 / WTBL-LP 49 (A1) - WGTB-LP 28 (FN/LeSEA) - WNSC 30 (PBS/SCETV) - WCNC 36 (NBC, WX Plus on DT2) - WTVI 42 (PBS, Create on DT3) - WJZY 46 (The CW) - WMYT 55 (MNTV, WGTB-LP on DT3) - WUNG 58 / WUNE 17 (PBS/UNC-TV) - WAXN 64 (Ind) Local cable television channels |
| See also Broadcast television in Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville, Columbia and Piedmont Triad |
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WGHP 8 (High Point) - WFXI 8 / WYDO 14 (Morehead City / Greenville) - WCCB 18 (Charlotte) - WSFX 26 (Wilmington) - WRAZ 50 (Raleigh) |
| See also: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CW, MNTV and Other stations in North Carolina |