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WTBS
Atlanta, Georgia
Branding	TBS
Slogan	Very Funny
Channels	17 (UHF) analog, 20 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	TBS
Owner	Turner Broadcasting System/Time Warner (Superstation, Inc.)
Founded	September 1, 1967 (Local Station) December 17, 1976 (via satellite)
Call letters meaning	Turner Broadcasting System
Former callsigns	WJRJ-TV (1967-1970), WTCG-TV (1970-1979)
Former affiliations	ABC, CBS, NBC (all secondary until 1976)
Transmitter Power	1480 kW/332 m(analog) 1000 kW/310.3 m (digital)
Website	www.tbs17.com

WTBS is an American TV station, broadcast on channel 17 (DTV channel 20) in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. While officially an independent station, it simulcasts most of the programming carried by the national TBS cable network.

Contents 1 Early history 1.1 Programs of the early era 1.2 Satellite broadcasting 2 Production notes 3 External links

The station commenced broadcasting on September 1, 1967, originally signing on with the callsign WJRJ. Atlanta entrepreneur John Rice, Jr. launched the station on a shoestring budget, with a schedule filled with old movies and one off-network rerun: a crime drama called "Target: The Corrupters." During Rice's ownership, WJRJ ran exactly one print advertisement: a half page ad in a September, 1967 TV Guide with the headline, "Yes, Atlanta, there is a channel 17." Technical snafus were the norm in the station's early months: film broke, slides appeared backwards and there were often long pauses when nothing was on screen. The station did carry a #1 show for a few weeks: Atlanta's CBS affiliate WAGA TV ran a local movie on Wednesday night, and WJRJ stepped in to run Medical Center for a time...until it hit Nielsen's Top 10.

In January 1970, entepreneur Ted Turner, who ran his father's billboard business and also owned radio stations, bought the low-rated UHF outlet, which was Atlanta's first independent, non-network station.

After using the callsign WTCG for most of its first decade under Turner's ownership, the station became WTBS in 1979. The WTBS call letters had been held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology radio station, but they agreed to cede the letters to Turner's station after Turner donated the money for a new transmitter for MIT's radio station. (The MIT station now uses call letters WMBR.)[1] WTCG's first move: steal a popular show from crosstown UHF station WATL-TV. The Now Explosion was a precursor to MTV, running music videos (some homebrewed) all weekend long.

A few months after facing emboldened competition from Turner's crew, WATL-TV folded.

WTCG programs in the pre-satellite era included games of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, some newscasts, reruns of Star Trek, and Georgia Championship Wrestling, one of the roots of the later World Championship Wrestling.

Another show on the WTCG lineup was hosted by the legendary R&B singer James Brown and called James Brown's Future Shock. The show, which bore similarities to American Bandstand and Soul Train, aired on late night each Friday. As reported by Steve Beverly on his TVGameShows.net after Brown's death on Christmas Day, 2006, "Two highlights of the dance party hour: when a group of the teen dancers lined up before the evening's final solo by Brown and chanted, 'Future shock...can't be stopped, future shock...can't be stopped,' and commercials for a mail-order "party ring"----in which a teen referred to the $19.95 jewelry as 'superbad'." An alternate interpretation is that the teen was moved to exclaim "Sho' is bad."

WTCG, which reportedly stood for "Watch This Channel Grow" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System) was one of the first TV stations to broadcast via satellite. It, along with WOR-TV in New York City (now WWOR-TV) and WGN-TV in Chicago, were among America's first "superstations", independent channels distributed to cable systems throughout their respective regions--or the entire country.

At 1 p.m. on December 17, 1976, WTCG's signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to its four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama; and Newton, Kansas. All four cable systems started receiving the sleepy 1948 Dana Andrews - Cesar Romero film Deep Waters, which was already 30 minutes in progress. Instantly, WTCG added 24,000 more households to its viewing audience, which consisted of 675,000 households in metropolitan Atlanta. That number would grow exponentially in the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the South (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball were, and still are, highly popular), but eventually encompassing the nation. The station, and Turner's innovation, signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.

• The channel 17 transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (in midtown Atlanta), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower.
• The building at this site was once home to the studios of WAGA and later channel 17, during the WJRJ years. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the studios were moved to the former Progressive Club site a few blocks west at 1050 Techwood Drive. The Techwood Drive studios also served as the studio facilities for WTBS' Saturday evening wrestling programs Georgia Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling, as well as the original home of CNN.
• The cable TBS is mostly a simulcast of flagship WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally produced public affairs programming on Saturday mornings, and certain special events. Unlike WTBS, the national TBS is not obligated to carry public affairs or educational "E/I" programming for children, because it is a cable channel, and thus exempted from FCC requirements.
• The DTV channel 20 is diplexed into a master TV antenna at the tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road Northeast, in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood.
• Contrary to expectations, WTBS, not the TBS superstation, is the feed distributed across Canada on all satellite and cable providers.

• TBS17 website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WTBS

v • d • e

Television stations in the Atlanta market (Nielsen DMA #9)

WSB 2 (ABC) - WUVM-LP 4 (Azteca América) - WAGA 5 (Fox) - WGTV 8 (PBS/GPB) - WXIA 11 (NBC, WX Plus on DT2) - WPXA 14 (ION) - WTBS 17 (TBS) - WCLP 18 (PBS/GPB) - W24AL 24 (HSN) - WANX-LP 26 (Jewelry TV) - WPBA 30 (PBS) - WANN-LP 32 (Ind) - WNEG 32 (CBS) - WUVG 34 (UNI) - WATL 36 (MNTV) - W38CU 38 (TEL) - WIRE-CA 40 (MTV2) - WAGC-LP 42 (Ind) - WGCL 46 (CBS) - WDTA-LP 53 (DS) - WYGA 55 (Ind) - W55BM 55 (JCTV) - WATC 57 / WSKC-CA 22 (Religious) - WHSG 63 (TBN) - WUPA 69 (The CW)

Local digital television channels WTHC-LP 42 (TIS)

Local/Regional cable/satellite television channels SportSouth - FSN South - CSS - AIB - Cobb edTV (Cobb County)