WGCL-TV

WGCL-TV

Atlanta, Georgia
Branding	CBS Atlanta (general) CBS Atlanta News (newscasts)
Slogan	We Ask the Tough Questions
Channels	Digital: 19 (UHF) Virtual: 46 (PSIP)
Subchannels	46.1 CBS
Owner	Meredith Corporation
First air date	June 6, 1971 (1971-06-06)
Call letters' meaning	Georgia's CLear News (former slogan)
Sister station(s)	WPCH-TV
Former callsigns	WHAE-TV (1971–1977) WANX-TV (1977–1984) WGNX (1984–2000)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 46 (UHF, 1971–2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1971–1994)
Transmitter power	1000 kW (digital)
Height	329 m (digital)
Facility ID	72120
Transmitter coordinates	33°48′26″N 84°20′22″W
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.cbsatlanta.com/

WGCL-TV, channel 46, is a CBS-affiliated television station located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Owned by the Meredith Corporation, WGCL-TV operates independent station WPCH-TV (channel 17), through a local marketing agreement with that station's owner, the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner. The studio facilities that house both stations are located in the city's Home Park neighborhood, WGCL-TV's transmitter is located near North Druid Hills, Georgia.

History

Early history

Channel 46 first went on the air on June 6, 1971 as WHAE-TV (standing for "Heaven And Earth"), originally owned by the Continental Broadcasting Network arm of evangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. The station originally broadcast for six hours each day, and offered a low-budget lineup consisting of one to two hours of general entertainment programs, mixed with religious programming (the latter of which also comprised the entire Sunday schedule). In 1972, the station expanded to an eight-hour-a-day schedule, with an additional two hours of entertainment shows daily, mainly programs that higher-rated stations and Ted Turner's WTCG passed on.

By 1976, the station had expanded to a 20-hour daily schedule, airing secular syndicated shows and religious programming (including twice daily airings of The 700 Club). In the fall of 1977, the station changed its call letters to WANX-TV (standing for "Atlanta IN Christ (X)"). While it began offering more secular programming around this time, its programming policies were considerably more conservative than its two main rivals at the time: WTCG/WTBS (now WPCH-TV) and WATL (channel 36), as WANX did not air any programming that would offend the sensibilities of its mostly fundamentalist and Pentecostal audience due to owner Robertson's beliefs. This policy would also guide programming choices for CBN during the 1980s and 1990s.

Tribune ownership and CBS affiliation

Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting acquired Channel 46 in late 1983, after which its call letters were changed once again, this time to WGNX; the new callsign reflected a connection with Tribune's Chicago flagship station, WGN-TV (whose own callsign refers to the slogan of the Chicago Tribune, "World's Greatest Newspaper"). Airings of The 700 Club on the station were reduced to once per day, before the show was dropped altogether – until channel 46 acquired the local rights to the program again in 2007. Under Tribune ownership, the new WGNX significantly upgraded its programming, picking up more racier programs than those allowed to air on the station under CBN ownership. The station formed a news department by the end of the decade, airing a 10 p.m. newscast on weeknights, alongside the Tribune-distributed syndicated newscast Independent Network News.

On November 2, 1993, Time Warner's Warner Bros. Television division and the Tribune Company announced the formation of The WB Television Network. As a result of Tribune holding a minority ownership stake in the network, the company decided to turn its then-seven independent stations into The WB's charter affiliates. WGNX was slated to become the new network's Atlanta outlet upon The WB's launch on January 11, 1995. However, those plans were suddenly altered on May 22, 1994, when New World Communications signed an affiliation agreement with the Fox Broadcasting Company, months after Fox won the NFL broadcast contract to run football games from the league's National Football Conference. Most of the New World stations became Fox affiliates as a result, including Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate, WAGA-TV (channel 5). CBS needed to find a new affiliate in what had become the nation's ninth largest media market, and approached all of Atlanta's major stations, including WGNX. However, none of them were interested at first.

By October 1994 – only a month before WAGA-TV was slated to join Fox – CBS faced the prospect of having to pipe in out-of-market affiliates from Columbus and Macon, Georgia, Spartanburg, South Carolina and Chattanooga, Tennessee to area cable providers until it found a new Atlanta-area affiliate. Almost out of desperation, CBS made a deal to buy WVEU, a low-rated station on channel 69 with the weakest signal of Atlanta's full-power stations. Around the same time that The WB launched, the United Paramount Network (originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries, before becoming a joint venture with Paramount Pictures/Viacom in 1996) was set to launch as a competitor to The WB, with WATL as the most likely choice to be that network's Atlanta affiliate. However, CBS still wanted to affiliate with a station that people were more familiar with (and that had a functioning news department). It continued to negotiate with Tribune, who eventually relented in November and allowed WGNX to become a CBS affiliate.

The affiliation switch became official on December 11, 1994. It was originally slated to occur on November 27, but Fox, New World and CBS were still ironing out the final details. Upon becoming a CBS affiliate, the station began airing more syndicated talk and reality shows; it also began branding itself as "CBS46" (these references were mostly verbal as on-air graphics continued to refer to the station as "channel 46"). The CBS affiliation's move to WGNX resulted in the station having to sell the cartoons and sitcoms that it would no longer have time to air due to network programming commitments, so some of its syndicated programs were relocated to WVEU, which became the market's UPN affiliate (while WATL joined The WB), and was later sold to Viacom, who changed that station's callsign to WUPA.

The only major downside to affiliating with WGNX is that CBS lost significant viewership in the northern portion of the Atlanta market. Despite its five million-watt analog signal, WGNX did not penetrate nearly as far into this area as WAGA did due to the relatively mountainous terrain that is found in that part of northern Georgia. Much of this region was among the few areas in the United States where cable television was still not readily available. CBS did not return over-the-air to this area until Toccoa's WNEG-TV (channel 32, now WUGA-TV) joined CBS the following August. Although it was located in the Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville market, WNEG served as the de facto CBS affiliate for the far northern portion of the Atlanta market until that station's sale to the University of Georgia in 2008. By this time, increased cable and satellite availability in this area increased channel 46's footprint in the area. Tribune began to manage the station in tandem with WATL in 1996 under a local marketing agreement.

Meredith Corporation ownership

WGCL's logo from 2004 to 2009.

In 1998, Tribune Broadcasting traded WGNX to the Meredith Corporation in a three-way deal that saw Tribune acquire Tacoma, Washington's KCPQ from Kelly Broadcasting; that deal allowed Tribune to buy WATL outright the next year. Around the same time, WGNX changed its branding to "CBS Atlanta". The station changed its callsign to WGCL-TV in 2000 to reflect its new slogan, "We're Georgia's CLear TV", along with a soft news concept called Clear News. Within a few months though, WGCL rebranded as "CBS Atlanta" again, before re-adopting the "CBS 46" moniker two years later.

On June 20, 2007, WGCL's website underwent a redesign due to a partnership between Meredith and Internet Broadcasting, following the successful testing of the websites of five of its sister stations, which had joined the Internet Broadcasting platform the year before. WGCL's website was the sixth Meredith station website to switch from being run by WorldNow to Internet Broadcasting. Meredith's contract with IB expired in June 2011, with the Meredith station sites becoming operated by WorldNow again. WGCL and Fox-affiliated sister station WHNS in Greenville, South Carolina, were the first Meredith-owned stations to relaunch with the new WorldNow-operated sites on June 6, 2011.

In March 2009, Meredith announced that WGCL would begin handling the master control operations of both WHNS and Nashville's WSMV-TV. The new master control hub began operations in the fall of 2009. Three other Meredith-owned stations, in Kansas City, Hartford-New Haven and Bay City, Michigan, were later added to the WGCL hub in 2010. Meredith operates a similar hub at KPHO-TV in Phoenix to handle its Las Vegas and Portland, Oregon-Vancouver, Washington stations. On March 12, 2011, WGCL-TV, as well as WSB-TV, became the first stations in the Atlanta area to begin offering Mobile DTV broadcasts.

On January 18, 2011, Meredith Corporation entered into a local marketing agreement with the Turner Broadcasting System (owner of WPCH-TV) that would result in WPCH vacating its studios on Techwood Drive and merging its operations with WGCL at its studios in the city's Home Park neighborhood. Production of the station's 45 Atlanta Braves broadcasts was also transferred from Turner Sports to Fox Sports South as a result. The LMA with Meredith ended Turner Broadcasting's yearly sponsorship of Piedmont Park's "Screen on the Green" in 2011. Ironically, while WPCH is the junior partner in the arrangement, the station (formerly known as WTCG until 1980 and WTBS from 1980 to 2004) was the stronger of the two stations until the late 1980s.

Digital television

Digital channel

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP short name	Programming
46.1	1080i	16:9	WGCL-TV	Main WGCL-TV programming / CBS

WGCL-TV also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 46.1, broadcasting at 1.83 Mbit/s.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WGCL-TV shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition in the United States. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 19, using PSIP to display WGCL-TV's virtual channel as 46. Although the DTV Delay Act extended the mandatory shutdown of analog television until June 12, WGCL-TV applied to the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to shut down the analog signal on the original deadline of February 17. However, the station did not appear on the FCC list of such stations, which was released on February 11 (WATC (digital channel 57) and WGTV (digital channel 8) were the other local stations on this list). The station applied to be an "analog nightlight" station, ending its regular programming on June 12 as required by law, but continuing to broadcast information regarding the digital transition for an additional two weeks until June 26.

WGCL-DT 46.2 "March Madness" test card.

After this, WYGA-CA may be allowed to increase its analog low-power signal on adjacent channel 45, as it was forced from channel 55 by MediaFLO, and has been operating on special temporary authority at very low power to protect adjacent-channel WGCL from signal interference. WSB-TV 39 (2.x) may be also allowed to begin transmitting a co-channel digital fill-in translator from south of Gainesville. Both are pending FCC approval of their applications, and WSB also filed for an STA to begin as soon as possible after WGCL ended analog transmissions.

Subchannels

WGCL-TV has multiplexed additional digital subchannels on its over-the-air transmitter during the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship period during select days and time periods in March. This is done in order to broadcast several basketball games in progress simultaneously carried by CBS Sports. The subchannels, which can number as many as three, have a typical video resolution of 480i at 4:3 aspect ratio. In March 2009, only one subchannel (46.2, labeled WGCLDT2) was used. Since then, no subchannels have been needed because the additional games in progress are now broadcast on TBS and TNT due to a deal between CBS, the NCAA and Turner Broadcasting.

News operation

WGCL presently broadcasts a total of 34½ hours of local newscasts each week (with six hours on weekdays, two hours on Saturdays and 1½ hours on Sundays). The station does not currently maintain a sports department. As a CBS affiliate, WGCL has struggled against other Atlanta area television stations in the ratings, usually ranking fourth behind WSB-TV, WAGA and WXIA-TV; as such, WGCL has been one of CBS' weaker affiliates throughout its affiliation with the network, despite the station's status as CBS' largest affiliate (in contrast, WAGA was one of CBS' strongest affiliates, prior to joining Fox in 1994). However since 2011, the station has traded third and fourth place in the ratings with WXIA-TV.

As an independent station, Tribune Broadcasting started a news department for the station. On January 16, 1989, WGNX began producing a nightly primetime newscast at 10 p.m. Debuting as the Channel 46 News at Ten, it was the only primetime newscast in the Atlanta market at the time. When the station became a network affiliate after joining CBS on December 11, 1994, the station began airing more newscasts; it added newscasts weekdays at noon and weeknights at 6 and 7:30 p.m. (the latter of which was later cancelled), and the 10 p.m. newscast was moved back one hour to 11 p.m. In later years, the station would also debut a weekday morning newscast, a late afternoon newscast at 4 p.m. and a short-lived 5 p.m. newscast,.

On January 11, 2009, WGCL became the third station (behind WSB-TV and WXIA-TV) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. With the switch to HD, WGCL has rebranded back to "CBS Atlanta", which it used in 1999 and 2002. In October 2009, WGCL decided to shut down its sports department in a cost-cutting decision, resulting in the layoffs of sports anchors Gil Tyree and Mark Harmon. The station then entered into an agreement with sports talk radio station WQXI (790 AM) to provide sports coverage. On August 30, 2010, WGCL debuted an hour-long weeknight newscast at 5 p.m., effectively creating a 2½ hour local news block from 4 to 6:30 p.m. newscast. That fall, WGCL discontinued its noon newscast and added an additional weekday morning newscast from 9 to 10 a.m. On September 29, 2012, WGCL debuted its first weekend morning newscasts as an hour-long program on Saturdays and a half-hour program on Sunday mornings.

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• Channel 46 News at Ten (1989–1994)
• WGNX News (1994–1999)
• CBS Atlanta News (1999–2000, 2002–2003 and 2009–present)
• Clear News (2000–2002)
• CBS 46 News (2003–2009)

Station slogans

• "Giving Atlanta a Choice!" (1985–1989)
• "Georgia's News at Ten" (1989–1994)
• "Working to Be Your New Choice" (1997–1999)
• "News That Clearly Matters" (2000–2002)
• "Atlanta's NewsChannel" (2003–2004)
• "Breaking News. Breaking Stories." (2004–2005)
• "We Ask the Tough Questions" (2008–present)

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On-air staff

Current on-air news staff

Anchors

• Katie Brace - weekend evenings; also weekday reporter
• Jocelyn Connell - weekend mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta
• Stephany Fisher - weeknights at 4, 5, 6 and 11 p.m.; also health reporter
• Tracye Hutchins - weekday mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta (5-7 and 9-10 a.m.)
• Brandon Rudat - weekday mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta (5–7 and 9–10 a.m.), also fill in anchor.
• Bernard Watson - interim anchor; weeknights at 5 p.m., also general assignment reporter and fill-in anchor
• JaQuitta Williams - weeknights at 4 and 6 p.m.; also reporter

Storm Tracker Weather Team

• Markina Brown (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weekdays at 4, and weeknights at 5, 6 and 11 p.m.
• Cris Martinez (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval; member, NWA) - meteorologist/severe weather specialist; weekdays at 4 and weeknights at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. also weekend mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta and weekend evenings.
• Jennifer Valdez (member, NWA) - meteorologist; weekday mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta (5–7 a.m.) and (9–10 a.m.)
• Paul Ossmann (NWA Seal of Approval) - meteorologist; weekday mornings on Better Mornings Atlanta (5–7 a.m.) and (9–10 a.m.)
• Rodney Harris - fill-in meteorologist and weather producer

Reporters

• Craig Bell - general assignment reporter
• Greg Digarndo - general assignment reporter
• Veronica Griffin - general assignment reporter
• Christopher King - general assignment reporter
• Tony McNary - general assignment reporter
• Sonia Moghe - general assignment reporter
• Rebekka Schramm - weekday morning reporter
• Renée Starzyk - general assignment reporter
• Will Frampton - weekday morning reporter

CBS Atlanta Investigates

• Jeff Chirico - investigative reporter
• Jennifer Mayerle - investigative reporter; also general assignment reporter
• Adam Murphy - consumer investigative reporter; also general assignment reporter
• Mike Paluska - investigative reporter; also general assignment reporter
• Harry "Pot Hole" Samler - investigative reporter

Former on-air staff

• John Doyle - weathercaster (1997–2005, retired from broadcasting; currently doing voice-overs, working part-time as bailiff at the Gwinnett County Courthouse)
• Tony Harris - weeknight anchor (2003–2004, now on-air at Al Jazeera)
• Dagmar Midcap - evening weather anchor/reporter (2007–2010, now at KNSD-TV/San Diego)
• Toni Neal - traffic reporter (2004)
• Chau Nguyen - general assignment reporter (2000–2003)
• Jane Robelot - weeknight anchor (1999–2003, now reporter/substitute anchor at WYFF-TV/Greenville, South Carolina)

External links

• WGCL-TV homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WGCL
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WGCL-TV