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WGCL-TV 46 is the CBS television station serving the metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia area. Its city of license is Atlanta and the station is owned by Meredith Corporation. Currently it is the largest of any "Big Three" affiliates (ABC, CBS or NBC) on UHF, and the largest CBS affiliate not owned and operated by the network. In the few areas of the eastern United States where viewers cannot receive CBS programs over the air, WGCL is available to Dish Network customers through National Programming Service.

The station transmits from the "Richland" site near North Druid Hills, on analog from the west tower and digital from the east tower, along with several other stations. The station's digital TV signal on channel 19 datacasts TV Guide On Screen for the area.

History

Channel 46 first went on the air on June 6, 1971. It was originally owned by the Continental Broadcasting Network, an arm of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. Its original calls were WHAE-TV, which stood for "Heaven And Earth." It originally was programmed for an eight-hour broadcast day. It also had a low-budget lineup consisting of a few hours of general entertainment and another few hours of religious shows per day. It ran only religious programming on Sundays.

By 1976, the station had expanded to a 20-hour broadcast day, airing cartoons, classic sitcoms, family dramas, westerns, and religious programming (including The 700 Club twice a day) on weekdays. Children's programming, westerns and movies were shown on Saturdays and the station continued to air strictly religious programming on Sundays until the fall of 1980. At that time, it began to run general entertainment programming during the afternoon. In 1977, it changed calls to WANX-TV, which stood for "Atlanta IN Christ (X)." It also began offering more mainstream programming. However, it didn't air any programming that would offend fundamentalist/Pentecostal sensibilities.

The station was bought by Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting in 1984. Tribune changed its call letters once again, this time to WGNX, named after then-sister station in Chicago WGN-TV: it took WGN, and added an X from the previous callsign (basically it was WGN + WANX). The 700 Club was now only broadcast once a day, before being dropped altogether until 2007, when WGCL once again broadcast the show. The station continued to air a similar entertainment lineup with newer shows being added over the years, especially shows that it would not have aired under CBN ownership. In 1989, WGNX started its first ever newscast, Channel 46 News at Ten, a seven-night-a-week, 10–11 p.m. newscast. When Tribune partnered with Time Warner to form the new WB Network, WGNX was slated to become the new network's Atlanta affiliate when that network launched in January 1995.

Those plans came to a halt on May 22, 1994, however. On that day, New World Communications announced an affiliation agreement with the Fox Broadcasting Company, months after Fox won the broadcast rights to NFC football games. This resulted in most of its stations set to become Fox affiliates. One of the stations due to switch was Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate, WAGA-TV. CBS needed to find a new affiliate, but neither WGNX nor Atlanta's original Fox affiliate, WATL, were interested at first. Fearing it would have no affiliate in Atlanta, CBS made a deal to buy WVEU, a low-rated station on channel 69 with the weakest signal of Atlanta's full-power stations in October 1994. Around the same time that the WB launched, another new network, the United Paramount Network (UPN), co-owned by Paramount Pictures/Viacom and Chris-Craft Industries, was set to launch, and with all the other events going on, WATL would have most likely become the UPN affiliate for Atlanta. However, CBS still wanted to affiliate with a station that people were more familiar with (and that had a functioning news department). For several months, it continued to negotiate with Tribune, who finally relented in November and allowed WGNX to become a CBS affiliate.

This move left WGNX with cartoons and sitcoms that it would no longer have time to air as a CBS affiliate, so it sold some of its syndicated programming to WVEU, which became the UPN affiliate (while WATL joined the WB), and was later sold to Viacom, which changed its calls to WUPA. As a CBS station, WGNX moved the 10 p.m. newscast to 11 p.m. and added newscasts at Noon (12 p.m.) and 6 p.m., as well as a short-lived 7:30 p.m. newscast, and more syndicated talk and reality shows. WGCL would add on a short-lived 5 p.m. newscast, a morning newscast, and a 4 p.m. newscast as well.

Tribune began to manage the station in tandem with WATL in 1996 under a local marketing agreement. In 1998, Tribune swapped WGNX to Meredith Corporation in a three-way deal which saw Tribune acquire KCPQ in Seattle from Kelly Broadcasting; that deal allowed Tribune to buy WATL outright the next year.

The station changed its calls to WGCL-TV in 2000 to reflect its new branding tagline, We're Georgia's CLear TV, along with "Clear News", a soft news concept. A few months later, WGCL was "CBS Atlanta" again, then two years later readopted the "CBS 46" moniker.

On June 20, 2007, WGCL's website underwent a redesign as part of a partnership between Meredith Corporation and Internet Broadcasting, following the successful testing of the websites of five of its sister stations, which had joined Internet Broadcasting the year before. WGCL's website was the sixth Meredith station website to switch from WorldNow to Internet Broadcasting.

In March 2009, Meredith announced that WGCL would begin handling the master control operations of WSMV-TV 4 in Nashville, Tennessee and WHNS TV 21 in Greenville, South Carolina. The new hub operation is scheduled to begin operations by mid-summer 2009. A similar hub is planned at sister station KPHO-TV in Phoenix, Arizona to possibly handle stations in Portland, Oregon and Las Vegas, Nevada. [1]

Digital transition

Although the DTV Delay Act extended the mandatory shutdown of analog television until June 12, WGCL-TV applied to the FCC to end its transmissions on February 17, the original deadline. However, the station does not appear on the FCC list of such stations, which was released on February 11. (WATC TV 57 and WGTV TV 8 are the other local stations on this list.) Since then, the station has run crawls that indicate that it will switch on June 12.

After the analog shutdown, WGCL will permanently continue digital TV broadcasts on its current pre-transition channel number 19, using PSIP to display WGCL-TV's virtual channel as 46.1.

File:MMMC46-2.PNG

WGCL-DT 46.2 "March Madness" test card.

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.

High-definition

On Sunday January 11, 2009, WGCL became the third station (behind WSB-TV 2 and WXIA-TV 11) to broadcast TV news in high definition. With the switch to HD, WGCL has rebranded back to CBS Atlanta, which they used in 1999 and 2002. Like most CBS stations, it transmits in 1080i mode.

Station timeline

File:WGCL.jpg

WGCL's former logo

• 1971: WHAE-TV as an independent general entertainment/religious station owned by CBN
• 1977: Callsign change to WANX-TV
• 1984: Sold to Tribune becoming WGNX
• 1989: WGNX begins a local news broadcast
• 1994: Switched to CBS (previously on WAGA-TV 5)
• 1995: Became known as "WGNX CBS46"
• 1999: Meredith closes on purchase of station, renamed "CBS Atlanta"
• 2000: Callsign change to WGCL-TV renamed "Clear TV"
• 2002: Renamed "CBS Atlanta" again
• 2003: Renamed "CBS46" again
• 2009: Renamed "CBS Atlanta" yet again

Current news personalities

Anchors

• Mike Brooks, Better Mornings Atlanta anchor/reporter
• Stephany Fisher, 4, 6, and 11 PM anchor/reporter
• Bill Gaines, 4, 6, and 11 p.m. anchor/reporter
• Tracye Hutchins, Better Mornings Atlanta anchor/reporter
• Danielle Knox, weekend/evening anchor/reporter
• Helen Neill, noon anchor/reporter

Reporters

• Chris Adams, "Sky Eye" Pilot/Reporter
• Corrina Allen, Better Mornings Atlanta lifestyle/entertainment reporter
• Kim Fettig, Investigative Reporter
• Christopher King, General Assignment Reporter
• Michelle Marsh, General Assignment Reporter
• Joanna Massee, General Assignment Reporter
• Jennifer Mayerle, General Assignment Reporter
• Tony McNary, General Assignment Reporter
• Mike Moore, General Assignment Reporter
• Adam Murphy, Consumer Investigative Reporter
• Sarah Parker, General Assignment Reporter
• Wendy Saltzman, Investigative Reporter
• Harry Samler, General Assignment Reporter
• Rebekka Schramm, General Assignment Reporter
• Renée Starzyk, General Assignment Reporter
• Lesley Tanner, General Assignment Reporter/Photographer

Weather

• Laura Huckabee, Senior/Weekends Meteorologist
• Greg Majewski, Weather producer/Substitute meteorologist
• Dagmar Midcap, Chief Weather Presenter, 4, 6, and 11PM weekdays
• Jennifer Valdez, Better Mornings/Noon Meteorologist/Traffic Reporter

Sports

• Gil Tyree, Sports Director/Reporter
• Corey Anderson, Sports Producer/Reporter
• Mark Harmon, Weekend Sports Anchor/Reporter

Former personalities

• Denise Agent, General assignment reporter (1989–?, last seen at WAAY-TV)
• Andrea Arceneaux Coleman, anchor and reporter (1999–2002, Founding Editor/CEO of Southwest Atlanta Magazine)
• Tylar Bacome, reporter (2003-2005)
• Patrick Boggs, (1981–?) Now newscaster at SRN Radio News.
• Joy Barge, Traffic reporter (1999–2001; 2002–2004)
• Shane Butler, weathercaster (?–1997, now a meteorologist at WSET-TV)
• Cari Champion, weekend anchor and reporter (2006-2008)
• Kevin Cokely, anchor (1988-?)
• Steve Dawson, anchor and reporter (?, now at WHBQ-TV)
• Ryan Deal, General assignment reporter (2003-2008)
• Tiffani Diaz Reynolds, General assignment reporter (?–2005, now at WSB-TV)
• John Doyle, weathercaster (1997–2005, retired from broadcasting; currently doing voice-overs, working part-time as balliff at the Gwinnett County Courthouse)
• Sheldon Fox, Traffic reporter (2004–2006, now at WGNO-TV)
• Naki Frierson, Traffic reporter (2006, now at WSB-TV)
• Jennifer Gladstone, General assignment reporter (1999–2002, now a morning anchor at WBFF-TV)
• Leigh Green, General assignment reporter (1989–2000, deceased)
• Karyn Greer, Primary co-anchor and reporter (1989–1999, now morning/noon anchor at WXIA-TV)
• Tony Harris, 5:00, 6:00, and 11:00 anchor (2003–2004, now co-anchor of CNN Newsroom)
• Calvin Hughes, 5:00, 6:00, and 11:00 anchor (1999–2002, now a weekday morning and noon co-anchor at WPLG-TV )
• Patricia Hunte, General assignment reporter (?)
• Steve Johns, Morning and Noon anchor (1999–2002, last seen at WNCN-TV)
• Brett Martin, Better Mornings Atlanta Features Reporter
• Kristy Mazurek, General assignment reporter (2000–2003)
• John McKnight, anchor and reporter (1989–1999)
• Monica McNeal, weathercaster (2003–2004, now at CNN)
• Chris McWatt, Morning anchor (2002–2003, now host of HGTV's Weekend Warriors)
• Ray Metoyer, anchor and reporter (1994–2000, now president of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and executive producer of the Black Family Channel)
• Letitia Miele, General assignment reporter (?–2002, last seen at WHP-TV)
• Charles Molineaux, Weekend anchor and reporter (2002–2005, last seen at WAGA-TV)
• Denny Moore, weathercaster (?–2000)
• Marc Mullins, General assignment reporter (2003–2005, now at KMTR-TV)
• Kathy Murphy, Weekend anchor and reporter (?–2005)
• April Nelson, Health Reporter (1997–2005, moved to Egypt)
• Chau Nguyen, General assignment reporter (?–2003, now a reporter and Saturday morning anchor at KHOU-TV)
• Lori Nixon, General assignment reporter (2003–2004, now at KIRO-TV)
• Rich Noonan, 4:00, 6:00, and 11:00 anchor (2004–2006, now has his own video production company based in Alpharetta, Georgia)
• Gene Norman, Chief meteorologist (2000-2008, now chief meteorologist at KHOU-TV)
• Greg Pallone, General assignment reporter (2004–2005, now an anchor at WJCL-TV)
• Fred Powers, General assignment reporter (1997–2008, deceased)
• Jane Robelot, 5:00, 6:00, and 11:00 anchor (1999–2003, now a reporter and substitute anchor at WYFF-TV)
• Emily Schapmann Stroud, General assignment reporter (2000–2003, 2006)
• Gwen Scott, anchor (1988-1989)
• Marshall Seese, Meteorologist (was an on-camera meteorologist with The Weather Channel until November 2008)
• Martha Sharan, anchor and reporter (?–1999)
• Todd Shearer, Weekend anchor and reporter (1999–2003, now a consultant with the DeMoss group based in Duluth, Georgia)
• Cynné Simpson, Weeknight 6 pm co-anchor and 11 pm reporter (2004–2007, now a weekend anchor at WJLA-TV in Washington, DC.)
• LuAnn Sodano, General assignment reporter
• Chris Smith, Weekend meteorologist (2005-2008, now a meteorologist at CNN)
• Mike Stevens, Weekend anchor and reporter (?–1999, now a weeknight anchor at WEYI-TV following a brief stint with WXIA-TV)
• Steve Taylor, Sportscaster (1989–2005)
• Derek Toomey, General assignment reporter (?–2002, currently a singer/songwriter residing in the Atlanta area)
• Stacey Turner, General assignment reporter (2003–2005)
• Cynthia Vail, General assignment reporter (?–2003)
• Shannon Walshe Stephens, Weekend anchor and reporter (?–1999, last seen at WSB-TV)
• John Wetherbee, weathercaster (?–2005, now a meteorologist at WTOC-TV; can be heard doing weather locally on 106.1 WNGC in Athens)
• Heather Wiggins Thompson, General assignment reporter (?–2004, last seen at WXIA-TV)
• Lori Wilson, (2002–2005, now co-host of lifestyle and entertainment show 10! on WCAU-TV)

External links

• WGCL-TV homepage
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