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WATL (RF channel 25, virtual channel 36) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, USA affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by the Gannett Company and is a sister station to WXIA-TV (channel 11), Atlanta's NBC affiliate. WATL's callsign refers to ATLanta, the station's city of license, along with the airport code for Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Television studios and offices are shared with WXIA and are located at One Monroe Place on the north end of midtown Atlanta. It shares a broadcast tower with several other local stations near North Druid Hills, just northeast of the city. WATL is one of a handful of stations to have been affiliated with both News Corporation-owned networks, Fox and MyNetworkTV. The station can also be seen on Comcast channel 13 and HD channel 813.

History

Channel 36 began operation on September 13, 1954 as WQXI-TV. The station, owned by UHF pioneer Robert Rounsaville, was one of about 150 UHF stations to give the new high-band spectrum a try. The TV station, which had one camera, shared a house in the northeast Atlanta area of Buckhead with WQXI radio. The radio station constantly promoted its TV sister station in an effort to build an audience. However, UHF converters were rare prior to the All-Channel Receiver Act, and programming (largely old movies, a Saturday-evening barn dance, and shots of the radio DJ spinning records) was nearly unwatchable. The station signed off after less than nine months on the air on March 13, 1955.

Channel 36 would remain dark until the station was relaunched on September 8, 1969 as WATL-TV, under the ownership of U.S. Communications, a broadcaster owned by Daniel H. Overmyer. Overmyer planned on signing-on the station a few years earlier as WBMO-TV as one of the owned and operated stations of the new Overmyer Network, which folded after a month on the air in 1967. This incarnation of WATL lasted only until March 10, 1971 and channel 36 went dark again. For about a week before it signed off, the station ran :30 second announcements with a photograph of its studios on an art card, announcing that it would soon cease operations, ending with the words "Thank You" on screen.

In a newspaper article reporting on the station's demise, it was reported that U.S. Communications spent $1 million on programming the first year, including Lost in Space and a block of dinnertime game shows. Ted Turner's WTCG (channel 17, later WTBS and now WPCH-TV) which had been operating a bit longer, "didn't spend a million dollars on anything" and survived. WATL was also the first station in the country to run music videos all weekend, on a show called The Now Explosion. Turner's first move after acquiring WTCG, the UHF station that would serve as the foundation of his media empire, was to take The Now Explosion from WATL.

On July 5, 1976, Don Kennedy of The Popeye Club (a long-running Atlanta kids TV show on WSB-TV) returned channel 36 to the air for good. WATL-TV had a general entertainment format typical of non-network stations, such as public domain movies, financial news, low-budget local shows, syndicated reruns and cartoons, and a blend of CBS, NBC and ABC shows pre-empted from WAGA-TV, WSB-TV and WXIA-TV, respectively. In a common practice among independent stations at the time, the station aired subscription television in the early evening from the late 1970s to about 1981.

ATL Acquisitions Group bought the station in the early 1980s. The subscription TV format moved to new sign-on WVEU (channel 69, now WUPA) in 1982. At that time, most daytime programming now came from the Financial News Network (now part of CNBC). In 1984, the station was sold again, this time to Outlet Communications. By that time, WATL was a general entertainment independent once again. WATL became one of the charter affiliates of the newly-launched Fox Broadcasting Company in October 1986.

The "musical chairs" of ownership continued in 1989, as Outlet sold WATL, along with WXIN in Indianapolis, to Chase Broadcasting. In 1992, WATL and WXIN were included in Chase's merger with Renaissance Broadcasting. Less than a year later, WATL was sold to Fox outright and channel 36 became a Fox owned-and-operated station, and the first network-owned station in Atlanta, although for only two years. (Renaissance would trade then-new sister station KDVR in Denver to Fox in exchange for KDAF in Dallas two years later.) Fox was in the planning stages for a news operation at the station, and WATL had even gone as far as hiring a news director. However, on May 22, 1994, New World Communications announced an affiliation agreement with Fox, months after the network won the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference of the National Football League. In this deal, most of New World's stations, including WAGA, would switch over to the Fox network. As a result, Fox cancelled the plans for a newscast on WATL and put the station up for sale.

Finding itself about to lose Fox programming, WATL was then approached with an affiliation offer from CBS, which was losing WAGA as an affiliate. However WATL was not interested. At that point, it almost seemed likely that WATL would join the soon-to-launch United Paramount Network in early 1995. Rival station WGNX (channel 46, now WGCL-TV), then owned by Tribune Broadcasting was already slated to join the WB Television Network and had also turned CBS down, forcing CBS to make a deal to buy WVEU. Eventually, however, Tribune agreed to let WGNX join CBS, and WVEU became the UPN affiliate.

Fox programming moved from WATL to WAGA on December 10, 1994. Not long after that, Fox subsequently sold the station to Qwest Broadcasting, a company partially owned by musician Quincy Jones and Tribune Broadcasting. (Fox would not be without an owned-and-operated station in Atlanta for long, as they bought out New World in late 1996.) Although it lost the Fox affiliation, WATL kept the Fox Kids programming, because WAGA was not interested in it. The station also affiliated with the WB in January 1995. (Since the sale to Qwest Broadcasting would not be finalized until December 14, 1995, WATL became a WB affiliate owned by Fox, a condition which lasted nearly a year.) WATL continued to air Fox Kids until 1999, when it moved to WHOT (channel 34, now WUVG). That year, Tribune sold WGNX to the Meredith Corporation and purchased WATL outright in February 2000. Because Tribune owned a stake in the WB, WATL could have been considered to be a WB owned-and-operated station.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom at the end of 2005) and Warner Bros. Entertainment (the Time Warner division that operates the WB) announced plans to dissolve WB and UPN, combining them to launch The CW Television Network in September 2006. As part of this joint venture, it was announced that CBS-owned WUPA will become the CW's Atlanta affiliate. It would not have been an upset had WATL been chosen instead, however. CW officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations, and Atlanta was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN stations were both relatively strong.

WATL was originally slated to revert to independent status, but on May 15, 2006, Tribune announced that WATL would be joining MyNetworkTV, which was formed by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, 20th Television.

On June 5, 2006, Tribune announced that they would sell WATL to the Gannett Company, the owners of Atlanta's NBC affiliate WXIA-TV, for $180 million. The sale was completed on August 7, 2006, giving Gannett the first television duopoly in Atlanta. ([1]) Like most duopolies consisting of a "Big Four" affiliate and a minor network affiliate, WATL may take up responsibility as an alternate NBC affiliate by airing programs when WXIA cannot such as in a news-related emergency. WATL aired Atlanta Falcons preseason games in August 2008 while its sister station was committed to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Channel 36 introduced its new on-air branding, MyAtlTV on August 20, 2006, ahead of the September 5 debut of My Network TV (and about a month before the WB's final night on the air). Along with the new network, WATL now airs a WXIA-produced 10 p.m. weeknight HDTV newscast, titled 11Alive News at 10 (formerly My 11Alive News at 10). This half-hour competes with the first half of WAGA TV 5's newscast at that time, while still allowing WXIA to air NBC prime time at that hour.

Prior to the acquisition by Gannett, WATL's studios were located at One Monroe Place. When the station was acquired, WXIA management decided to move WXIA to the Monroe Place studios. During construction, WATL's studios were located with WXIA at 1611 West Peachtree Street, behind competitor WSB.

The station now airs Fox's Saturday morning block, Weekend Marketplace (which WAGA does not air), from 7-9am. Other programs broadcast include popular nationally-syndicated game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, which is rare for a MyNetworkTV affiliate. Because WATL airs these two shows, it does not air any sitcom repeats until 10:30 P.M.

Digital television

The station's permanent digital channel 25 is now airing three virtual channels:

Channel Label Video Aspect Programming
36.1 WATL-DT 1080i 16:9 Main WATL programming / MyNetworkTV
36.2 Bounce 480i 4:3 Bounce TV
36.3 Sports Universal Sports
(To be Antenna TV once Universal Sports becomes cable only.)[2][3]

As with the same arrangement with sister stations KUSA and KTVD in Denver, WATL airs their main channel in upscaled 1080i rather than MyNetworkTV's default 720p format for operational reasons, to present syndicated programming without downscaling to the latter format, and to accommodate any NBC programming airing on WATL due to local pre-emption on WXIA.

WATL previously aired The Tube on 36.2, but after that network ceased, the digital subchannel was deleted. The 11Alive Weather Information Zone was moved from channel 11.2 on WXIA in early December 2010, possibly in preparation for adding another network to that station. (The lower bitrate of the low-motion weather graphics would leave more for mobile datacasting to be done on WATL than adding the new network to WATL.) In 2011, Atlanta-based Bounce TV began airing on September 26 (the network's first day in operation), taking the Weather Information Zone off the air for two weeks until mid October, when it was bounced back to channel 11.2 on WXIA. By coincidence, the first program aired by Bounce on its new flagship station in place of the WIZ was the movie The Wiz.

In late October 2011, Universal Sports was added as channel 36.3. The network also airs on WXIA-TV channel 11.3 currently, and the network is being removed from broadcast distribution at the end of 2011 due NBC's purchase by cable TV giant Comcast, to prevent competition with both Universal Sports and Versus by over-the-air TV. However this is likely only to provide technical tests over 36.3's channel, as Tribune Broadcasting's Antenna TV classic television network has stated on their website that 36.3 will be taking the market's affiliation for the network on a date to be announced, likely when Universal Sports is removed on December 31, 2011 [3].

Mobile television

At the NAB convention in April 2009, the Open Mobile Video Coalition announced that WATL would be one of the first stations to test-out new ATSC-M/H technology for mobile DTV, expected to be on the air by the end of 2009.[4] It is also carrying the mobile DTV channels for WXIA, as that station is already at its maximum bitrate carrying three channels, and because it is on VHF, while WATL's UHF channel is better suited to mobile communications.

WATL TV and its sister station, WXIA-TV have plans for mobile DTV simulcasts of their first subchannels (36.1 and 11.1 respectively), but have not yet[when?] begun transmissions.[5][6]

Channel 36 signed on as WQXI-TV in 1954. The callsign was used on channel 11 from 1968 to 1974. Today, channels 11 and 36 are owned by the same company, Gannett.

Station timeline

  • September 1954: channel 36 signs on as WQXI-TV
  • 1955: WQXI-TV signs off
  • 1969: channel 36 returns to the air, for the second time, as WATL-TV
  • 1971: WATL-TV signs off [citation needed]
  • July 1976: channel 36 is reactivated, for the third time, retaining the WATL call letters
  • October 1986: becomes a charter Fox network station, later adopted the branding "Fox 36"
  • December 1994: reverted back to independent status as "WATL 36" after WAGA-TV (channel 5) became Fox's new Atlanta affiliate
  • January 1995: becomes a WB affiliate as "WB 36"
  • 2004: adopts the branding "WATL, Atlanta's WB"
  • May 2006: WATL is announced as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV
  • June 2006: WATL debuted The Tube on its second digital subchannel (36.2)
  • August 2006: sale of WATL from Tribune to Gannett, announced in June is completed; adopts the branding "MyAtlTV" (pronounced "my A T L T V")
  • September 2006: WATL drops its WB affiliation and becomes a MyNetworkTV affiliate; sister station WXIA-TV begins producing a 10 p.m. newscast
  • December 2010: WIZ joins WATL on 36.2, leaving 11.2 on WXIA
  • September 2011: Bounce TV joins WATL

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

  • My 11Alive News (2006–2008)
  • 11Alive News on MyAtlTV (2008)
  • 11Alive News at 10 (2008–present)

Anchors

Weeknights

  • Jeff Hullinger - weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
  • Melissa Long - weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
  • Mike Francis (AMS and NWA Seals of Approval) - chief meteorologist; weeknights at 10:00 p.m.
  • Fred Kalil - sports director; weeknights at 10:00 p.m.

Weekends

  • Keith Whitney - weekends at 10:00 p.m.
  • Chris Holcomb (AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Seal of Approval) - meteorologist,Weekends at 10:00 p.m.
  • Sam Crenshaw - sports anchor; Weekends at 10:00 p.m.


Station slogans

  • Atlanta's Destination Station (2006–present)

References

  1. ^ "Gannett completes the acquisition of WATL-TV Channel 36 in Atlanta". Gannett.com. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
  2. ^ Universal Sports Dropping Multicast Outlets, TVNewsCheck, September 12, 2011.
  3. ^ a b "Antenna TV Affiliation Map". Retrieved 3 December 2011.
  4. ^ "OMVC Will Showcase Mobile DTV in D.C." wirelessandmobilenews.com. 2009-04-20. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  5. ^ http://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atscmph
  6. ^ http://www.mdtvsignalmap.com/
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