WMC-TV
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WMC-TV (channel 5) is a television station in
History
The station first signed on the air on November 13, 1948, as WMCT, initially transmitting on VHF channel 4. WMCT was also the first television station in the state of Tennessee. This first transmission coincided with being the first football game telecast in Tennessee—the tenth meeting at
Since at least the 1950s, WMC-TV's logo has included an illustration of a riverboat, a symbol of the Mississippi River region which the station serves. Since that time, its newscasts have opened with a riverboat whistle; its former AM sister used a whistle as its sounder from the 1930s to the 1990s. The station was known as "The Showplace of the South" during the 1960s. It dropped the "T" from its callsign (simultaneously tacking on the "-TV" suffix to it) on January 1, 1967 (the co-owned FM station had similarly changed its call letters from WMCF to WMC-FM in 1960). Also in 1967, it began using a "5" logo with a resemblance to the numerical typeface found on a five-dollar bill, which would be used for over two decades.
The WMC stations moved to their current location at 1960 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis in 1959 and celebrated with a broadcast hosted by comedian George Gobel. In 1960, the stations broadcast live remotes of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who both came to Memphis to campaign for the presidency. When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike that set the stage for his assassination in 1968, then-station general manager Mori Greiner established an unprecedented program called The 40% Speaks, in an effort to promote racial healing in the community. It was hosted on alternating weeks by Rev. James Lawson, a leader in the civil rights movement and proponent of nonviolent social change, and Rev. Ben Hooks, who went on to become the first Black head of the FCC and then head of the national NAACP. That show was the first time Black people had a television platform in Memphis to talk about community issues. The show evolved into Face to Face, which ran for two more decades and regularly addressed issues of race and social justice with multicultural panels and crew members.[citation needed]
After many years of solid management, Scripps sold WMC-AM-FM-TV to Atlanta businessman Bert Ellis and his new company, Ellis Communications, on July 19, 1993, for $65 million-a handsome return on Scripps' original investment in WMC radio in 1923.. All three stations use modified versions of the same logo style today.
Ellis, in turn, sold the stations to a new broadcasting group formed by the
On June 25, 2018,
Programming
Past program preemptions and deferrals
This section needs expansion with: specific preemptions. You can help by adding to it. (September 2021) |
Like many NBC affiliates from the 1960s through the 1990s, WMC-TV began preempting a handful of NBC programs, mostly a sizeable portion of the network's daytime lineup, in favor of syndicated talk shows,[16] although NBC's daytime reruns of sitcoms would often continue to air in the early morning hours (between 5 and 6 am). Although NBC had traditionally been far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, it was more than satisfied with WMC-TV, which then as now was one of NBC's strongest affiliates.
Local programming
In 1979, in an effort to build its viewership for
A popular local program on WMC-TV was
Sports programming
One of the station's first broadcasts was a
News operation
WMC-TV presently broadcasts 44 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday, and 4+1⁄2 hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). The station's newsroom is named after longtime employee Ed Greaney, who died on June 19, 2005. Greaney started working at WMCT in 1949, only two months after the station signed on and worked at channel 5 until retiring in late 2000.
Appropriately for a station founded by a newspaper, WMC-TV has a strong local news tradition. For the better part of its first four decades on the air, it was the dominant station in Memphis. However, rival WREG closed the gap in the late 1980s, and for the next two decades the two stations waged a spirited battle in the
In October 2006, WMC debuted an overhauled news set (the first set update since 1995), along with an updated graphics and music package. On July 2, 2008, WMC-TV became the first television station in the Memphis market and the second in Tennessee (behind WTVF in Nashville) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.[18]
On August 22, 2011, WMC-TV debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast, which replaced The Oprah Winfrey Show (which ended its run in May of that year) and competes against WREG's newscast in the same timeslot.[citation needed] On June 26, 2013, WMC-TV debuted an hour-long weekday morning newscast from 7–8 a.m. on its Bounce TV-affiliated second digital subchannel with a heavy emphasis on weather and traffic updates.[19] The 7–8 a.m. Bounce newscast ended in 2017. On September 10, 2018, WMC-TV expanded its weekday morning newscast with an extra half-hour starting at 4 a.m.
Notable former on-air staff
- Dave Brown – chief meteorologist, hosted Championship Wrestling (1977–2015)
- Jovita Moore – news reporter; moved to WSB-TV in Atlanta in 1998 (died in 2021)
- Lance Russell – freelance host; best known as the host of the live Championship Wrestling program on Saturday mornings (joined the station in 1977 from WHBQ-TV; died in 2017)
- Dick Williams – host of Magicland (1966–1989; died in 2020)
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
5.1 | 1080i | 16:9 |
WMC-NBC | NBC |
5.2 | 480i | Bounce | Bounce TV | |
5.3 | The365 | The365
| ||
5.4 | Oxygen | Oxygen | ||
5.5 | WMC-5 | Action News 5 Plus | ||
5.6 | This TV | This TV |
Analog-to-digital conversion
WMC-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
Out-of-market coverage
WMC-TV was historically the default NBC affiliate on cable and over-the-air in two neighboring media markets—Jackson, Tennessee and Jonesboro, Arkansas, as NBC never affiliated with any stations in either of these markets. In 2014, WNBJ-LD signed on the air as the Jackson area's own NBC affiliate. WMC-TV remains intact on the area's cable system of the Jackson Energy Authority. That system also carried Nashville's WSMV until the sign-on of WNBJ.
In late January 2015, WMC's ABC-affiliated sister station KAIT (channel 8) in Jonesboro converted their second subchannel, KAIT-DT2, into an NBC affiliate for the Jonesboro area. In addition, WMC-TV's over-the-air signal still provides city-grade coverage into both Jonesboro and Jackson. The central and southern portions of the two southernmost counties in the Missouri Bootheel can also still pick up WMC-TV's signal.[22]
References
- ^ a b c d "Licensing and Management System". enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
- ^ "Report & Order", Media Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, January 9, 2023, Retrieved January 9, 2023.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WMC-TV". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
- ^ M'Gee, Mike (November 13, 1948). "Weather Can't Stop Grid Game Telecast". The Commercial Appeal. p. 1. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ Talley, Robert (December 11, 1948). "Gala Show Tonight To Bring Television To Memphis Homes". The Commercial Appeal. p. 1. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ Talley, Robert (December 11, 1948). "The Commercial Appeal Station WMCT To Make Bow In Big 4 1/2-Hour Program". The Commercial Appeal. p. 1. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ "Require Prime Evening Time for NTA Films", Boxoffice: 13, November 10, 1956
- ^ "Scripps to sell Memphis stations for $65 million". United Press International. July 19, 1993. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
- ^ "GRAY AND RAYCOM TO COMBINE IN A $3.6 BILLION TRANSACTION". Raycom Media (Press release). June 25, 2018. Archived from the original on June 25, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ Miller, Mark K. (June 25, 2018). "Gray To Buy Raycom For $3.6 Billion". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheckMedia. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ Eggerton, John (June 25, 2018). "Gray Buying Raycom for $3.6B". Broadcasting & Cable. NewBay Media. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ Hayes, Dade (June 25, 2018). "Gray Acquiring Raycom For $3.65B, Forming No. 3 Local TV Group". Deadline Hollywood. Penske Media Corporation. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ "FCC OK with Gray/Raycom Merger", Broadcasting & Cable, December 20, 2018, Retrieved December 20, 2018.
- ^ "Gray Closes On $3.6 Billion Raycom Merger". TVNewsCheck. NewsCheckMedia. January 2, 2019. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ "Gray Completes Acquisition of Raycom Media and Related Transactions", Gray Television, January 2, 2019, Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ 1965 listing From Radio-Info Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ Newspaper Clip from www.memphiswrestlinghistory.com
- ^ "Action News 5 in High Definition". WMC-TV. July 2, 2008. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ Marszalek, Diana (July 23, 2013). "News Finds A New Home Among Diginets". TV News Check. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
- ^ "RabbitEars TV Query for WMC". RabbitEars. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
- ^ List of Digital Full-Power Stations
- ^ "New DTV Station Channel 34 Senatobia, MS. Approved Post-Transition Operation: Granted Construction Permit" (PDF). transition.fcc.gov. Retrieved September 5, 2023.