WGCL-TV

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WGCL-TV
Atlanta, Georgia
Branding	CBS46
Slogan	Atlanta's Channel 46
Channels	46 (UHF) analog, 19 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	Meredith Corporation
Founded	June 6, 1971
Call letters meaning	We're Georgia's CLear TV (former slogan)
Former callsigns	WHAE-TV (1971-1977) WANX-TV (1977-1984) WGNX-TV (1984-2000)
Former affiliations	Independent (1971-1994)
Transmitter Power	2340 kW/332 m(analog) 49 kW/329 m (digital)
Website	www.cbs46.com

WGCL-TV 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.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Station timeline 1.2 Logos 2 Trivia 3 Newscasts 4 Other Local Programs 5 See also 6 Transmission tower 7 External links

[edit] 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 only 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, 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. 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. 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. 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 more syndicated talk and reality shows.

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. It began calling itself "CBS Atlanta" again, then two years later readopted the "CBS46" moniker.

[edit] Station timeline

• 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-TV
• 1989: WGNX-TV begins a newscast product
• 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

[edit] Logos

WGNX logo from 1994 to 1999	WGNX logo 1999 to 2000	WGCL-TV Station ID logo from 2000 to 2001	WGCL-TV logo from 2001 to 2002
WGCL-TV logo from 2002 to 2003	WGCL-TV logo from 2003 to 2004	WGCL-TV logo from 2004-present

[edit] Trivia

• As of September 2005, Atlanta is the largest market where at least one of the "Big Three" networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) is on UHF.
• WGCL-TV is Meredith Broadcasting's largest television station based on market size.
• In mid-2006, WGCL added The 700 Club to its weekday schedule at 9AM. Its addition is somewhat ironic, considering WGCL's past ownership under CBN.

[edit] Newscasts

WGCL-TV currently airs StormTracker 46 forecasts and Instant Traffic every weekday morning from 5 - 9am.

Weekdays

• CBS46 News at Noon - NOON-12:30PM
  • Anchored by Helen Neill... and Weather with Laura Huckabee
• CBS46 News First at 4 p.m. - 4-5PM
  • Anchored by Stephany Fisher and Bill Gaines... Weather with Gene Norman... and Instant Traffic with Naki Frierson
• CBS46 News at 6 p.m. - 6-6:30PM
  • Anchored by Bill Gaines and Cynné Simpson... Weather with Gene Norman... and Sports with Gil Tyree
• CBS46 News at 11 p.m. - 11-11:35PM
  • Anchored by Stephany Fisher and Bill Gaines... Weather with Gene Norman... and Sports with Gil Tyree

Saturday

• CBS46 News at 6 p.m. - 6-6:30PM
  • Anchored by Mike Moore and Cari Champion... Weather with Chris Smith... and Sports with Mark Harmon
• CBS46 News at 11 p.m. - 11-11:35PM
  • Same as CBS 46 News at 6 p.m.

Sunday

• CBS46 News at 6:30 p.m. - 6:30-7PM
  • Anchored by Mike Moore and Cari Champion... Weather with Chris Smith... and Sports with Mark Harmon
• CBS46 News at 11 p.m. - 11-11:30PM
  • Same as CBS 46 News at 6:30 p.m.

[edit] Other Local Programs

• Sunday Sports Special - Sundays 11:30PM-MIDNIGHT
  • Hosted by Mark Harmon

Other current WGCL-TV produced shows and specials include...

• SEC Pre-Game Show, which can be seen during College Football Season
• SEC Post-Game Show, which can be seen during College Football season
• 4th Of July at Lenox Square, which can be seen every 4th of July.

Past WGCL-TV produced newscasts, shows, and specials include...

• CBS 46 News at 5:00 p.m. was cancelled in favor of the syndicated Ellen show. The 5 p.m. newscast lasted from 1999 until 2004 (Previous brandings include CBS Atlanta News at 5 p.m. and Clear News at 5 p.m.).
• CBS 46 Morning News was cancelled due to sagging ratings, and replaced with CBS News programs Up To The Minute and CBS Morning News, although local weather and traffic updates remain in place during The Early Show. The morning newscast lasted from 1999 until 2005 (Previous brandings include CBS Atlanta News This Morning, Clear News This Morning, and Good Morning Atlanta).
• Eye On Sports, which was a sports variety show that lasted from 1997 until 1999. It would later be replaced by the current Sunday Sports Special.
• CBS Atlanta News Sunday Morning, which was a Sunday morning talk show that lasted from 1999 until 2002 (Previous branding includes Clear News Sunday Morning).
• Channel 46 News at Ten, which was Atlanta's only 10 p.m. newscast, before WGCL/then WGNX was awarded CBS affiliation (when rival station WAGA was awarded FOX affiliation). The 10 p.m. newscast began when the station's news department was incepted in 1989. The newscast ended in 1994, and was replaced by the current Noon, 6 p.m., and 11 p.m. newscasts.
• Channel 46 News at Seven, which was Atlanta's first 7 p.m. newscast that lasted from 1993 until 1996.

[edit] See also

• WGCL-TV personalities

[edit] Transmission tower

WGCL is on the same tower, north of Druid Hills, with:

• W04DB (4)
• W24AL (24)
• WATL (36/25)

The tower also contains construction permits for:

• WIRE-CA (40)
• WUVG-TV (digital 48 only)
• WTBS (digital 20, analog backup 17).

FM stations on the same tower are: WNNX (99.7, newly moved from the WTBS TV main analog tower) and permits for WRFG (89.3) and WKHX-FM (101.5) as well as an application for a broadcast translator from Immanuel Broadcasing Network on 101.9.

Another tower about 120 meters (400 feet) to the west holds the existing WKHX-FM, WLTM (94.9) and WKLS (96.1), and applications for translators on 89.7 and 88.9 from WAY-FM Media Group.

[edit] External links

• WGCL-TV (CBS 46) homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WGCL