WLBT

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WLBT
Jackson, Mississippi
Branding	WLBT-3, WLBT News
Slogan	Top Story, Total Coverage, True Commitment.
Channels	3 (VHF) analog, 9 (VHF) digital
Affiliations	NBC
Owner	Raycom Media
Founded	December 19, 1953 (current license dates from June 1971
Call letters meaning	W Lamar Broadcast Television (Former owner)
Former callsigns	WJBT (1953-54)
Former affiliations	ABC (secondary, 1953-70)
Transmitter Power	100.0 kW (analog) 7 kW (digital)
Height	624 m (analog) 393 m (digital)
Website	WLBT.COM

WLBT (analog channel 3; digital channel 9) is the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi.

The station was founded on December 19, 1953 as WJBT by Lamar Life Insurance Company. It is Mississippi's third oldest television station (behind WJTV in Jackson and WTOK-TV in Meridian ), and the second-oldest in Jackson. A few weeks later, it was renamed WLBT, which stands for Lamar Broadcasting Television. The old calls sounded too close to WJTV. Its transmitter is located near Raymond, Mississippi.

It has always been an NBC affiliate, though it shared ABC with WJTV until WAPT signed on in 1970. For many years, it operated a semi-satellite in Meridian, WLBM; that station is now a stand-alone station, WGBC.

Contents 1 Segregationist history 2 WLBT today 3 Logos 4 Trivia 5 Tower Tragedy 6 Famous Outages 7 Current News Staff 8 See also 9 Lafayette, LA DMA coverage 10 External links

[edit] Segregationist history

The station attained significant notoriety for its aggressive support of segregation in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. Lamar had close ties to the state's white political and business elite, as well as with segregationist groups, such as the White Citizens' Council and the John Birch Society. It often coordinated opposition to civil rights with these groups. WLBT reportedly went as far as to display segregationist literature in the lobby of its studios in downtown Jackson.

For the most part, the station ignored the Civil Rights Movement, cutting out coverage of it from the NBC News feed (largely by pretending that technical problems were the cause of interruptions). It also pre-empted NBC programs that even mildly referred to racial justice or featured African American actors prominently. At the same time, it provided a platform on its local newscasts and public affairs programs for individuals advocating resistance to efforts by the Federal government to enable African Americans to vote and gain access to basic amenities such as public schools. The station even sold airtime to the Ku Klux Klan. In all truth, WLBT generally did not acknowledge that African Americans even existed, even though African-Americans make up 35% of the population in central Mississippi.

Many television stations in the South often felt chagrin at network coverage of the Civil Rights movement. For instance, WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama switched its affiliation from CBS to ABC in part because CBS News had become increasingly supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. However, WLBT went farther than any other Southern station to oppose civil rights.

Over the years, civil rights groups and the United Church of Christ (represented locally by the Woodworth Chapel at nearby Tougaloo College) sent numerous petitions to the Federal Communications Commission to complain of WLBT's flagrant bias. The FCC issued numerous warnings to Lamar, but those went unheeded. The FCC finally lost patience in 1969, and stripped Lamar of the WLBT license. Lamar appealed, but lost in 1971. That June, control of the station was given to a bi-racial foundation called Communications Improvement, Inc. The group promised to make the station a beacon of tolerance. While some WLBT employees were retained, a new group of managers, including some of the first African American television executives in the South, recreated the station as a far more neutral news source.

To this day, WLBT remains one of only two television stations that has ever lost its license for violating FCC regulations on fairness. The other station was WJIM-TV in Lansing, Michigan (now WLNS-TV). The case is widely noted in communications textbooks.

[edit] WLBT today

Ironically, since the 1970s, WLBT's news department has been quite aggressive. For instance, it exposed the activities of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the arm of 1960s governor Ross Barnett to suppress Civil Rights activity in the state.

On January 9, 1980, Communications Improvement sold WLBT to TV-3, Inc., a group of five companies who had competed for the license. In 1984, Frank Melton (who is now mayor of Jackson) formed Civic Communcations and bought WLBT. Under his watch, the station rose to first place in the ratings. WLBT still leads the Jackson ratings today, although WJTV and WAPT have closed the gap in recent years.

In 2002, Melton sold the station to Liberty Corporation, who in turn merged with Raycom Media in 2006.

[edit] Logos

WLBT logo, 1950s	WLBT logo, 1960s	WLBT logo, 1976	WLBT logo, early 1980s
WLBT logo during the early part of this decade	The current WLBT logo

[edit] Trivia

Current 6 pm and 10 pm anchors Maggie Wade and Howard Ballou comprise the only African-American news anchor team on a weekday local newscast in the United States.

[edit] Tower Tragedy

On Thursday, October 23, 1997, three Canadian men from Canada's LeBlanc & Royal were preparing to replace the guy wires of WLBT's 1,999-foot transmission tower near Raymond when the tower collapsed, killing them all. The workers were at the 1,500-foot level and held on to the tower as it fell. [1]

The tower's collapse knocked WLBT and the local PBS/Mississippi ETV Network affiliate WMPN off the air for several hours. WLBT was able to resume broadcasting on a 100-foot secondary tower, which only reached about half of its normal viewing area until a new 2,000-foot tower was completed in 1999.

[edit] Famous Outages

On May 6, 2004 at approximately 8:00 p.m. EST, a car hit the affiliate headquarters, taking out the signal for the entirety of the final episode of Friends. The station rebroadcast the episode later in the week.

[edit] Current News Staff

Anchors

• Roslyn Anderson - weekends
• Howard Ballou - 6 and 10 p.m. weekdays
• Stephanie Bell Flynt - noon
• Bert Case - noon and 5 p.m.
• Jack Hobbs - mornings
• Rob Jay - sports director, weekdays
• Cheryl Lasseter - weekend mornings
• Dawn Russell - mornings
• Chuck Stinson - sports, weekends
• Wilson Stribling - mornings; "Midday Mississippi"
• Scott Vlahon - sports reporter/anchor
• Maggie Wade - weekday evenings

Meteorologists

• Barbie Bassett - chief meteorologist, weekday evenings
• Joanna Hancock - weekends
• Eric Law - weekends
• Paul Williams - weekday mornings and at noon

Reporters

• Walt Grayson
• Andrew Hasbun
• David Kenney
• Wendy Suares
• Marsha Thompson

[edit] See also

• Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

[edit] Lafayette, LA DMA coverage

Satellite television provider DirecTV provides this stations signal to subscribers residing in the Lafayette, LA DMA as the NBC station for this market.

[edit] External links

• WLBT 3
• On the Front Lines: Television and African-American Issues From the Museum of Television & Radio; includes info on WLBT in the 1960s
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WLBT