WREG-TV

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WREG-TV
Memphis, Tennessee
Branding	NewsChannel3
Slogan	On Your Side
Channels	3 (VHF) analog, 28 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	New York Times Company (sale pending [1])
Founded	January 1, 1956
Call letters meaning	Variation of original calls
Former callsigns	WREC-TV (1956-71)
Website	www.wreg.com

WREG-TV is Memphis, Tennessee's CBS affiliate, operating on channel 3. The station is owned by the New York Times Company, although it was announced on September 12, 2006, that the New York Times Company plans to sell all its stations, including WREG [2]. Its transmitter is located in Memphis.

WREG-TV first went to air on New Year's Day 1956 as WREC-TV. Owned by electrical engineer and radio dealer Hoyt Wooten along with WREC-AM 600, the station began regular broadcasts the next day. The calls stood for Wooten's radio store, the Wooten Radio-Electric Company. It took the CBS affiliation from WHBQ-TV because WREC-AM had been a CBS affiliate since 1929. Studios were located in the Hotel Peabody in downtown Memphis. Wooten had actually applied for one of the first television licenses in the country, in 1928.

For its first six years, WREC-TV was the only locally-owned station in Memphis (WHBQ-TV was owned by General Tire and WMC-TV was owned by Scripps). However, Wooten sold WREC-AM-FM-TV in 1962 to Cowles Communications. In turn, Cowles sold WREC-TV to the New York Times in 1971 and the call letters changed to WREG-TV; it later sold the radio stations to other interests. Four years later in 1975, the Times built new facilities for WREG on one of the highest points on Chickasaw Bluff, overlooking the Mississippi River.

For the past two decades, WREG has been in a television ratings war with WMC, steadily gaining in recent years and now leading the Nielsens with its morning and late evening newscasts.

The station's best-known personality, Jerry Tate, was the station's main anchor from 1975 to 2005, interrupted by a stint at WHBQ-TV in the 1980s.

[edit] Trivia

Throughout the early 1960s into the early 1980s, WREC/WREG claimed to possess the largest motion picture library of any TV station in the United States, which was evidenced in its daily (late afternoons and late nights) and weekend programming lineup at the time. The station used some of those features for theme weeks (e.g., "Godzilla Week", "John Wayne Week"), which proved to be very popular with viewers. However, like most major network affiliates, in the early 1980s channel 3 began cutting back on the heavy amount of movie airings that occupied much of its off-network schedule, a move prompted by the presence of cable, VCRs, and the emergence of then-independent competitors WPTY-TV in 1978 and WMKW (now WLMT) in 1983. WREG is one of the few CBS stations that preempts the "Saturday Early Show" in favor of a Saturday morning newscast.

[edit] External links

• NewsChannel 3
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WREG
• Blog of former WREG-TV anchor Joe Larkins

CBS Network Affiliates in the state of Tennessee
WREG 3 (Memphis) - WTVF 5 (Nashville) - WVLT 8 (Knoxville) - WJHL 11 (Kingsport) - WDEF 12 (Chattanooga)
See also: ABC, CW, Fox, i, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS and Other stations in Tennessee