| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
Jefferson-Pilot (then known as Jefferson Standard) took this station to the air on January 15, 1949 as the first television station in the Carolinas and the oldest between Richmond and Atlanta--beating Greensboro's WFMY-TV by a few weeks. Jefferson-Pilot got into Charlotte broadcasting two years earlier when it bought the city's oldest radio station, WBT-AM 1110--the first fully licensed radio station in the South. It still owns the radio station today.
WBTV has always been a CBS affiliate, but had secondary affiliations with NBC until 1957 (when WSOC-TV signed on) and with ABC until 1964 (when WCCB signed on). Despite this, it is one of only a few non-network owned stations in the country that has had the same call letters, the same owner, the same channel and the same network affiliation throughout its history. When Atlanta's WAGA-TV switched to Fox in 1994, WBTV became the longest continuously-affiliated CBS station south of Washington, DCWashington, DC officially the District of Columbia (also known as DC Washington and, historically, the Federal City is the capital city and administrative district of the United States of America. Residents of the city and its surrounding suburbs refer to.
For many years, WBTV was the far-and-away market leader, but has lost first place in the news ratings to WSOC. However, it still has a small lead sign-on to sign-off because it's the only Charlotte station that puts a decent signal into the mountains (the Charlotte market includes several counties in the Blue Ridge region) without the need for repeatersIn telecommunication, the term repeater has the following meanings: #An analog device that amplifies an input signal regardless of its nature (analog or digital). A digital device that amplifies, reshapes, retimes, or performs a combination of any of thes.