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WPCH-TV

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WPCH-TV, channel 17, is an independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner. Known by the on-air branding of Peachtree TV, WPCH-TV has its studios and transmitter located in Atlanta.

This station was known as WTBS from August 27, 1979 until October 1, 2007, when its operations were split from the co-owned TBS SuperStation. WTBS was the pioneering superstation, and its signal was carried to cable and satellite viewers throughout the United States and Canada.

History

As WJRJ-TV

Channel 17 commenced broadcasting on September 1, 1967, as WJRJ-TV. It was the Atlanta market's first independent station, and one of the first in the entire Southeastern United States. The station was named for its founder, Atlanta entrepreneur Jack Rice, Jr.

WJRJ-TV was launched on a shoestring budget, with an afternoon and evening schedule (4 p.m. to 11 p.m.) filled with old movies and a few off-network reruns, as well as a 15-minute news program. In addition to placing daily ads on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution TV page, WJRJ ran exactly one TV Guide advertisement: a half page ad in a September 1967 issue with the headline, "Yes, Atlanta, there is a channel 17." Despite WJRJ billing themselves as "Good-looking Channel 17" [1], technical snafus were the norm in the station's early months: film broke down, slides frequently appeared backwards, and there were often long pauses when nothing appeared on screen. The station did carry a top-rated show for a few weeks: Atlanta's CBS affiliate WAGA-TV (channel 5) ran a local movie on Wednesday night, and channel 17 stepped in to run Medical Center for a time.

Ted Turner enters the picture

In January 1970, entrepreneur Ted Turner, who ran his father's billboard business and also owned radio stations, bought the low-rated UHF outlet. Soon after, Turner changed the call letters to WTCG, which reportedly stood for "Watch This Channel Grow" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System).

During an interview in 2004, Turner revealed that some of the problems that had dogged WJRJ were present in the early days at WTCG. First, when Turner bought the station, it was the only one in the Atlanta market still broadcasting exclusively in black-and-white because the previous owners had not made necessary color upgrades. Second, money was still very tight during the first couple of years that Turner owned the station. The station decided to purchase the color broadcasting equipment it needed, on credit after Turner took over. However, some months had passed and Turner found himself unable to make the payments on the equipment. As a last resort (after unsuccessfully attempting to secure further financing), Turner held an on-air telethon, much in the manner of public television, to raise the money needed to pay the station's bills. Third, there was new competition in the form of new UHF station WATL (channel 36) beginning operations. Once the financial problems were settled, WTCG eventually drove WATL off the air. (Rumors also abound that WATL owner Daniel H. Overmyer bore significant responsibility for the station's failure.) In fact, WTCG's first major move was to steal a popular show from WATL. The Now Explosion was a precursor to MTV, running music videos (some local) all weekend long.

WTCG's programming in the pre-satellite era included games of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, reruns of Star Trek, and Georgia Championship Wrestling, one of the roots of the later World Championship Wrestling and some local newscasts, often of a jokey nature. One such newscast was 17 Update Early in the Morning, which featured usually straight-faced Bill Tush and Tina Seldin reporting the news in a mostly normal fashion, with comedic sideline gags at times by another co-anchor wearing a brown paper grocery bag over his head billed only as "The Unknown Newsman." The newscast, which often contained elements resembling that of a comedic morning drive radio show, had a brief run between late night/early morning movie presentations in 1978 and 1979. Bill Tush would later move on to regular interview programs on WTCG and during the early years of CNN.

Another show on the WTCG lineup was hosted by the legendary R&B singer James Brown and called James Brown's Future Shock. The show, which bore similarities to American Bandstand and Soul Train, aired on late night each Friday. As reported by Steve Beverly on his TVGameShows.net after Brown's death on Christmas Day, 2006, "Two highlights of the dance party hour: when a group of the teen dancers lined up before the evening's final solo by Brown and chanted, 'Future shock...can't be stopped, future shock...can't be stopped,' and commercials for a mail-order "party ring"----in which a teen referred to the $19.95 jewelry as 'superbad'." An alternate interpretation is that the teen was moved to exclaim "Sho' is bad."

The first "Superstation"

Main article: TBS (TV network)

Beginning in the early 1970's many cable systems in surrounding states would microwave the WTCG-TV 17 signal into neighboring Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina, beyond the Atlanta TV market. WTCG was one of the first TV stations to broadcast via satellite. It, along with WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) in New York and WGN-TV in Chicago, were among America's first "superstations": independent channels distributed to cable systems throughout their respective regions, or the entire country.

At 1 p.m. on December 17, 1976, WTCG's signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to its four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama; and Newton, Kansas. All four cable systems started receiving the sleepy 1948 Dana Andrews - Cesar Romero film Deep Waters, which was already 30 minutes in progress. Instantly, WTCG added 24,000 more households to its viewing audience, which consisted of 675,000 households in metropolitan Atlanta. That number would grow exponentially in the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the Southern United States (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball were highly popular), but eventually encompassing the nation. The station, and Turner's innovation, signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.

As WTBS

After using the callsign WTCG for most of its first decade under Turner's ownership, the station became WTBS on August 27, 1979. The WTBS callsign had been held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology radio station, but MIT agreed to cede the letters to Turner's station after Turner donated the money for a new transmitter for MIT's radio station, which is now known as WMBR. ([2])

Transition to Peachtree TV

On October 1, 2007, Turner Broadcasting rebranded WTBS as Peachtree TV, with new call letters, WPCH-TV. [1] As a result of this, the nationwide version of TBS, which was blacked-out in the Atlanta market, became available to cable and satellite viewers in the market for the first time. Peachtree TV, with the notable exception of Braves Baseball, generally broadcasts lower quality and less expensive programming.

WPCH-TV will broadcast 45 Atlanta Braves baseball games in 2008. [3]

WPCH-TV is not related to a similarly-called FM radio station in the Macon area, WPCH FM 96.9, which is owned by Clear Channel Communications. WPCH was also the call letters in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s for "Peach 94.9", the Atlanta radio station that is now WUBL FM; and after that (2003 to 2006) for WPCH AM 1380 in the Augusta area, now WYNF. Like WPCH FM, WYNF and WUBL are both owned by Clear Channel.

Canada

WPCH-TV is carried across basic cable outlets in Canada. This dates back to when it was carried under the WTBS calls and TBS branding, as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission allows any local American station to be carried on Canadian cable services. TBS cable wasn't carried, as it had to go through the processes necessary to be approved for Canadian carriage, which for American cable networks is a low percentage of acceptance. Due to this technicality, Canadian cable services now carry Peachtree TV instead of the nationwide TBS channel that other American cable viewers receive.[2] Many cable companies were apparently unaware of the changeover until after it occurred. As a result, should Canadian cable companies wish to air "cable" TBS, it will be several months before the necessary approvals are received, and even then the channel may not be approved at all (similar channels general interest entertainment stations USA Network and TNT have not been approved for cable coverage).

Production notes

  • The name "Peachtree TV" is derived from Peachtree Street (Atlanta's main street), and the large number of other streets in Atlanta having "Peachtree" as part of their names in some form or other.
  • The channel 17 analog transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street NW (in midtown Atlanta), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting TV tower which can be seen to the east side of the Downtown Connector. WNNX FM 99.7 ("99X") was located on this tower, and still maintains it as a full-power backup. Its sister station WWWQ FM also has a low-power backup here.
  • The building at this site was once home to the TV studios of WAGA-TV and later channel 17, during the WJRJ years. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the studios were moved to the former Progressive Club site a few blocks west at 1050 Techwood Drive. The Techwood Drive studios also served as the studio facilities for WTBS' Saturday evening wrestling programs Georgia Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling, as well as the original home of CNN. WPCH still uses the building to this day.
  • The station's digital signal is at the maximum allowable power (1000kW ERP), while its original analog signal is not. Its DTV channel 20 is diplexed with WUVG-TV 34 into a master TV antenna at a separate tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road NE, in Atlanta's Morningside neighborhood. The station has also applied for an analog backup facility at this location, with a corresponding construction permit dating from its original application in 2003 to transmit from the WATL TV 36 digital (25) antenna on the same tower. Two subsequent applications in 2006 to increase the power of the backup have not been ruled on as of October 2007. Several other TV stations are on this tower, including WUVM-LP and W23DN, and possibly WGCL-TV 46. WNNX FM is now located on this tower, sharing the same antenna with WVEE FM 103.3 and WZGC FM 92.9. WKHX-FM 101.5 is slightly lower on the tower, while WRFG FM 89.3 has an application for much lower on the tower. According to the FCC database, another tower holding several other stations is located about 110 meters or 350 feet east-northeast (these may actually be the same tower). [4] [5]
  • The cable TBS was mostly a simulcast of WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally-produced public-affairs programming on Saturday mornings, and certain special events. Unlike WTBS, the national TBS is not obligated to carry public affairs or educational "E/I" programming for children, because it is a cable channel, and thus exempted from FCC broadcast requirements. The current lineup, as "Peachtree TV", is now completely separate from that of TBS. It includes a nightly movie, various sitcoms, a double run of the game show Temptation, and a one-hour simulcast of Turner-owned Headline News at 6am.
  • FCC regulations often caused unusual requirements for a nationally distributed local television station. If a technical failure of the Atlanta local transmitter forced the station to go off the air locally, the national version was required to cease transmission to the satellite also, until the local problem was resolved.
  • When Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting, Time Warner sold off a cable system (originally Summit Cable) it owned in northern Cobb and southern Cherokee counties (suburban Atlanta) to what was then MediaOne (later AT&T, now Comcast), to avoid running afoul of FCC rules that prohibit a company from owning broadcast TV stations and cable TV systems in the same market.

Digital Television

The station's digital channel:

Digital channels
Virtual
Channel 		Physical
RF Channel 		Video
Resolution 		Aspect
Ratio 		Programming
17.1 20.1 1080i 16:9 Main WPCH programming

In 2009, WPCH-TV (formerly WTBS-TV) will leave channel 17 and move to channel 20 when the analog to digital conversion is complete.[3]

References

  1. ^ Turner Pressroom
  2. ^ "WTBS Atlanta" is listed on the CRTC lists of eligible satellite services
  3. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf


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