WLTX

WLTX (channel 19) is a television station in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Garners Ferry Road (US 76–378) in southeastern Columbia, and its transmitter is located on Screaming Eagle Road (southeast of I-20) in rural northeast Richland County.

WLTX
In purple, a thin "W L T X" next to a bold 19, the 9 slightly overlapping the 1, with the CBS eye in the lower right corner next to the 9.
Channels
BrandingWLTX News19
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
History
First air date
September 1, 1953 (1953-09-01)
Former call signs
WNOK-TV (1953–1977)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 67 (UHF, 1953–1961), 19 (UHF, 1961–2009)
  • Digital: 17 (UHF, 2002–2019)
  • All secondary
  • DuMont (1953–1955)
  • ABC (1956–1961)
  • UPN (1995–1997)
Call sign meaning
From former owner Lewis Television
Technical information
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID37176
ERP700 kW
HAAT531.7 m (1,744 ft)
Transmitter coordinates34°5′50″N 80°45′50″W
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.wltx.com

WLTX is Columbia's oldest operating television station, going on the air in September 1953 as WNOK-TV on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 67. Built by Columbia radio station WNOK (1230 AM), it struggled in its first years on air as Columbia's lone very high frequency station, WIS (channel 10), used that position to become the dominant TV station in central South Carolina. The station endured in the shadow of its much larger competitor and moved to the lower channel 19 in 1961. The WNOK stations were sold to Julius Curtis Lewis Jr. in 1977; the TV station was given new WLTX call letters. However, for almost all of Lewis's ownership, the station was a distant second-place outlet which, for years, only broadcast one daily newscast.

In the final years of Lewis ownership and after WLTX's purchase by Gannett in 1998, the station grew into a much more substantial second-place force in the market. The news department was significantly expanded in facilities, personnel, and newscasts offered.

History

WNOK-TV

On August 15, 1951, Palmetto Radio Corporation, owner of WNOK (1230 AM), applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking to build a new TV station on channel 10 in Columbia.[2] In May 1952, with the possibility looming of a contest for channel 10—and two parties seeking channel 25 in the new ultra high frequency (UHF) band, WNOK amended its application to specify the only other available TV channel at Columbia, channel 67.[3] When the FCC made its way through a priority list of station applications to Columbia, channels 25 and 67 were uncontested, and on September 18, 1952, the commission moved to grant WCOS-TV (channel 25) and WNOK-TV (channel 67) construction permits.[4]

WNOK-TV began broadcasting on September 1, 1953, as an affiliate of CBS and the DuMont Television Network. It had DuMont Laboratories's second high-power UHF transmitter installed (the first having been at WGLV in Pennsylvania).[5] It signed on between WCOS-TV on May 1[6] and WIS-TV (channel 10) on November 7.[7] WIS, with its very high frequency (VHF) assignment of channel 10, was the only station that sets could receive if they were not modified for UHF reception: this left the UHF stations far behind WIS, which became the dominant television station in the Midlands of South Carolina.[8] Dick Laughridge, a station employee from 1953 to 1998 and general manager for the last 20 years of his tenure, described having to buy UHF converters for the station's advertisers just so they could see their own advertisements on channel 67.[9] When WCOS-TV folded in January 1956 for economic reasons, WNOK-TV acquired its business assets but not its physical plant.[10][11] Channel 67 then began airing selected ABC programs.[12]

Nearly from the start, WNOK sought to improve the visibility of its television station by adding a second VHF channel to Columbia. When it bought WCOS-TV's business, it also asked the FCC to assign channel 5 to Columbia, moving it from Charleston.[10] The FCC invited comment on the proposal,[13] though it was denied nearly a year later.[14] In 1960, with a third station (WCCA-TV, today's WOLO-TV) on the horizon, WNOK instead proposed changing Columbia to have UHF channels 14, 25, and educational 31 instead of educational 19, 25, and 67.[15] The FCC chose to instead switch channel 19 to commercial use, move WNOK-TV there, and allocate channel 31 for educational use by moving it from Lancaster.[16] On June 12, 1961, the station switched to channel 19.[12]

In 1966, the Hotel Jefferson, which had housed the studios of WNOK radio and television, was sold to the Citizens & Southern National Bank, which announced plans to build an office tower on the site.[17] Though the hotel closed in April 1966, the WNOK stations continued to hold a lease on the studio site through June 1967.[18] A new facility would be necessary. In August, Palmetto Radio Corporation broke ground on a new facility on Garners Ferry Road, which would be twice and feature two television studios.[19] The stations moved into the facility in June 1967.[20][21] Following the studio move, Palmetto Radio upgraded the station's effective radiated power, improving its signal, and began producing live local programs in color in 1968.[22]

WLTX: Lewis Television ownership

Palmetto Radio Corporation announced in April 1977 it would sell WNOK radio and television to Lewis Broadcasting, a company owned by Savannah, Georgia, businessman Julius Curtis Lewis Jr., for $4 million.[23] When the sale took effect in April 1978, in order to change the station's image, Lewis changed the station's call sign from WNOK-TV to WLTX; this was the case even though the radio stations remained under common ownership.[24]

Lewis applied in 1984 to increase the station's effective radiated power to five million watts, the maximum permitted on UHF, from a new tower northeast of Columbia.[25] The new facility and 2,049-foot (625 m) tower were activated in June 1985.[26]

In January 1995, WLTX became a charter affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN); it carried the network's programming on a secondary basis, beginning first with Star Trek: Voyager and expanding at UPN's insistence to additional network programming that fall.[27] Citing scheduling difficulties, WLTX dropped UPN programs in September 1997.[28] No station carried UPN in the South Carolina Midlands until Sumter-licensed WQHB (channel 63) signed on that November.[29]

Gannett/Tegna ownership

The Gannett Company announced in February 1998 that it would acquire WLTX from Lewis, a move that came as the Lewis family was planning their estate and seeking a buyer. With the move, Laughridge, WLTX general manager for 20 years, announced his retirement. It came at a time when WLTX's total audience ratings had beaten WIS for the first time in history, though the improving news department was still far behind channel 10.[30] The purchase closed at the end of April.[31] A renovation and expansion of the Garners Ferry Road studio, started in 2000 and completed in 2001, added another 8,000 square feet (740 m2) to the facility; the addition housed the newsroom, studio control, and several offices.[32] In 2002, WLTX became the first commercial station in Columbia to broadcast in digital.[33]

WLTX's broadcasts became digital-only, effective June 12, 2009.[34] The station later relocated its signal from channel 17 to channel 15 on September 6, 2019, as a result of the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction.[35]

On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WLTX was retained by the latter company, named Tegna.[36]

News operation
Gannett hired popular meteorologist Jim Gandy from WIS in 1998, then brought him to WLTX at the end of 1999.

WLTX was long a distant runner-up to WIS in the market. So low were channel 19's ratings that the station opted by the late 1970s to cease airing in short, five-minute 11 p.m. local newscast, concentrating on its 6 p.m. dinner-hour news.[37] This allowed it to compete against WIS with syndicated shows, most notably The Andy Griffith Show, which was far more competitive with the WIS 11:00 Report and often finished in second place in its time slot.[38][39][27]

Several years after Dick Hall—the news director for 13 years under Lewis ownership—left in 1991,[40] the WLTX news department slowly began to scale to a more typical size in the final years of Lewis ownership. Five-minute 11 p.m. news updates and weekend 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts debuted between 1993 and 1995.[41] A full 30-minute newscast at 11, seven nights a week, began airing in March 1996.[42] In conjunction with a revamped format for CBS This Morning, the station began broadcasting a 7 a.m. morning newscast that August;[43] a midday newscast debuted in September 1997[44]

The Gannett purchase led to wholesale changes throughout 1999 as Gannett replaced the general manager (hiring Rich O'Dell of WKYC-TV in Cleveland) and news director.[45] Longtime WLTX personalities, including anchor Gene Upright and weather presenter Camille Bradford Hugg, moved to new off-air jobs or retired.[46] In August 1999, to accommodate the launch of The Early Show by CBS, WLTX replaced its 7 a.m. morning news with a two-hour broadcast at 5 a.m.[47] At year's end, on December 31, the centerpiece of the strategy debuted on air. In 1998, Gannett had hired meteorologist Jim Gandy away from WIS to serve as a consultant while he waited out a one-year non-compete clause in his contract with channel 10; when the move was announced, he was widely expected to return to Columbia and forecast the weather on WLTX after the year was up, which proved to be the case.[48][49] Channel 19 also added a Doppler weather radar system to bolster its weather forecasts.[50]

The substantial changes in WLTX's news product did not immediately lead to a ratings boost,[51] but by 2001, WLTX was giving WIS its most credible competition ever, aided by the strong performance of CBS network programming such as Survivor.[52] A 7 p.m. newscast—the first-ever challenge to WIS's popular 7:00 Report—debuted in late 2001 after the September 11 attacks.[53] However, WIS was able to successfully fend off the challenge and keep WLTX in second place, particularly in the 6 and 7 p.m. newscasts.[54] Looking for a further lift, in late 2002, the station moved the anchor duo of J. R. Berry and Darci Strickland, both South Carolina natives, from the morning newscasts to the evening newscasts.[55] The move kept WLTX competitive; its ratings remained behind WIS in total households but sometimes ahead in key demographics with desirable younger viewers.[56] One of the few holdovers from the pre-Gannett WLTX was in the area of sports: sports director Bob Shields, who created a regional high school Player of the Week award while at channel 19 and retired from broadcasting in 2010 after 30 years.[57]

WLTX was awarded the prestigious Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award in 2015 for DSS: When the System Fails, its series of reports on the dysfunction of South Carolina's Department of Social Services.[58]

Gandy retired in 2019 after 44 years in broadcasting.[59] That year, Broadcasting & Cable magazine honored O'Dell as its general manager of the year in a non-top-50 market, citing an improvement in the station's ratings that catapulted it ahead of WIS in early and late evening news as well as the adoption of a "Street Squad" community reporting model.[60]

Notable former on-air staff

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Subchannels of WLTX[64]
Channel Video Aspect Short name Programming
19.1 1080i16:9WLTX-HDMain WLTX programming / CBS
19.2 480iCrimeTrue Crime Network
19.3 DecadesCatchy Comedy
19.4 QuestQuest
19.5 TwistTwist
19.6 ShopLCShop LC
19.7 This TVThis TV
19.8 TheGrioTheGrio

References
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