WATL (TV)
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| WATL | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Atlanta, Georgia | |
| Branding | MyAtlTV |
| Slogan | Atlanta's Destination Station |
| Channels | Analog: 36 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | MyNetworkTV (2006-Present) |
| Owner | Gannett Company (Pacific and Southern Company, Inc.) |
| First air date | September 13, 1954 (First incarnation) September 8, 1969 (Second incarnation) July 5, 1976 (Present incarnation) |
| Call letters’ meaning | We're in ATLanta (IATA Airport code for Hartsfield-Atlanta International Airport) |
| Sister station(s) | WXIA-TV |
| Former callsigns | WQXI-TV (1954-1955) WBMO-TV (1967) WATL-TV (1st incarnation: 1969-1971) WATL-TV (Present incarnation: 1976-1985) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1954-1955, 1967-1971, 1976-1986, 1994-1995) Silent (1955-1967, 1967-1969, 1971-1976) ON (1967) Fox (1986-1994) The WB (1995-2006) |
| Transmitter Power | 2690 kW (analog) 500 kW (digital) |
| Height | 313 m (analog) 332 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 22819 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.myatltv.com/ |
WATL channel 36 is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, USA affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It's owned by the Gannett Company and is a sister station to WXIA-TV (channel 11), Atlanta's NBC affiliate. WATL's callsign refers to ATLanta, the station's city of license.
Studios and offices are shared with WXIA and are located at 1611 West Peachtree Street on the north end of Atlanta's Midtown area. New facilities are being constructed for WXIA and WATL at the old studio and office location of WATL, at One Monroe Place in Atlanta. The stations plan on moving into the new facilties formally after the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in September, 2008.
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[edit] History
Channel 36 began operation on September 13, 1954 as WQXI-TV. The station, owned by UHF pioneer Robert Rounsaville, was one of about 150 UHF televisions to give the new high-band spectrum a try. The TV station, which had one camera, shared a house in the north Atlanta suburb of Buckhead with WQXI AM 790. The radio station constantly promoted its sister TV station in an effort to build an audience. But UHF converters were rare and programming (largely old movies, a Saturday evening Barn Dance and shots of the radio DJ spinning records) was nearly unwatchable. The station signed off after less than nine months on the air on March 13, 1955.
Channel 36 would remain dark until the station was relaunched on September 8, 1969 as WATL-TV, under the ownership of U.S. Communications, a broadcaster owned by Daniel H. Overmyer. Overmyer planned on signing on the station a few years earlier as WBMO-TV as one of the owned and operated stations of the new Overmyer Network, which folded after a month on the air in 1967. This incarnation of WATL lasted only until March 10, 1971 and channel 36 went dark again. For about a week before it signed off, the station ran :30 second announcements showing its studios, announcing that it would soon cease operations, ending with the words "Thank You" on screen.
In a newspaper article reporting on the station's demise, it was reported that US Communications spent $1 million on programming the first year, including "Lost in Space" and a block of dinnertime game shows. Ted Turner's WTCG, which had been operating a bit longer, "didn't spend a million dollars on anything" and survived. WATL was also the first station in the country to run music videos all weekend, on a show called The Now Explosion. Turner's first move after acquiring WTCG, the UHF station that would serve as the foundation of his media empire, was to steal The Now Explosion from WATL.
On July 5, 1976, Don Kennedy of The Popeye Club (a long running Atlanta kids TV show on WSB-TV) returned channel 36 to the air for good. WATL-TV had a general entertainment format typical of non-network stations, such as public domain movies, financial news, low-budget local shows, syndicated reruns and cartoons and a blend of CBS, NBC and ABC shows pre-empted from WAGA-TV (channel 5), WSB-TV (channel 2) and WXIA-TV, respectively. In a common practice among independent stations at the time, the station aired subscription television in the early evening from the late 1970s to about 1981.
ATL Acquisitions Group bought the station in the early 1980s. The subscription TV format moved to new sign-on WVEU (channel 69, now WUPA) in 1982. At that time, most daytime programming now came from the Financial News Network (now part of CNBC). In 1984, the station was sold again, this time to Outlet Communications. By that time, WATL was a general entertainment independent once again. WATL became one of the charter affiliates of the newly-launched Fox Broadcasting Company in October 1986.
The musical chairs of ownership continued in 1989, as Outlet sold WATL (along with WXIN in Indianapolis) to Chase Broadcasting. In 1992, WATL and WXIN were included in Chase's merger with Renaissance Broadcasting. Less than a year later, WATL (along with new sister station KDVR in Denver) was sold to Fox outright and channel 36 became a Fox owned-and-operated station. Fox was in the planning stages for a news operation at the station, and WATL had even gone as far as hiring a news director. However, on May 22, 1994, New World Communications announced an affiliation agreement with Fox, months after the network won the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference of the National Football League. In this deal, most of New World's stations, including WAGA, would switch over to the Fox network. As a result, Fox cancelled the plans for a newscast on WATL and put the station up for sale.
Finding itself about to lose Fox programming, WATL was then approached with an affiliation offer from CBS, which was losing WAGA as an affiliate. However WATL was not interested. At that point, it almost seemed likely that WATL would join the soon-to-launch United Paramount Network in early 1995. Rival station WGNX (channel 46, now WGCL-TV), then owned by Tribune Broadcasting was already slated to join the WB Television Network and had also turned CBS down, forcing CBS to make a deal to buy WVEU. Eventually, however, Tribune agreed to let WGNX join CBS, and WVEU became the UPN affiliate.
Fox programming moved from WATL to WAGA on December 10, 1994. Not long after that, Fox subsequently sold the station to Qwest Broadcasting, a company partially owned by legendary musician Quincy Jones and Tribune Broadcasting. (Fox would not be without an owned-and-operated station in Atlanta for long, as they bought out New World in late 1996.) Although it lost the Fox affiliation, WATL kept the Fox Kids programming, because WAGA was not interested in it. The station also affiliated with the WB in January 1995. (Since the sale to Qwest Broadcasting would not be finalized until December 14, 1995, WATL became a WB affiliate owned by Fox, a condition which lasted nearly a year.) WATL continued to air Fox Kids until 2003, when it moved to WHOT (channel 34, now WUVG). In 1999, Tribune sold WGNX to the Meredith Corporation and purchased WATL outright in February 2000. Because Tribune owned a stake in the WB, WATL could have been considered to be a WB owned-and-operated station.
On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which split from Viacom at the end of 2005) and Warner Bros. Entertainment (the Time Warner division that operates the WB) announced plans to dissolve WB and UPN, combining them to launch the CW Television Network in September 2006. As part of this joint venture, it was announced that CBS-owned WUPA will become the CW's Atlanta affiliate. It would not have been an upset had WATL been chosen instead, however. CW officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations, and Atlanta was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN stations were both relatively strong.
WATL was originally slated to revert to independent status, but on May 15, 2006, Tribune announced that WATL would be joining MyNetworkTV, which was formed by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television.
On June 5, 2006, Tribune announced that they would sell WATL to the Gannett Company, the owners of Atlanta's NBC affiliate WXIA-TV, for $180 million. The sale was completed on August 7, 2006, giving Gannett the first television duopoly in Atlanta. ([1]) Like most duopolies consisting of a "Big Four" affiliate and a minor network affiliate, WATL may take up responsibility as an alternate NBC affiliate by airing programs when WXIA cannot such as in a news-related emergency.
Channel 36 introduced its new on-air branding, MyAtlTV on August 20, 2006, ahead of the September 5 debut of My Network TV (and about a month before the WB's final night on the air). Along with the new network, WATL now airs a WXIA-produced 10 p.m. weeknight newscast, titled 11Alive News at 10 (formerly My 11Alive News at 10).
[edit] Digital Television
The station's digital channel:
Digital channels
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 36.1 / 25.1 | Main WATL programming |
In 2009, WATL-TV will leave channel 36 and move to channel 25 when the analog to digital conversion is complete.[1]
[edit] Station timeline
- September 1954: channel 36 signs on as WQXI-TV
- 1955: WQXI-TV signs off
- 1969: channel 36 returns to the air, for the second time, as WATL-TV
- 1971: WATL-TV signs off[citation needed]
- July 1976: channel 36 is reactivated, for the third time, retaining the WATL call letters
- October 1986: becomes a charter Fox network station, later adopted the branding "Fox 36"
- December 1994: reverted back to independent status as "WATL 36" after WAGA-TV (channel 5) became Fox's new Atlanta affiliate
- January 1995: becomes a WB affiliate as "WB 36"
- 2004: adopts the branding "WATL, Atlanta's WB"
- May 2006: WATL is announced as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV
- June 2006: WATL debuted The Tube on its second digital subchannel (36.2)
- August 2006: Sale of WATL from Tribune to Gannett, announced in June is completed; adopts the branding "MyAtlTV"
- September 2006: WATL drops its WB affiliation and becomes a MyNetworkTV affiliate; sister station WXIA-TV begins producing a 10 p.m. newscast
[edit] Transmission tower
It is on the same tower, north of Druid Hills, with:
The tower also contains construction permits for:
- WIRE-CA (40)
FM stations on the same tower are: WWWQ (99.7, newly moved from the WPCH-TV main analog tower), WKHX-FM (101.5) and permits for WRFG (89.3) and as well as an application for a broadcast translator from Immanuel Broadcasing Network on 101.9.
Another tower about 120 meters (400 ft) to the west holds the existing WGCL-TV (46/19), WLTM-FM (94.9), and WKLS-FM (96.1), and applications for translators on 89.7 and 88.9 from WAY-FM Media Group.
[edit] Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- WATL is one of a handful of stations to have been affiliated with both News Corporation-owned networks, Fox and MyNetworkTV.
- Channel 36 signed on as WQXI-TV in 1954. The callsign was used on channel 11 from 1968 to 1974. Today, channels 11 and 36 are owned by the same company, Gannett.
[edit] External links
- WATL website
- WXIA-TV Website
- My Network TV
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WATL
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WATL-TV
[edit] References
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