WLBT
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| WLBT | |
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| Jackson, Mississippi | |
| Branding | WLBT 3 WLBT News |
| Slogan | On Your Side |
| Channels | Analog: 3 (VHF) |
| Affiliations | NBC |
| Owner | Raycom Media (WLBT License Subsidiary, LLC) |
| First air date | December 19, 1953 (current license dates from June 1971) |
| Call letters’ meaning | Lamar Broadcast Television (former owner) |
| Former callsigns | WJBT (1953-1954) |
| Former affiliations | Secondary: ABC (1953-1970) |
| Transmitter Power | 100 kW (analog) 7 kW (digital) |
| Height | 624 m (analog) 393 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 68542 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.wlbt.com |
WLBT (analog channel 3; digital channel 9) is the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. Its transmitter is located near Raymond, Mississippi. WLBT transmits its signal from an antenna 1,929 feet in height.
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[edit] History
The station was founded on December 19, 1953 as WJBT by Lamar Life Insurance Company. It is Jackson's second-oldest television station, following WJTV (channel 12), which debuted in January 1953. Channel 3 is also Mississippi's third-oldest television station, (WTOK-TV in Meridian went on the air three months earlier). A few weeks after its debut, the station was renamed WLBT - which stands for Lamar Broadcasting Television - because the original call letters sounded similar to WJTV.
It has always been an NBC affiliate, though it shared ABC with WJTV until WAPT (channel 16) signed on in 1970. For many years, it operated a semi-satellite in Meridian, WLBM; that station is now a stand-alone station, WGBC.
[edit] Opposition to civil rights
The station attained significant notoriety for its aggressive support of segregation in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. Lamar had close ties to the state's white political and business elite, as well as with segregationist groups, such as the White Citizens' Council and the John Birch Society. It even went as far as to coordinate opposition to civil rights with these groups. It was rumored that the station even displayed segregationist literature in the lobby of its studios in downtown Jackson.
For the most part, the station ignored the Civil Rights movement, cutting out coverage of it from the NBC News feed (largely by pretending that technical problems were the cause of interruptions). It also pre-empted NBC programs that even mildly referred to racial justice or featured African American actors prominently. At the same time, it provided a platform on its local newscasts and public affairs programs for individuals advocating resistance to efforts by the federal government to enable African Americans to vote and gain access to basic amenities such as non-segregated public schools. The station even sold airtime to the Ku Klux Klan. In all truth, WLBT generally did not acknowledge that African Americans even existed, even though African-Americans make up 35 percent of the population in central Mississippi.
Many television stations in the South often felt chagrin at network coverage of the Civil Rights movement. For instance, WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama switched its affiliation from CBS to ABC in 1961, in part because CBS News had become increasingly supportive of Civil Rights. However, WLBT went farther than any other Southern station to oppose civil rights. It kept its NBC affiliation even though that network has historically been very intolerant of local pre-emptions and many NBC personalities, like Bonanza's Pernell Roberts, were speaking out on behalf of civil rights.
Over the years, civil rights groups and the United Church of Christ (represented locally by the Woodworth Chapel at nearby Tougaloo College) sent numerous petitions to the Federal Communications Commission to complain of WLBT's flagrant bias. The FCC issued several warnings to Lamar, but these went unheeded. The issue was contested in court, with the U.S. Court of Appeals forcing the FCC to revoke the station's license in 1969. Lamar appealed, but lost in 1971. That June, control of the station was given to a bi-racial, non-profit foundation called Communications Improvement, Inc. The group promised to make the station a beacon of tolerance. While most WLBT employees were retained, a new group of managers, including some of the first African American television executives in the South, recreated the station as a far more neutral news source.
To this day, WLBT remains one of only two television stations that has ever lost its license for violating FCC regulations on fairness. The other station was WJIM-TV (now WLNS-TV) in Lansing, Michigan. The case is widely noted in communications textbooks.
[edit] WLBT today
Since the 1970s, WLBT's news department has been quite aggressive. For instance, it exposed the activities of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the arm of 1960s governor Ross Barnett to suppress Civil Rights activity in the state. The station's strong news coverage soon made WLBT the dominant news operation in Mississippi.
WLBT was one of the first television stations in the South to devote a significant block of airtime and dedicated personnel to the production of local investigative, documentary style news. "Probe" was a 30 minute program that aired weekly. It garnered numerous awards, including a George Foster Peabody award in 1976 for a segment called "Power Politics in Mississippi." [1]
On January 9, 1980, Communications Improvement sold WLBT to TV-3, Inc., a group of five companies who had competed for the license. In 1984, Frank Melton (who is now mayor of Jackson) formed Civic Communcations and bought WLBT. Under his watch, the station continued its first place run in the ratings. WLBT still leads the Jackson ratings today, although WJTV and WAPT have closed the gap in recent years.
In 2002, Melton sold the station to Liberty Corporation, who in turn merged with Raycom Media in 2006.
In 2008, WLBT announced that it would begin a 4 o'clock newscast on weekdays. This will be the first of its kind in the Jackson, MS television market. [2]
[edit] Logos
 WLBT logo, 1953-1960 |
 WLBT logo, 1960-1967 |
 WLBT logo, 1973-1976 |
 WLBT logo, 1979-1986 |
 WLBT logo during the early part of this decade |
 The current WLBT logo |
[edit] Trivia
Current 6 pm and 10 pm anchors Maggie Wade and Howard Ballou comprise the only African-American news anchor team on all of a station's weekday evening newscasts in the United States.
[edit] Tower Tragedy
On Thursday, October 23, 1997, three Canadian men from Canada's LeBlanc & Royal were preparing to replace the guy wires of WLBT's 1,999-foot (609 m) transmission tower near Raymond when the tower collapsed, killing them all. The workers were at the 1,500-foot (460 m) level and held on to the tower as it fell. [3]
The tower's collapse knocked WLBT and the local PBS/Mississippi ETV Network affiliate WMPN off the air for several hours. WLBT was able to resume broadcasting on a 100-foot (30 m) secondary tower, which only reached about half of its normal viewing area until a new 2,000-foot (610 m) tower was completed in 1999.
The 1,999-foot (609 m) tower was actually the second WLBT transmission tower to fall at their Raymond site. WLBT's original transmission tower collapsed on March 3, 1966 when the Candlestick Park Tornado, one of only two F5 tornadoes in Mississippi's history struck the tower and transmitter building. [4] WLBT engineers salvaged what they could of the transmitter and operated on the same stand by tower as it would operate with later after the second tower collapse. When the 1,999-foot (609 m) replacement tower was completed later in 1966, the new tower was one of the tallest structures east of the Mississippi River and was in service until the second collapse in 1997.
[edit] Famous Outages
On May 6, 2004, a pickup truck hit a utility pole in front of the station, cutting power to the building and taking the signal off the air. It remained dark through the retrospective clip show on the final night of Friends, but it managed to get a signal back in time for the actual show's grand finale. It was rebroadcast at a later date.
[edit] Current News Staff
Anchors
- Roslyn Anderson - weekend evenings
- Howard Ballou - 6 and 10 pm weekdays
- Bert Case - noon and 5 pm weekdays
- Stephanie Bell Flynt - noon weekdays; also covers medical issues.
- Jack Hobbs - weekday mornings
- Cheryl Lasseter - weekend mornings
- Wendy Suares - weekday mornings
- Wilson Stribling - weekday mornings; "Midday Mississippi"
- Maggie Wade - 4, 5, 6 and 10 pm weekdays
Weather Staff
- Barbie Bassett - chief meteorologist; weekday evenings
- Joanna Hancock - substitute (fills in when others are absent)
- Eric Law - weekend and primary fill-in meteorologist
- Paul Williams - weekday morning and noon/midday meteorologist
Reporters
- Kandiss Crone
- Walt Grayson - also does "Look Around Mississippi"
- Monica Hernandez
- David Kenney
- Julie Straw
- Marsha Thompson - "3 On Your Side" investigative reporter
Sports
- Rob Jay - sports director; weekday sports anchor
- Chuck Stinson - weekend sports anchor; sports reporter
- Scott Vlahon - sports reporter; fill-in sports anchor
[edit] Former Staff
- Gene Adams
- Woodie Assaf - retired meteorologist
- Mark Bagley
- Jodi Baskerville
- Cliff Bingham
- Cynthia Bowers - now at CBS News
- Davis Brister - now at WDSU New Orleans
- Ed Bryson
- Melissa Buscher - now at Time Warner Cable of Raleigh, North Carolina
- John Capers
- Vince Caruso
- Helen Chickering - NBC News
- Forrest Cox
- Judy Moon Denson
- Rodney Dunigan - now at WTVF Nashville
- Joanna Gaitanoglou
- Gayla Gibbons
- Keith Glatzer
- Jennifer Griffin - Miss. Public Broadcasting
- Clay Hall
- Andrew Hasbun - now at KSAZ
- J.P. Hervis - now at WSVN Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Mark Ledbetter
- Howard Lett
- Mary Lynch
- Charlie McAlexander
- Kelly (Morgan) Mack
- Travers Mackel - now at WDSU
- Emmett Miller - now at KTLA Los Angeles
- Tom Mustin - now at KCNC Denver, Colorado
- Mari Payton - now at KNSD San Diego
- Mearl Purvis - now at WHBQ Memphis, Tennessee
- Randall Pinkston - now at CBS News
- Steve Raleigh - now at WCPO Cincinnati, Ohio
- Rob Roblin - now at WBAL-TV Baltimore, Maryland
- Michael Rubenstein
- Dawn Russell
- Walter Saddler
- Edward St. Pe
- Dick Sanders
- Jane Segal
- Kimberly Noel Sweet
- Hagan Thompson
- Anita Vanetti
- Scott Walker - now at WESH Orlando, Florida
- Keller Watts - now at WAAY Huntsville, Alabama
- Andy Wise - now at WMC-TV Memphis
- Jon Wright
[edit] See also
[edit] Lafayette, LA DMA coverage
Satellite television provider DirecTV provides this stations signal to subscribers residing in the Lafayette, LA DMA as the NBC station for this market.
[edit] External links
- WLBT 3
- On the Front Lines: Television and African-American Issues From the Museum of Television & Radio; includes info on WLBT in the 1960s
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WLBT
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WLBT-TV
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