WSFA
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| WSFA | |
|---|---|
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| Montgomery, Alabama | |
| Branding | WSFA 12 News |
| Slogan | Coverage, Community, Commitment |
| Channels | Analog: 12 (VHF) |
| Affiliations | NBC NBC Weather Plus (DT2) RTN (DT3) |
| Owner | Raycom Media, Inc. (WSFA License Subsidiary, LLC) |
| First air date | December 25, 1954 |
| Call letters’ meaning | With the South's Finest Airport |
| Former callsigns | WSFA-TV (1954-1986) |
| Transmitter Power | 316 kW (analog) 600 kW (digital) |
| Height | 610 m (analog) 507 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 13993 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.wsfa.com |
WSFA is an NBC-affiliated television station broadcasting on VHF channel 12 in Montgomery, Alabama. It is owned by Raycom Media, and is one of the company's two flagship stations, along with WBTV in Charlotte. Its transmitter is located near Grady, Alabama.
WSFA's signal is one of the strongest in the state, covering a large area extending from the geographical center of the state in Chilton County (in the Birmingham suburbs) to the Florida state line and the Black Belt region of southwestern Alabama to the Chattahoochee River bordering the state of Georgia. As such, the station is the default NBC affiliate for the Dothan/southeastern Alabama market as well, as that area has no NBC station of its own.
WSFA carries NBC Weather Plus on one of its digital subcarriers, and carries programs from the Retro Television Network, owned by Equity Media Holdings Corporation on its other subcarrier.[1]
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[edit] History
The call letters WSFA stand for South's Finest Airport. These call letters can be traced back to 1930, when Gordon Persons (later to become Governor of Alabama) opened Alabama's fourth radio station under the same name in Montgomery. The radio station was located in what is now the Gunter Annex of Maxwell Air Force Base, but was then Montgomery Regional Airport. Persons publicized the station with the call letters and the slogan they represented.
WSFA quickly became a landmark in Montgomery, and the station was most famous in its early days for launching the career of country music legend Hank Williams, a native of nearby Georgiana, in the 1940s. By the mid-1950s, the new medium of television was sweeping the nation, and, accordingly, Persons won the construction permit for Montgomery's second television station, on channel 12. Ironically, channel 12 was supposed to be occupied by Montgomery's first television station, WCOV-TV. However, due to a delay in getting a transmitter for channel 12, WCOV-TV was forced to move to channel 20--a historical accident that would ultimately cost it Montgomery's CBS affiliation 30 years later.
On Christmas Day, December 25, 1954, WSFA-TV aired its first broadcast. When the television studios were built, the radio station moved into the facility along with the new TV station.
In February 1955, just two months after going on the air, the radio and television stations were purchased by the Oklahoma Publishing Company. At that time, the stations were operated by a staff of 35. In 1956, the radio station was sold, changed its call letters to WHHY, and moved to a downtown location. [2]
The TV station, now operating apart from its former namesake radio partner, also was again sold, this time to the Broadcasting Company of the South of Columbia, South Carolina in 1959. During that period, WSFA gained a national reputation for its coverage (fed periodically to the NBC network) of local events in the Civil Rights Movement such as the Bus Boycott of 1955 involving Rosa Parks and the varied activities of Martin Luther King, Jr. during his pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The station's news director for much of the Civil Rights era was Frank McGee, who eventually joined NBC News and hosted The Today Show until his death in 1974.
The Broadcasting Company of the South, a subsidiary of Liberty Life Insurance Company, renamed itself Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation in 1965. Later in the decade, Liberty reorganized itself as The Liberty Corporation, with Cosmos and Liberty Life as its subsidiaries.
The station's reputation as a strong news station dates from its original purchase by the Oklahoma Publishing Company. For example, it was one of the first stations outside a major market to own film processing equipment. Channel 12 has received much praise from critics for its thorough and straightforward coverage of state politics. When Liberty bought WSFA, the station's image as a strong news station led Liberty to beef up the news departments at its other properties as well.
That reputation, along with its history as the area's only VHF station until 1985 and its large service territory (almost all of southeastern Alabama), has made channel 12 the far-and-away market leader for as long as records have been kept. WSFA has further cemented its hold on local audiences with programs such as the Auburn University football coach's Sunday post-game show, hosted for many years by former WSFA sports director Phil Snow. Also, its early morning Today in Alabama is reputed to be one of the highest, if not the highest, rated local morning shows in the U.S.
Liberty exited the insurance business in 2002, bringing WSFA directly under the Liberty banner. Liberty merged with Raycom in 2006. Since Raycom is headquartered in Montgomery, this made WSFA Raycom's flagship station. However, with Raycom's recent purchase of Lincoln Financial Media's television stations, WSFA now shares flagship status with Charlotte's WBTV.
Tracing back from its humble beginnings as the upstart TV arm of a local radio station, WSFA is still broadcasting from its original south Montgomery location. Several expansions of the Delano Avenue facility now provide room for a staff of more than 100 and two large telecasting studios.
[edit] Current News Personalities
News Anchors:
- Bob Howell
- Valorie Lawson
- Kim Hendrix
- Mark Bulock
- Tonya Terry
- Judd Davis
Reporters:
- Bryan Henry
- Chris Holmes
- Cody Holyoke
- Eileen Jones
- Sally Pitts
Weather:
- Rich Thomas
- Dan Atkinson
- Allyson Rae
Sports:
- Jeff Shearer
- Derek Steyer
- Kyle Montgomery
- Abby Chin
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- WSFA website
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WSFA
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WSFA-TV
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