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''WTBS may also refer to the BBC's Wartime Broadcasting Service, designed to provide public information and morale-boosting broadcasts for 100 days after a nuclear attack.''
'WTBS' is an American TV station, broadcast on channel 17 (DTV channel 20) in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. While officially an independent station, it currently simulcasts most of the programming carried by the national TBS cable network.
WTBS can be found on cable channel 7 in most parts of the Atlanta market.
Channel 17 commenced broadcasting on September 1, 1967, originally signing on with the television call sign 'WJRJ-TV'. It was the Atlanta market's first independent, non-network station, and one of the first in the entire Southeastern United States.
Atlanta entrepreneur Jack Rice, Jr. (Rice Broadcasting) launched the station 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 placing daily ads on the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' TV page, WJRJ ran exactly one print advertisement: a half page ad in a September 1967 TV Guide with the headline, "Yes, Atlanta, there is a channel 17." 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 ran a local movie on Wednesday night, and WJRJ stepped in to run ''Medical Center'' for a time ... until it hit Nielsen's Top 10.
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'.
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' 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.
After using the callsign WTCG for most of its first decade under Turner's ownership, the station became 'WTBS' in 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. (The MIT station now uses call letters WMBR.)[1]
WTCG programs in the pre-satellite era included games of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, some newscasts, often of a jokey nature, reruns of ''Star Trek'', and Georgia Championship Wrestling, one of the roots of the later World Championship Wrestling. One such newscast "17 Update Early In The Morning" co-anchored by usually straight-faced Bill Tush and Tina Seldon would report the news in a mostly normal fashion with off the wall 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 many times over contained the elements resembling that of a comedic morning drive radio show (and became a forerunner to Late Night With David Letterman) had a brief run between late night/early morning movie presentations in 1978 and 1979. Bill Tush moved 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."
WTCG, which reportedly stood for "'W'atch 'T'his 'C'hannel 'G'row" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System) was one of the first TV stations to broadcast via satellite. It, along with WOR-TV in New York City (now WWOR-TV) 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 South (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball were, and still are, highly popular), but eventually encompassing the nation. The station, and Turner's innovation, signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.
In late June 2007, Turner Broadcasting announced that WTBS would change its callsign and become 'WPCH-TV', under the branding '''Peachtree TV'''. According to Turner, the new channel 17 will offer sitcoms and movies geared toward an Atlanta-area audience, substantially if not entirely separate from the satellite feed. The new station will, in the future, also broadcast 45 Atlanta Braves baseball games in 2008. The change is scheduled to take place on October 1. As a result, the channel 17 change will allow Atlanta cable and satellite television viewers to receive, for the first time, the national TBS feed in its entirety.[2]
The new station will not be related to the similarly-called FM station in Macon, WPCH, which is owned by Clear Channel.
In Canada, most cable and satellite companies carry WTBS's local Atlanta signal. It is unknown whether Canadian systems will keep the station as Peachtree TV, switch to TBS, or even drop the channel entirely.
★ The channel 17 transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (in midtown Atlanta), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower.
★ The building at this site was once home to the 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. WTBS still uses the building to this day.
★ The cable TBS is mostly a simulcast of flagship WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally produced public affairs programming on Saturday mornings, and certain special events (but see "Separation of Channel 17 from TBS" above). 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 requirements.
★ The DTV channel 20 is diplexed into a master TV antenna at the tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road Northeast, in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood.
★ Contrary to expectations, WTBS, not the TBS superstation, is the feed distributed across Canada on all satellite and cable providers.
★ When Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting, Time Warner sold off a cable system it owned in northern Cobb County (suburban Atlanta) to what was then MediaOne to avoid running afoul of FCC rules that prohibit a company from owning broadcast TV stations and cable TV systems in the same market.
★ TBS17 website
★
★ Google Maps Satellite View of the Transmission Tower for WTBS-DT
'WTBS' is an American TV station, broadcast on channel 17 (DTV channel 20) in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area. While officially an independent station, it currently simulcasts most of the programming carried by the national TBS cable network.
WTBS can be found on cable channel 7 in most parts of the Atlanta market.
| Contents |
| Early history |
| WJRJ, 1967-70 |
| Turner Enters the Picture, 1970 |
| WTBS, 1979-present |
| Programming, 1970s |
| The First "Superstation" |
| Separation of Channel 17 from TBS |
| Production notes |
| External links |
Early history
WJRJ, 1967-70
Channel 17 commenced broadcasting on September 1, 1967, originally signing on with the television call sign 'WJRJ-TV'. It was the Atlanta market's first independent, non-network station, and one of the first in the entire Southeastern United States.
Atlanta entrepreneur Jack Rice, Jr. (Rice Broadcasting) launched the station 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 placing daily ads on the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' TV page, WJRJ ran exactly one print advertisement: a half page ad in a September 1967 TV Guide with the headline, "Yes, Atlanta, there is a channel 17." 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 ran a local movie on Wednesday night, and WJRJ stepped in to run ''Medical Center'' for a time ... until it hit Nielsen's Top 10.
Turner Enters the Picture, 1970
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'.
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' 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.
WTBS, 1979-present
After using the callsign WTCG for most of its first decade under Turner's ownership, the station became 'WTBS' in 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. (The MIT station now uses call letters WMBR.)[1]
Programming, 1970s
WTCG programs in the pre-satellite era included games of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, some newscasts, often of a jokey nature, reruns of ''Star Trek'', and Georgia Championship Wrestling, one of the roots of the later World Championship Wrestling. One such newscast "17 Update Early In The Morning" co-anchored by usually straight-faced Bill Tush and Tina Seldon would report the news in a mostly normal fashion with off the wall 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 many times over contained the elements resembling that of a comedic morning drive radio show (and became a forerunner to Late Night With David Letterman) had a brief run between late night/early morning movie presentations in 1978 and 1979. Bill Tush moved 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"
WTCG, which reportedly stood for "'W'atch 'T'his 'C'hannel 'G'row" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System) was one of the first TV stations to broadcast via satellite. It, along with WOR-TV in New York City (now WWOR-TV) 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 South (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball were, and still are, highly popular), but eventually encompassing the nation. The station, and Turner's innovation, signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.
Separation of Channel 17 from TBS
In late June 2007, Turner Broadcasting announced that WTBS would change its callsign and become 'WPCH-TV', under the branding '''Peachtree TV'''. According to Turner, the new channel 17 will offer sitcoms and movies geared toward an Atlanta-area audience, substantially if not entirely separate from the satellite feed. The new station will, in the future, also broadcast 45 Atlanta Braves baseball games in 2008. The change is scheduled to take place on October 1. As a result, the channel 17 change will allow Atlanta cable and satellite television viewers to receive, for the first time, the national TBS feed in its entirety.[2]
The new station will not be related to the similarly-called FM station in Macon, WPCH, which is owned by Clear Channel.
In Canada, most cable and satellite companies carry WTBS's local Atlanta signal. It is unknown whether Canadian systems will keep the station as Peachtree TV, switch to TBS, or even drop the channel entirely.
Production notes
★ The channel 17 transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (in midtown Atlanta), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower.
★ The building at this site was once home to the 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. WTBS still uses the building to this day.
★ The cable TBS is mostly a simulcast of flagship WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally produced public affairs programming on Saturday mornings, and certain special events (but see "Separation of Channel 17 from TBS" above). 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 requirements.
★ The DTV channel 20 is diplexed into a master TV antenna at the tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road Northeast, in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood.
★ Contrary to expectations, WTBS, not the TBS superstation, is the feed distributed across Canada on all satellite and cable providers.
★ When Time Warner acquired Turner Broadcasting, Time Warner sold off a cable system it owned in northern Cobb County (suburban Atlanta) to what was then MediaOne to avoid running afoul of FCC rules that prohibit a company from owning broadcast TV stations and cable TV systems in the same market.
External links
★ TBS17 website
★
★ Google Maps Satellite View of the Transmission Tower for WTBS-DT
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