WVTM-TV
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| WVTM-TV | |
|---|---|
| Image:WVTMNBC13HD.jpg | |
| Birmingham, Alabama | |
| Branding | NBC13 HD NBC13 HD News |
| Slogan | Accuracy Matters |
| Channels | Analog: 13 (VHF) Digital: 52 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | NBC (since 1954) NBC Weather Plus (DT2) |
| Owner | Media General (Birmingham Broadcasting, LLC) |
| Founded | May 29, 1949 |
| Call letters meaning | W Vulcan (in reference to statue) Times Mirror (former owners) |
| Former callsigns | WAFM-TV (1949-1953) WABT (1953-1958) WAPI-TV (1958-1980) |
| Former affiliations | CBS (1949-1954) ABC (secondary, 1949-1961) CBS (secondary, 1961-1970) |
| Transmitter Power | 316 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 408 m (analog) 399 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 74173 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | www.nbc13.com |
WVTM-TV is the NBC affiliate television station in the Birmingham-Anniston-Tuscaloosa, Alabama television market. The station is owned by Media General. Its transmitter is located on Red Mountain in Birmingham.
Contents |
[edit] History
The station signed on the air on May 29, 1949 as WAFM-TV, owned by The Voice of Alabama, Inc. along with WAPI, AM radio (AM 1070, and WAFM, FM radio, now WYSF). It is Alabama's oldest television station. In the beginning, channel 13 carried programming from CBS and ABC.
In 1953, the Birmingham News bought Voice of Alabama and changed WAFM-TV's calls to WABT (for Alabama's Best Television). A year later, WABT swapped primary affiliations with WBRC-TV and became an NBC affiliate. In 1956, the Newhouse newspaper chain bought the News.
The station changed call signs again in 1958 when it became WAPI-TV to match its sister radio stations. (The calls stood for Alabama Polytechnic Institute, who owned WAPI from 1925 until 1932.)
When WBRC-TV took the ABC affiliation on a full-time basis in 1961, WAPI-TV was forced to shoehorn both CBS and NBC programs into its schedule. This was rather unusual, since in most two-station markets both stations either shared ABC programming, or one station carried ABC as a secondary affiliation.
While channel 13 tried to carry the most popular NBC and CBS shows (slightly favoring NBC), a lot of very popular shows did not air in Birmingham because of this arrangement. One of the more popular shows that WAPI-TV did not clear was The Ed Sullivan Show, meaning that central Alabama viewers missed The Beatles' American debut unless they were lucky enough to pick up stations in Atlanta, Huntsville or Montgomery. Strangely, one of the NBC shows channel 13 turned down was The Tonight Show. WAPI-TV strongly favored NBC for news, so when CBS and NBC expanded their news programs to 30 minutes in the early 1960s, Walter Cronkite was not seen on Birmingham-area television screens for several years. This was due, of course, to both networks' feeding their newscasts to affiliates at 5:30 p.m. Central Time (like today). Channel 13 had its local newscast at 6 p.m. Central, and prior to 1971, prime-time network programming began at 6:30 p.m. Central. This left no room on the schedule for "CBS Evening News" to air, even had station management wanted to air it. This meant that, for some years, NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report was the only national evening television newscast available to central Alabama viewers, since WBRC-TV did not carry ABC's evening news at the time (and would not for some years to come).
When WBMG-TV (channel 42, now WIAT) signed on in 1965, it nominally had a CBS affiliation, but CBS allowed WAPI-TV to continue airing its higher-rated programming. This was largely because WBMG had only signed on a year after the Federal Communications Commission required television sets to include all-channel tuning. To fill out the schedule, WBMG aired some NBC programming that WAPI-TV turned down (such as The Tonight Show). Both stations listed "CBS/NBC" as their affiliation. However, in May 1970, for a number of reasons, WAPI-TV became an exclusive NBC affiliate, sending all of CBS' programming to WBMG. At the same time that channel 13 became an exclusive affiliate of NBC and WBMG aligned with CBS, WCFT in Tuscaloosa and WHMA in Anniston also affiliated with CBS; prior to then, the primetime schedule of WCFT and WHMA virtually mirrored that of WBMG.
The Newhouses' company, Advance Publications, got out of broadcasting in the early 1980s. WAPI-TV was sold to Times-Mirror Broadcasting in 1980, and as a result the station became WVTM (for Vulcan Times-Mirror), and remains so to this day.
In the early 1990s, the station was purchased by Argyle Broadcasting. In 1994, New World Communications, which had recently cut an affiliation deal with Fox Broadcasting Company, agreed to purchase WVTM along with sister stations KTVI in St. Louis, KDFW in Dallas, and KTBC in Austin, Texas. However, New World also decided to purchase Great American Broadcasting, which owned WBRC. Great American agreed to exclude WBRC from its deal with New World, and to sell WBRC directly to Fox instead. As such, WVTM retained its NBC affiliation, while KTVI (former St. Louis ABC affiliate), KDFW (former Dallas/ Fort Worth CBS affiliate) and KTBC (former Austin CBS affiliate) became Fox affiliates. Fox operated WBRC as an ABC affiliate until 1996.
New World sold off all its stations in late 1996. Its Fox affiliates were sold to Fox outright, while its two NBC stations (WVTM and KNSD 39 San Diego) were sold to NBC.
The station also went through numerous name changes from NewsCenter13, to NewsWatch13 and its AM newscast 13 Alive to 13 Action News and then 13 and You, an ode to NBC and You to Alabama's 13, People Who Care, NBC13, We've Got You Covered, to today's NBC13, Accuracy Matters. WVTM, currently known on air as NBC13, runs more than 35 hours of local news a week along with NBC network news.
Also in 2004, WVTM became the first television station in Alabama to obtain a 1-million watt doppler radar system originally dubbed "Skywatch Doppler One Million", now called "WeatherPlus Doppler One Million", located on Bald Rock Mountain in St. Clair County, Alabama.
WVTM was one of four NBC O&Os in smaller markets that were put up for sale on January 9, 2006, along with WJAR-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and WNCN in Raleigh, North Carolina. On April 6 2006, NBC Universal and Media General announced that Media General would purchase WVTM-TV as part of a $600 million four station deal between the two companies[1]. Media General has announced that it will sell its existing station in Birmingham, WIAT, since the FCC doesn't allow one company to own two of the four largest stations in a single market. Media General closed on all four stations on June 26 2006, after the FCC granted the company a temporary waiver allowing it to keep both WVTM and WIAT for six months. On August 2, it was announced that Media General sold WIAT to New Vision Television. [2]
For several months after Media General acquired the stations from NBC Universal, WVTM's website and those of the other three stations remained in the format used by the websites of NBC O&O stations. In December 2006, the websites of all four stations were redesigned; they now credit Media General in their copyright notices, and are no longer operated by Internet Broadcasting.
On October 17th, 2007 NBC 13 began broadcasting local news in high definition. NBC 13 is the first station in Alabama to broadcast HD local news.
[edit] Chronology
[edit] Anchors
- Mike Royer - weekdays 4:30, 5, 6, and 10PM
- Gina Redmond - weekdays 5, 6, and 10PM
- Rod Carter - weekday mornings/midday
- Andrea Lindenberg - weekday mornings/midday
Weather Anchors:
- Jerry Tracey - weekday evenings / Chief Meteorologist
- Stephanie Walker - weekday mornings
- Richard Jacks - weekends/fill in
Sports Anchors:
- Don Hawes - weekday evenings / Sports Director
- Rob Jones - weekends/fill in
Traffic Anchor:
[edit] Notable past personalities
- Bob Jones: News Anchor
- Wendell Harris: News Anchor
- Ken Snow: News Anchor
- Pam Huff: News Anchor (currently on Birmingham's WBMA/WCFT/WJSU)
- Phil Rozen: News Anchor
- Steve Sanders: News Reporter (currently on WGN-TV, Chicago)
- David Mattingly: News Reporter (currently on CNN)
- Gene Lively: News Anchor
- Mike Moore: News Anchor (currently on WGCL-TV, Atlanta)
- Terri Merrimman: News Anchor (currently on WSMV, Nashville)
- Janice Rogers: News Reporter (now at WBRC, Birmingham)
- Bill Fitzgerald: News Reporter (now at WNCN, Raleigh/Durham)
- Rene Syler: News Anchor
- Buddy Rutledge: Sports Anchor
- Gary Sanders: Sports Anchor
- Scott Palmer: Sports Anchor
- Herb Winches: Sports Anchor (was at WJOX-AM, Birmingham, from 1990-2006; now on WIAT-TV in Birmingham)
- Ken Lass: Sports Anchor, later Morning News Anchor (currently on WDJC-FM, Birmingham)
- Jim Dunaway: Sports Anchor, later Morning News Anchor (currently on WSPZ, Birmingham)
- Rosemary Lucas: Weather Reporter
- Larry Nobles: Meteorologist
- Jay Prater: Meteorologist (currently on KAKE-TV, Wichita, KS)
- James Spann: Meteorologist (currently on WBMA/WCFT/WJSU)
- Fran Curry: News Anchor
[edit] External links
Broadcast television in the Central Alabama (Birmingham / Anniston / Tuscaloosa) Designated Market Area (Nielsen DMA #40) |
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WBXA-CA 2 (MTV2) -
WBRC 6 (Fox) -
WVUA-CA 7 (A1/ShopNBC) -
WCIQ 7 / WBIQ 10 (PBS/APT) -
WVTM 13 (NBC) -
WOTM-LP 19 (Ind) -
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NBC Network Affiliates in the state of Alabama |
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WSFA 12 (Montgomery) - WVTM 13 (Birmingham) - WPMI 15 (Mobile) - WAFF 48 (Huntsville) |
| See also: ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, MyNetworkTV, PBS and Other stations in Alabama |
Media General, Inc. |
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Corporate Directors: J. Stewart Bryan, III (COB) · Marshall N. Morton · O. Reid Ashe, Jr. · John A. Schauss · Diana F. Cantor · Charles A. Davis · Thompson L. Rankin · Rodney A. Smolla · Walter E. Williams · Coleman Wortham, III · H. Graham Woodlief, Jr. · James A. Zimmerman · Neal F. Fondren · Stephen Y. Dickinson · George L. Mahoney · Lou Anne J. Nabhan · John A. Schauss · James F. Woodward
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| Annual Revenue: $80.2 million USD (FY 2004) · Employees: approximately 7,900 · Stock Symbol: NYSE: MEG · Website: www.mediageneral.com |
