![]() | |
![]() | |
| |
---|---|
City | Greensboro, North Carolina |
Channels | |
Branding | WFMY News 2 |
Programming | |
Affiliations |
|
Ownership | |
Owner |
|
History | |
First air date | September 22, 1949 |
Former channel number(s) |
|
Call sign meaning | Began as the television sister of FM station WFMY |
Technical information [2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 72064 |
ERP | 743 kW |
HAAT | 568.8 m (1,866 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 35°52′13.3″N79°50′24.1″W / 35.870361°N 79.840028°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www |
WFMY-TV (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Piedmont Triad region. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Phillips Avenue in Greensboro and a transmitter in Randleman, North Carolina.
WFMY began broadcasting in 1949; it was the second television station in North Carolina and the first to originate a live broadcast. It was owned by the Greensboro News Company, publishers of the Greensboro Daily News and Daily Record. It aired programming from all major networks in its early years, when it was the only station in the Triad, though it was always primarily a CBS affiliate. WFMY became the highest-rated station in the market and the traditional ratings leader, with such regionally popular local shows as The Old Rebel Show and The Good Morning Show. Beginning in the late 1990s, sharper competition from the other major stations in the market has reduced and at times eliminated the lead WFMY-TV once had.
The Greensboro News Company, publisher of the Greensboro Daily News and Daily Record newspapers, began its foray into broadcasting with FM radio. On January 8, 1947, ground was broken on a tower for a new FM radio station, WFMY, near the Daily News building on Davie Street. [3] Construction proceeded slowly; the tower was not completed until December, [4] and WFMY made its first broadcast on March 14, 1948, [5] on 97.3 MHz. [6]
A month before WFMY radio debuted, the Greensboro News Company applied on February 26, 1948, for authority to build a television station. [7] The Federal Communications Commission approved the request on June 2, [8] but preparations for the new station began in earnest in April 1949, after final construction approval for changes. [9] Among the last items was a modification to the existing WFMY radio tower, which was set back by the failure of a cable, causing the antenna to drop and be damaged. [10] [11]
WFMY-TV made its first test broadcasts on August 18, 1949. At 6:10 p.m., viewers saw staff announcer Don Hardison; the newscast did not start correctly with sound, and the first words viewers heard Hardison say were "Judas Priest". [12] This was the first live television broadcast in North Carolina; while WBTV in Charlotte was already on the air, it lacked the capability to originate local broadcasts. [13] Full programming began on September 22, 1949, and the station initially aired six days a week, going off the air every Saturday. [14] WFMY-TV was a primary affiliate of CBS, [15] but it had arrangements to use programming from all four networks of the day, including NBC, ABC, and DuMont Television Network. [16] [17] Network programs were presented by kinescopes—filmed recordings of telecasts as seen in New York—until September 1950, when network coaxial cable service reached Greensboro. [18] WFMY radio closed on April 19, 1953, with its studio space and personnel absorbed into the growing television operation. [19]
WFMY and WBTV were the only authorized television stations in North Carolina prior to the FCC's freeze on new television station awards, which lasted from October 1948 to July 1952. [20] [21] As a result, channel 2 was the first television station to provide dependable service not only to the Triad but areas of east-central North Carolina; this included Durham and the state capital, Raleigh, which did not get a local station until July 1953. Even then, WNAO-TV was an ultra high frequency (UHF) station and required a converter to view, so many households in Raleigh continued to mostly watch WFMY [22] until WTVD began in Durham in September 1954. [23] The end of the freeze also brought new stations to the Triad. WFMY-TV became a sole CBS affiliate in September 1953 when two new stations went on the air in Winston-Salem. First on air was WTOB-TV (channel 26), an affiliate of ABC and DuMont, [24] followed by NBC affiliate WSJS-TV (now WXII-TV) on channel 12. [25] WTOB-TV closed in 1957, and channels 2 and 12 split ABC programming [26] until WGHP began on channel 8 in 1963. [27]
Beginning at the end of 1953, WFMY-TV built new facilities and a new tower, 659 feet (201 m) high plus a 101-foot (31 m) antenna, at its present studio site at Phillips and Summit avenues. [28] The new building was six times larger than the 4,500-square-foot (420 m2) facility on Davie Street and boasted two studios, each larger than the original studio of 14 by 26 feet (4.3 by 7.9 m). [29] The station moved to the new studios on January 2, 1955, and simultaneously increased its power to the maximum of 100,000 watts. [30]
Over the course of the 1950s, WFMY-TV launched three long-running local programs. In 1951, the station debuted the children's show Six-Gun Playhouse. It was hosted by George Perry, who noted a fad of Confederate fashion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and adopted a "Rebel cap" for his character. The Old Rebel Show—filmed before a live studio audience of dozens of children—remained on the station for 26 years, first in afternoons and then in mornings before becoming a weekly Saturday program in its final year. [31] [32] What's Cooking Today, a cooking series hosted by Cordelia Kelly, ran for 18 years from 1953 to 1971. [33]
The third major program in the 1950s came about as the result of a schedule change by CBS. When the network dropped an early incarnation of The Jimmy Dean Show , program director Gomer Lesch sought to fill the 7:30 a.m. slot it vacated with a local program along the lines of a radio morning show. On December 16, 1957, The Good Morning Show debuted, hosted by WFMY-TV announcer Lee Kinard. Over the years, the program evolved from a half-hour show that played music into a morning show with news, weather, sports, and community features. It expanded first to an hour, then 90 minutes and finally two hours in 1971. [34] Kinard also hosted a variety show in the afternoon, TV Matinee, that lasted until 1965. [34] in addition to presenting the weather on WFMY's early evening newscast. [35]
The Greensboro News Company, its newspapers and WFMY-TV included, were acquired by Norfolk–Portsmouth Newspapers Inc. in a $17.1 million transaction in 1964; half the transaction cost was estimated to represent the television station. [36] [37] Despite objections from some FCC commissioners over excessive concentration of media, the deal received approval in December, [38] Norfolk–Portsmouth Newspapers, now with media interests beyond Virginia, renamed itself Landmark Communications in 1967. [39]
The Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 spurred changes in the short- and long-term at WFMY-TV as well as the growth of the news department. These changes became visible in the late 1960s and 1970s as the station hired Black presenters and reporters. Fred Davis, hired in December 1968, was the first Black reporter at the station; his wife received death threats for Fred, threatening a reprise of "what happened to Martin Luther King". [12] Davis left for Michigan, but he recommended television to another graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, Sandra Hughes. Hughes joined in 1972 and two years later was hosting a daily talk show, Sandra & Friends, making her the first African American to host such a program in North Carolina. At times, bomb threats were called into the station; she stayed in the studio as almost everyone else evacuated, keeping the program going. [40]
Harte-Hanks Newspapers acquired WFMY-TV from Landmark in a $19 million deal announced in July 1976 and closed in January 1977. [41] [42] Old Rebel was canceled by the station, having "run its course". [43] [31] Landmark never gave a specific reason for selling WFMY-TV, but newspaper–broadcast cross-ownership limitations were suggested, as was a concurrent project to build a new printing press for the Greensboro newspapers. [44] When Sandra & Friends ended in 1978, Hughes initially moved to hosting the station's version of PM Magazine . [40] By this time, the station had cemented itself as the ratings leader; when one survey in 1978 showed WXII ahead of WFMY-TV at 6 p.m., Jerry Kenion of the Greensboro Daily News called it "the first time in recent memory (and perhaps the first time ever)" that WFMY had been surpassed. [45] That turned out to be a fluke, even by the admission of WXII management. [46] In 1981, the station expanded its evening newscast to an hour, the first in North Carolina outside of Charlotte. [47] In 1982, when CBS expanded its morning offerings, the weekday edition of the network morning show—then titled Morning—was removed from channel 2's schedule to keep the highly popular The Good Morning Show intact, and WFMY also lost Captain Kangaroo due to the scheduling difference. [48]
WFMY-TV built its current tower near Sophia, North Carolina, south of Greensboro, in 1980. The 1,914-foot (583 m) mast cost $3 million to build and was part of a plan to increase the station's coverage area from 11,720 square miles (30,400 km2) to 19,730 square miles (51,100 km2), though it also impaired reception for residents in its shadow. [49] [50]
On the evening of September 25, 1984, the station's leased Bell JetRanger news helicopter, "Sky 2", crashed while attempting to assist in the rescue of a construction worker trapped atop a water tower in Kernersville (near Winston-Salem). The tower was being dismantled when a piece of steel snapped and trapped the worker for hours, causing him to bleed profusely; "Sky 2" was called in to assist in the rescue. Pilot Tom Haroski began lowering the chopper above the tower, as an EMS worker on board was preparing to rescue the man. The chopper's tail rotor hit one of the steel beams as it hovered over the tower, sending it spiraling nose-first into the ground, killing Haroski and the rescue worker instantly. [51] [52]
In 1984, Harte-Hanks underwent a leveraged buyout that saddled it with $700 million in debt. To reduce this load, Harte-Hanks put a number of its divisions up for sale in October 1987, including three newspapers, seven cable systems, and WFMY-TV and WTLV in Jacksonville, Florida. [53] That December, Gannett agreed to buy WFMY-TV and WTLV for $155 million. [54] The transaction was completed in February 1988. [55] WFMY's first general manager under Gannett, Hank Price, found the station in good condition and not needing any major changes. [56] CBS This Morning began airing on tape delay in 1988, running after The Good Morning Show. [57]
As late as 1995, WFMY held leads in all time periods where it had newscasts. [58] However, its ratings soon came under pressure. Kinard left The Good Morning Show in November 1997 after just under 40 years, [59] and the station was experiencing increased competition from WGHP and WXII, to which it responded by updating the look and feel of its newscasts and the format of Good Morning—now airing for three hours—to appeal to younger viewers. [60] The 1998 local introduction of people meters for ratings purposes also hurt WFMY by increasing the representation of younger viewers, who were less likely to be loyal to the station. [60] [61]
Kinard retired from the 6 p.m. newscast in December 1999. [62] By then, WXII had come to surpass WFMY at 11 p.m., and WGHP was more competitive in the morning. [63] For WXII, this was the result of a strategy over the course of the 1990s to increase its coverage of news events beyond the western Piedmont and into Greensboro, the market's largest city; WGHP, which had made a similar decision, benefited from its 1995 affiliation switch from ABC to Fox. WFMY, with a news viewership described in 2000 as "older and more ethnic", [61] now found itself in a regularly close ratings race. [64] Hughes retired in 2010, capping a 20-year run as evening anchor at the station, which named its newsroom for her. [65]
In 2011, under general manager Larry Audas, WFMY revamped its news format, dubbed "News 2.0". [66] Shortly after, the station launched an expansion of The Good Morning Show to 4:30 a.m. [67] A new newscast displaced a fixture on channel 2's schedule: the 5:30 p.m. airing of The Andy Griffith Show , which WFMY-TV had aired in that time period for decades. [68]
On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WFMY was retained by the latter company, named Tegna. [69]
In December 2019, The Good Morning Show was changed to end at 7 a.m., allowing CBS This Morning to air live for the first time on WFMY; this was part of a larger schedule overhaul that included a 4 p.m. newscast. [70]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
---|---|---|---|---|
2.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WFMY HD | CBS |
2.2 | 480i | Crime | True Crime Network | |
2.3 | Mystery | Ion Mystery | ||
2.4 | Quest | Quest | ||
2.5 | OPEN | The365 | ||
2.6 | Crimes | Outlaw | ||
2.7 | QVC | QVC Over the Air | ||
2.8 | HSN | HSN |
WFMY-TV began digital broadcasting on April 18, 2002, as the second local station to do so. [78] It ended regular programming on its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the FCC-mandated transition to digital television for full-power stations. [79] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 51, using virtual channel 2. [80] As part of the SAFER Act, WFMY-TV kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters. [81]
On May 15, 2020, under the provisions of the FCC's spectrum reallocation program, WFMY's transmissions moved to channel 35. [82] [83]
The Piedmont Triad is a metropolitan region in the north-central part of the U.S. state of North Carolina anchored by three cities: Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point. This close group of cities lies in the Piedmont geographical region of the United States and forms the basis of the Greensboro–Winston-Salem–High Point, NC Combined Statistical Area (CSA). As of 2012, the Piedmont Triad has an estimated population of 1,611,243 making it the 33rd largest combined statistical area in the United States.
WXII-TV is a television station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, serving the Piedmont Triad region as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside Lexington-licensed CW affiliate WCWG. WXII-TV and WCWG share studios on Coliseum Drive in Winston-Salem; through a channel sharing agreement, the stations transmit using WXII-TV's spectrum from an antenna on Sauratown Mountain in Stokes County.
WNCT-TV is a television station licensed to Greenville, North Carolina, United States, serving Eastern North Carolina as an affiliate of CBS and The CW Plus. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on South Evans Street in Greenville, and its transmitter is located in Grifton Township along NC 118.
WXLV-TV is a television station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, serving as the ABC affiliate for the Piedmont Triad region. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Greensboro-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYV. The two stations share studios on Myer Lee Drive in Winston-Salem; WXLV-TV's transmitter is located in Randleman.
The Winston-Salem Journal is an American, English language daily newspaper primarily serving Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, North Carolina. It also covers Northwestern North Carolina.
WLXI is a television station licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, owned and operated by and broadcasting Tri-State Christian Television (TCT). WLXI shares a transmitter on Sauratown Mountain with WUNL-TV; the signal reaches the entire Piedmont Triad area. Programs are fed to the transmitter from the TCT studio center in Marion, Illinois; WLXI maintained studios on Patterson Street in Greensboro until TCT ended local operations nationally in June 2018.
WQMG is an urban adult contemporary station licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina and serves the Piedmont Triad region, which also includes High Point and Winston-Salem. The Audacy, Inc. outlet broadcasts with an ERP of 100 kW. The station's studios are located near the Piedmont Triad International Airport, and a transmitter site is in unincorporated south Guilford County.
WTQR is a country music station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina and serves the Piedmont Triad region, including Greensboro and High Point. Owned and operated by iHeartMedia, the station broadcasts at 104.1 MHz with an ERP of 100 kW. It has studio facilities and offices located on Pai Park in Greensboro, and a transmitter site is located atop Sauratown Mountain near Pinnacle, North Carolina. They are one of three country music outlets in the market; WPAW and WBRF are the others.
WSJS is a commercial radio station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and broadcasting to the Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point media market. It airs a talk and sports radio format. WSJS is owned by the Truth Broadcasting Corporation, with studios and offices in The Factory Building on North Main Street in Kernersville.
Monica Malpass is an American journalist and former television anchor for WPVI Action News in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She co-anchored the WPVI 5 p.m. weekday newscast and hosted the station's political talk show, Inside Story.
The News & Record is an American, English language newspaper with the largest circulation serving Guilford County, North Carolina, and the surrounding region. It is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, and produces local sections for Greensboro and Rockingham County, North Carolina.
WWNT is a Spanish language formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States, serving Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, North Carolina. WWNT is owned by Delmarva Educational Association. As of August 1, 2018, WWNT is silent.
WNAO-TV, UHF analog channel 28, was a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Owned by the Sir Walter Television Company, it was the first television station in the Raleigh–Durham area and the first UHF television station in North Carolina, broadcasting from July 12, 1953, to December 31, 1957. The station closed because of the establishment of higher-powered, more accessible very high frequency (VHF) television stations in the region.
WMYV is a television station licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, serving the Piedmont Triad region as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Winston-Salem–licensed ABC affiliate WXLV-TV. The two stations share studios on Myer Lee Drive in Winston-Salem; WMYV's transmitter is located in Randleman.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.
The 1913 North Carolina Tar Heels football team represented the University of North Carolina in the 1913 college football season. The team captain of the 1913 season was L. L. Albernethy.
The 1914 North Carolina Tar Heels football team represented the University of North Carolina in the 1914 college football season. The team captain of the 1914 season was Dave Tayloe.
The 1920 North Carolina Tar Heels football team represented the University of North Carolina in the 1920 college football season.
Elizabeth Webster Mitchell was an American educator and competitive shag dancer. In 1998 she won the National Shag Dance Championship in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Mitchell was killed during the 1998 Gainesville–Stoneville tornado outbreak a week after she won the championship. She was posthumously inducted into the Beach Shaggers National Hall of Fame's Keepers Of The Dance in 2002.