WCTV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Thomasville, Georgia, United States, serving the Tallahassee, Florida market as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Live Oak, Florida–licensed MeTV affiliate WFXU (channel 57). Both stations share studios on Halstead Boulevard in Tallahassee (along I-10), while WCTV's transmitter is located in unincorporated Thomas County, Georgia, southeast of Metcalf, along the Florida state line.
History
WCTV was Tallahassee and southwest Georgia's first television station. On October 13, 1954, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that plans of a new television station and the first television station in the Tallahassee market was introduced to viewers in North Florida and South Georgia. The station held the call letters WCTV beginning on January 25, 1955, the same time WCTV's studios were constructed in Thomasville. On August 29, 1955, the station began airing a test pattern as its test broadcast. The station first signed on the air on September 15, 1955, using channel 6, from studios on North Monroe Street in Tallahassee. WCTV was originally owned by John H. Phipps. Although it has always considered itself a Tallahassee station, it was licensed to Thomasville because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had allocated only one VHF channel to Tallahassee, channel 11.
Florida State University had managed to have the FCC reserve channel 11 for noncommercial use so it could put WFSU-TV on the air. UHF was not considered viable at the time. Until the 1964 FCC requirement that all new sets have all-channel capability, UHF stations were un-viewable without a converter, and even with one, the picture quality was marginal at best. Additionally, the FCC had just collapsed a large portion of southwest Georgia into the Tallahassee market, and UHF stations have never carried well across large areas.
Hoyt Wimpy, owner and founder of WPAX radio in Thomasville, persuaded the FCC to grant the Phipps family a license for channel 6 in Thomasville, the nearest city to Tallahassee that had a VHF allocation available. This could provide city-grade coverage of Tallahassee and north central Florida as well as southwestern Georgia. By this time, the FCC had changed its regulations to allow a station to operate its main studio outside its city of license. As a result, WCTV has been a Tallahassee station from the very beginning. However, it has always identified as serving "Thomasville/Tallahassee," and has operated a live studio/bureau in Thomasville for many years.
The station originally carried programming from all three networks, but was a primarily an NBC affiliate. After only a year on the air, it switched to CBS and has been affiliated with that network ever since. However, it carried a secondary ABC affiliation. It is still the only commercial VHF station in the market (the only other VHF stations are PBS members WFSU-TV, still on channel 11, and Georgia Public Broadcasting's WXGA-TV on channel 8). It was the only commercial station in the area until WECA-TV (now WTXL-TV) began operations in 1976 and took the ABC affiliation.
It was owned by the Phipps family until being sold to Gray Communications, now Gray Television, in 1996. Gray's purchase of WCTV forced the company to sell WALB, its flagship station in nearby Albany, because WALB's signal has city-grade quality in most of the Georgia side of the market (including Thomasville and Valdosta). WALB had doubled as the default NBC affiliate for Tallahassee for many years until WTWC signed on in April 1983, and WALB formerly carried ABC (until 1980) and DuMont (until 1955) programming as their secondary affiliations for the Tallahassee market. In 2004, Gray purchased WSWG in Valdosta, a UPN affiliate for the Albany market. The station dropped UPN in September of that year and is now a CBS affiliate as a semi-satellite of WCTV (see below). The acquisition created a strong combined signal with just under 50% overlap. WCTV had been the default CBS affiliate for Albany for many years.
In March 2006, WCTV moved from its longtime studios on County Road 12 in northern Leon County (approximately midway between Tallahassee and Thomasville) to new facilities on Halstead Boulevard in Tallahassee. The location formerly housed the now-defunct Florida's News Channel, a cable-only operation. On February 17, 2009, WCTV shut off its analog signal on channel 6, and became digital-exclusive on UHF channel 46.
