WCBI-TV (channel 4) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...
licensed to
Columbus, Mississippi
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterwa ...
, United States, serving the Columbus–
Tupelo
Tupelo , genus ''Nyssa'' , is a small genus of deciduous trees with alternate, simple leaves. It is sometimes included in the subfamily Nyssoideae of the dogwood family, Cornaceae, but is placed by other authorities in the family Nyssaceae. In ...
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
as an affiliate of
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...
,
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
and
The CW Plus
The CW Plus is a secondary national programming service feed of The CW that is fully controlled and 75% owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery each owning a 12.5% stake in the network. It is intended primar ...
. Owned by
Morris Multimedia
Morris may refer to:
Places
Australia
*St Morris, South Australia, place in South Australia
Canada
* Morris Township, Ontario, now part of the municipality of Morris-Turnberry
* Rural Municipality of Morris, Manitoba
** Morris, Manitob ...
, the station maintains studios on 5th Street South in Downtown Columbus, and its transmitter is located in northwestern
Clay County Clay County is the name of 18 counties in the United States. Most are named for Henry Clay, U.S. Senator and statesman:
* Clay County, Alabama
* Clay County, Arkansas (named for John Clayton, and originally named Clayton County)
* Clay County, Flor ...
.
History
When WCBI signed on-the-air July 13, 1956, it was the first television station in
North Mississippi
North Mississippi is a region in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Mississippi, consisting of Alcorn, Itawamba, Lee, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Tippah, Tishomingo, and Union counties. These counties share a unique cultural history that di ...
. The station was owned by Birney Imes, Jr., a Columbus businessman and publisher of the ''
Commercial Dispatch
''The Commercial Dispatch'' is the daily newspaper of Columbus, Mississippi, United States. It was created from the merger of two older papers, the ''Commercial'' and the ''Dispatch'', in the early 20th century. The first issue of the consolidated ...
'' newspaper. The station's
call letters
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
come from his initials. It had studios in a cement block building surrounded by a group of mobile homes in a pasture off
MS 12 just east of Columbus. For the first 23 years of its history, WCBI carried programming from all three major networks—CBS,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an Television in the United States, American English-language Commercial broadcasting, commercial television network, broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Enterta ...
and
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
. However, it has always been a primary CBS affiliate, except from 1977 to 1979 when it was a primary ABC affiliate; it returned to CBS in anticipation of
Meridian
Meridian or a meridian line (from Latin ''meridies'' via Old French ''meridiane'', meaning “midday”) may refer to
Science
* Meridian (astronomy), imaginary circle in a plane perpendicular to the planes of the celestial equator and horizon
* ...
station
WTOK, which was carried on Columbus cable systems, joining ABC in early 1980. During the late-1950s, it was also briefly affiliated with the
NTA Film Network
The NTA Film Network was an early American television network founded by Ely Landau in 1956. The network was not a full-time television network like CBS, NBC, or ABC. Rather, it operated on a part-time basis, broadcasting films and several first ...
.
NBC disappeared from the schedule in 1979 after
WTVA
WTVA (channel 9) is a television station licensed to Tupelo, Mississippi, United States, serving the Columbus–Tupelo market as an affiliate of NBC and ABC. It is owned by Allen Media Broadcasting, which provides certain services to West Poin ...
(channel 9) in
Tupelo
Tupelo , genus ''Nyssa'' , is a small genus of deciduous trees with alternate, simple leaves. It is sometimes included in the subfamily Nyssoideae of the dogwood family, Cornaceae, but is placed by other authorities in the family Nyssaceae. In ...
expanded its city-grade signal to include Columbus. WCBI continued to carry some ABC programs until 1983 when WVSB (channel 27, now
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
affiliate
WLOV-TV
WLOV-TV (channel 27) is a television station licensed to West Point, Mississippi, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Columbus–Tupelo market. It is owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, which maintains a local marke ...
) began operations.
The station remained in its rural location for more than thirty years. In the early 1990s, Frank Imes (Birney's son) supervised the renovation of the former Egger's Department Store in downtown Columbus. Live broadcasting began at the new facility on October 25, 1993 with ''News 4 at 6''.
WCBI began broadcasting a full-power digital signal in March 2000 on UHF channel 35. By early September 2002, it was broadcasting three digital signals including CBS in high definition on DT1. On DT2 was a
standard definition
Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...
UPN channel known on air as "UPN Mississippi" that was the first digital affiliate of the network in the country; the UPN affiliation was previously held by both WLOV and W22BS. A 24-hour local weather station was located on DT3 known on-air as "WCBI WeatherCheck" and provided as part of
The Local AccuWeather Channel
AccuWeather Inc. is an American media company that provides commercial weather forecasting services worldwide.
AccuWeather was founded in 1962 by Joel N. Myers, then a Pennsylvania State University graduate student working on a master's degree ...
.
In November 2003, Imes Communications sold WCBI to current owner Morris Multimedia with the sale closing on January 14 of the next year. It was the last remaining station of Imes' once-sizable smaller-
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
*Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
*Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, an ...
broadcasting group. The ''Commercial Dispatch'' remains under Imes family ownership to this day.
On September 5, 2006, the UPN Mississippi subchannel was relaunched as "My Mississippi", affiliating with
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
as part of the merger of UPN and
The WB
The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...
. Thirteen days later on September 18, the weather subchannel on DT3 was converted to a
CW affiliate as "North Mississippi CW".
News operation
On September 8, 2008, WCBI began producing the area's second prime time newscast on this station called ''WCBI News at 9 on My MS''. It only airs on weeknights for thirty minutes and competes with another prime time show seen for a half-hour on Fox affiliate WLOV-TV (produced Sunday through Friday nights by NBC affiliate WTVA). At some point in time, WCBI added an hour-long extension of its weekday morning show to WCBI-DT2 titled ''WCBI News Sunrise on My MS'', which airs from 7 until 8 and offers a local alternative to the national network morning shows. In addition to its main studios, the station operates a Tupelo Bureau on Main Street/
US 278
U.S. Route 278 (US 278) is a parallel route of U.S. Route 78, US 78. It currently runs for from Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, to Wickes, Arkansas at U.S. Route 71, US 71/U.S. Route 59, US 59, passing through five states in the ...
/
MS 6/
MS 178. On September 16, 2013, both newscasts airing on WCBI-DT2 moved to CW affiliate WCBI-DT3.
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's digital signal is
multiplexed
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
:
Analog-to-digital conversion
WCBI-TV shut down its analog signal, over
VHF channel 4, on January 24, 2009, due to a transmitter problem. This was under a month before the original date of the federally-mandated
transition from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting (the original date was February 17; it would later get pushed back to June 12). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition
UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter (on ...
channel 35.
Through the use of
PSIP
The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system and later extended for the A ...
, digital television receivers display the station's
virtual channel
In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered via digits on a receiver's ...
as its former VHF analog channel 4.
See also
*
Channel 4 virtual TV stations in the United States The following television stations operate on virtual channel 4 in the United States:
* K02LH-D in Clarks Fork, Wyoming
* K03DJ-D in Polson, Montana
* K03IZ-D in Salinas, California
* K04DH-D in Gunnison, Colorado
* K04GF-D in Wolf Point, Montana
* ...
*
Channel 27 digital TV stations in the United States
References
External links
*
{{TV Stations Alabama
CBS network affiliates
Defy TV affiliates
Morris Multimedia
Television channels and stations established in 1956
1956 establishments in Mississippi
CBI-TV