WTGS (channel 28) 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
Hardeeville, South Carolina
Hardeeville is a city in Jasper and Beaufort counties in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The population was 7,473 as of the 2020 census, an increase of over 150% since 2010. Hardeeville is included within the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Beaufor ...
, United States, serving as the
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 for the
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County, Georgia, Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the Kingdom of Great Br ...
, area. Owned by
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...
, WTGS maintains transmitter facilities on Fort Argyle Road/
SR 204 in western
unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to:
* Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality
* Unincorporated entity, a type of organization
* Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...
Chatham County, Georgia
Chatham County ( ) is located in the U.S. state of Georgia, on the state's Atlantic coast. The county seat and largest city is Savannah. One of the original counties of Georgia, Chatham County was created February 5, 1777, and is named after Will ...
, while its studios are located in the ''
Savannah Morning News
The ''Savannah Morning News'' is a daily newspaper in Savannah, Georgia. It is published by Gannett. The motto of the paper is "Light of the Coastal Empire and Lowcountry". The paper serves Savannah, its metropolitan area, and parts of South Ca ...
'' building on Chatham Parkway in Savannah.
WTGS went on the air in 1985 as the first independent television station for Savannah and the southern Lowcountry and the lone commercial television station in southeastern South Carolina. Originally built by a Florida company, a change in federal regulations on cable carriage that took effect weeks before starting up nearly carried the station to the brink of bankruptcy. Between 1996 and 2014, operations of WTGS were related to those of
WJCL (channel 22), Savannah's
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 ...
affiliate, by a series of operating agreements. During much of this period, WJCL produced local newscasts for air on WTGS. However, the two stations were split in 2014 when owner
LIN Media
LIN Media was an American holding company founded in 1994 that operated 43 television stations. All except one were affiliates of the six major U.S. television networks. One of the remaining stations was a low powered weather station in Ind ...
and its affiliates opted to divest WJCL and WTGS to separate entities in order to complete a merger. The two stations continue to share office space, though Sinclair now handles news production itself for WTGS.
History
Early years, cable disputes, and near-bankruptcy (19851996)
Business and Minority Coalition Broadcasters, Inc., a consortium of six investors from
Charleston, filed an application with the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) to build a new television station on channel 28 in Hardeeville ( from the allocation city of Savannah, the maximum distance permitted), which would transmit from a site on
St. Helena Island and reach audiences from
Kiawah Island in the northeast to Savannah in the southwest.
The FCC approved the license on November 17, 1981, and it took the call sign WTGS, with a planned start date in September 1982.
The WTGS construction permit was purchased in 1983 by American Communications and Television (AC&T), a company based in
Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...
.
This cable and communications firm was making an incursion into new full-power and low-power independent stations across the country.
It was another two years before movement began in earnest to build the station, whose founding general manager and 20% owner, John Bailie, had previously built two other Southern independents:
WPTY
WPTY (105.3 FM, "Party 105") is a rhythmic hot AC formatted station licensed to Calverton- Roanoke, New York and serving eastern Long Island. The station is owned by JVC Media LLC with studios located in Ronkonkoma, New York and transmitter l ...
in
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
and
WAWS-TV in
Jacksonville
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
.
Planned programming included movies and children's programming in the morning and afternoon, with few commercial interruptions; Bailie stated that WTGS was the first TV station "programmed exclusively for the
Lowcountry
The Lowcountry (sometimes Low Country or just low country) is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. The region includes significant salt marshes and other coastal waterways, making it an impor ...
". The station signed on September 1, 1985, as the market's first general entertainment
independent
Independent or Independents may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups
* Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s
* Independ ...
outlet.
On July 19, 1985 (a few months before WTGS officially signed on), a federal judge struck down the "
must-carry
In cable television, governments apply a must-carry regulation stating that locally licensed television stations must be carried on a cable provider's system.
North America Canada
Under current CRTC regulations, the lowest tier of service on ...
" rule imposed by the FCC, which required cable television operators to carry all commercial over-the-air stations within 35 miles of its community of service. This decision was challenging for WTGS, as Bailie felt that it would cause the new station to become "squeezed out of the market". By August 30, Savannah Cablevision, along with seven other local cable operators, had agreed to carry WTGS. However, Plantation Cablevision and
Hargray Cablevision, along with "dozens" of other local cable operators, had refused to carry WTGS.
WTGS was one of the first stations to pay for carriage on a cable system, leasing a channel from Savannah Cablevision for $2,000 a month (). In particular, WTGS stated that Plantation Cablevision refused to carry the station, as they considered it to be competition; however, Plantation Cablevision stated that they did not carry WTGS due to the removal of the must-carry rule. Plantation Cablevision also denied having wanted WTGS to pay for access to its cable system.
The controversy continued that September, when Plantation Cablevision announced a new
emergency warning system for
Hilton Head Island
Hilton Head Island, sometimes referred to as simply Hilton Head, is a South Carolina Lowcountry, Lowcountry resort town and barrier island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. It is northeast of Savannah, Georgia, and southwest of C ...
. This angered Bailie, as he was concerned that those who did not subscribe to Plantation Cablevision's service would not be able to receive emergency information; WTGS decided to create its own emergency warning system instead.
That September, Bailie went to
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
at the invitation of broadcasting groups, in order to speak to congressional leaders who were concerned that the repeal of the must-carry rule would hurt independent stations such as WTGS. The next month, Bailie revisited Congress in order to comment to the House Copyright Committee about bills in consideration at the time which would reform "
compulsory license
A compulsory license provides that the owner of a patent or copyright licenses the use of their rights against payment either set by law or determined through some form of adjudication or arbitration. In essence, under a compulsory license, an i ...
" rules. That same month, Plantation Cablevision was "carefully documenting requests" for WTGS to be added to its cable lineup, and had sent out a questionnaire to subscribers in order to measure what viewers liked and disliked about the cable system. On December 27, 1985, Plantation Cablevision started to carry WTGS; the addition of WTGS removed Charleston stations
WCBD and
WCIV
WCIV (channel 36) is a television station in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV and ABC. The station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, and maintains studios on Allbritton Boulevard along US 17/701 (Johnnie ...
from the lineup.
WTGS was a charter affiliate of Fox at its October 1986 launch.
In May 1987, the station was profiled on the ''
MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour'', by which time it was so near to bankruptcy—due to its diminished ability to reach all TV homes in the region—that Bailie lived and slept in his office and drove a taxi cab the station had bought to promote the show ''
Taxi
A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice ...
''. Later that year, AC&T sold itself to new Florida-based owners, giving it an infusion of $500,000 in cash.
The new ownership moved the station's facilities south from Hardeeville to a site in
Chatham County, Georgia
Chatham County ( ) is located in the U.S. state of Georgia, on the state's Atlantic coast. The county seat and largest city is Savannah. One of the original counties of Georgia, Chatham County was created February 5, 1777, and is named after Will ...
, which would not be limited by height restrictions on a tower and be more centrally located for advertising sales purposes.
The new tower was activated in February 1990.
AC&T sold its two remaining stations, WTGS and
KOOG
A ''koog'' (plural: ''köge'') or ''groden'' is a type of polder found on the North Sea coast of Germany that is established by the construction of dykes enclosing the land which is then drained to form marshland. This type of land reclamation is ...
in
Ogden, Utah
Ogden is a city in and the county seat of Weber County, Utah, United States, approximately east of the Great Salt Lake and north of Salt Lake City. The population was 87,321 in 2020, according to the US Census Bureau, making it Utah's eighth ...
, to Trivest Financial Services Corporation in 1991.
Common operation with WJCL (19962014)
Licensee Hilton Head Television sold the station in 1996 for $7 million to LP Media, a company owned by Julius Curtis Lewis III. His father,
Julius Curtis Lewis Jr., was the majority owner and namesake of WJCL television. The two stations came under common operation at that time. Lewis sold WJCL in 1998 to Grapevine Communications of Atlanta for $19 million, and in a parallel transaction, LP Media sold WTGS to Brissette Communications, owned by Paul Brissette, for $20 million. After Grapevine Communications, having purchased and changed its name to GOCOM in 1999, became
Piedmont Television
Piedmont Television was a broadcasting company in the United States that owned television stations in smaller markets. The company was based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Piedmont was founded in 1996 as Grapevine Communications, and was originall ...
Holdings (owned by Brissette), WTGS was sold to Bluenose Broadcasting, a company owned by members of the Brissette family. Parkin Broadcasting purchased WTGS for $17.5 million in 2007, in tandem with
New Vision Television
New Vision Television was a broadcast company based in Santa Monica, California. Throughout its two decade plus history, the company owned or managed over 60 television stations in large and medium-sized markets.
History
New Vision I
Formed by ...
acquiring WJCL—and WJCL's option to buy WTGS's assets—for the same price.
The two stations moved out of WJCL's longtime Abercorn Street studios to the vacant third floor of the ''
Savannah Morning News
The ''Savannah Morning News'' is a daily newspaper in Savannah, Georgia. It is published by Gannett. The motto of the paper is "Light of the Coastal Empire and Lowcountry". The paper serves Savannah, its metropolitan area, and parts of South Ca ...
'' building in 2011, establishing a content partnership with the newspaper. In 2012,
LIN TV Corporation purchased New Vision Television and WJCL, which included a tandem sale of WTGS and two other stations that New Vision operated—
KTKA-TV
KTKA-TV (channel 49) is a television station in Topeka, Kansas, United States, affiliated with ABC and The CW Plus. It is owned by Vaughan Media, LLC, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexstar Media Gro ...
in
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka ( ; Kansa language, Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the Capital (political), capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the County seat, seat of Shawnee County, Kansas, Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the ...
, and
WYTV
WYTV (channel 33) is a television station in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Vaughan Media, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexstar Media Group, ow ...
in
Youngstown, Ohio
Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, Mahoning County. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of ...
—to Vaughan Media.
During
Super Bowl XLVIII
Super Bowl XLVIII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Denver Broncos and National Football Conference (NFC) champion Seattle Seahawks to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for th ...
, WTGS notably aired a two-minute long advertisement by local
personal injury lawyer
A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal services to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence of another person, company, government agency or any entity. Personal injury la ...
Jamie Casino, which featured a
thriller-styled retelling of how he stopped
representing "cold-hearted villains" to avenge the shooting death of his brother Michael Biancosino in 2012, culminating with Casino digging through a grave with a
sledgehammer
A sledgehammer is a tool with a large, flat, often metal head, attached to a long handle. The long handle combined with a heavy head allows the sledgehammer to gather momentum during a swing and apply a large force compared to hammers designed t ...
. The ad gained media attention following the game as a
viral video
A viral video is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhong Lan, Alexander Haupt ...
, and while the station did not provide exact numbers, a WTGS spokesperson stated that the ad was its most expensive advertising sale in history.
Sinclair Broadcast Group ownership (2014present)
On March 21, 2014, LIN Media entered into an agreement to merge with
Media General
Media General was an American media company based in Richmond, Virginia. The company's origins can be traced back to 1887 when Richmond attorney Joseph Bryan acquired ''The Richmond Daily Times'', which later became ''The Richmond Times-Dispatch' ...
in a $1.6 billion deal. Because Media General already owned NBC affiliate
WSAV-TV
WSAV-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Savannah, Georgia, United States, affiliated with NBC, The CW Plus, and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on East Victory Drive/US 80/ SR 26 in Savannah's Live ...
(channel 3), the companies were required to sell either WSAV or WJCL to another station owner in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to those rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibit
sharing agreements.
On August 20, Media General announced that it would keep WSAV and sell WJCL to
Hearst Television
Hearst Television, Inc. (formerly Hearst-Argyle Television) is a broadcasting company in the United States owned by Hearst Communications. From 1998 to mid-2009, the company traded its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ...
. It also would swap WTGS and television stations in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
, and
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Green Bay is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The county seat of Brown County, it is at the head of Green Bay (known locally as "the bay of Green Bay"), a sub-basin of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the Fox River. It is above sea lev ...
, in exchange for properties that Sinclair owned or was acquiring in
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...
;
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in Pe ...
; and
Tampa
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...
. Sinclair also acquired the right to purchase other WTGS assets from WTGS Television LLC.
The sale was completed on December 19.
Newscasts
Through a news share agreement established in 1996, WJCL produced a nightly prime time newscast on WTGS for the station from 1996 to 2016. On June 1, 2016, WJCL ceased producing the newscast for WTGS, and Sinclair took production in-house. The news program is produced and presented from
WPDE-TV
WPDE-TV (channel 15) is a television station licensed to Florence, South Carolina, United States, serving the Pee Dee and Grand Strand regions of South Carolina and affiliated with ABC and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which al ...
in
Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach is a resort city on the east coast of the United States in Horry County, South Carolina. It is located in the center of a long and continuous stretch of beach known as "The Grand Strand" in the northeastern part of the state. Its ...
, using a local staff of seven.
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
WTGS discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
UHF channel 28, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to
transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009).
The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 27 to channel 28.
It was then
repacked to channel 26 in 2020.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wtgs
Television channels and stations established in 1985
1985 establishments in South Carolina
TGS
Fox network affiliates
Comet (TV network) affiliates
Antenna TV affiliates
TBD (TV network) affiliates
Charge! (TV network) affiliates
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Jasper County, South Carolina
Beaufort County, South Carolina