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WATE-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for East Tennessee licensed to Knoxville. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 26 (or virtual channel 6.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter on Sharp's Ridge in North Knoxville. The station can also be seen on Charter channel 13 in SD, 713 in HD as well as Comcast channel 13 in SD, 1006 in HD, Knology channel 901, and AT&T U-Verse Channel 6. Owned by Media General, WATE has studios in the Greystone mansion on North Broadway/SR 33/SR 71/US 441. ==History== Channel 6 was East Tennessee's first television station, signing on the air at 8 PM on October 1, 1953 as WROL-TV. The race to be the first television station in the eastern part of the state was won by WROL-TV when the tower of WJHL-TV in Johnson City (ironically, now a sister station to channel 6) collapsed a few months earlier. That station would have been first to sign-on, but WROL claimed the title by only 25 days. Its first studios were underneath the self-supporting tower on Sharp's Ridge which was one of the tallest man-made structures in Tennessee at the time. It was owned by local insurance executive Paul Mountcastle and a small group of investors along with WROL-AM 950. At the time, Mountcastle was chairman of the board of the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee of Nashville, who signed on WLAC-TV (now WTVF) in that city in 1954. WROL-TV signed-on as a primary NBC affiliate because of WROL-AM's longtime affiliation with NBC Radio and also shared ABC programming with CBS affiliate WSKT-TV (now WVLT-TV). Although NBC held a firm grip on WROL, DuMont tried unsuccessfully several times to get a secondary affiliation with the station when it was not broadcasting NBC and ABC. Channel 6 opted to fill its non-network schedule with local programming, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate. DuMont was forced to join WTVK on a secondary basis. CBS also made many attempts to grab a primary affiliation with Knoxville's only VHF station, but the owners of WROL held firm despite many financial incentives from the other networks especially CBS. The station changed its call letters to WATE-TV in 1955 with the new call letters not really standing for anything. John Reese, the station's program director at the time stated "those call letters were the next available at the FCC." In 1956, WATE dropped ABC when WBIR-TV signed-on and took the CBS affiliation from WTVK, leaving WTVK the ABC station by default. At that time, all three networks had three affiliates in Knoxville. WROL-AM later changed its call letters to WATE-AM to correspond with the television station. WATE-TV had a role in the failure of WBIR to have its first antenna tower on Zachary Ridge next to House Mountain in 1965 for better coverage. This station used a rather ingenious way to force its chief rival station to build a tower on Zachary Ridge instead of the much higher House Mountain. WATE simply purchased the top of House Mountain from the property owners. With no property for the tower base on the Mountain, WBIR had no choice but to build a much taller tower in the valley two years later.〔John Reece, interview. PM Magazine. WATE-TV, Knoxville, Tennessee. 30 September 1983〕 As was broadcast tradition in the 1950s, the channel's sales offices moved to Downtown Knoxville and the studios were moved to a new building on North Broadway. In 1965, Mountcastle and his group sold WATE-TV to Nationwide Communications of Columbus, Ohio. That same year, the station moved into and renovated the historic 19th century Greystone Mansion that is now on the National Register of Historic Places. At the same time, WATE-AM (which had changed frequency to 620 kilohertz) was sold off changing its call letters to WETE. It is now WRJZ, at AM 620. The self-supporting tower on Sharp's Ridge was dismantled in 1975 when the station built a broadcasting tower alongside it. In September 1979, WATE swapped its NBC affiliation with WTVK and became an ABC affiliate. ABC become the highest-rated in the country and wanted a stronger station in Knoxville. At the time, WATE was the market leader with a strong VHF signal in East Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, and Southeastern Kentucky. WTVK's UHF signal on channel 26 was marginal at best in much of the Knoxville area and many viewers in East Tennessee and Southeastern Kentucky had never seen ABC before. Coincidentally, seventeen years later, WATE's digital signal would be broadcast on digital channel 26. During its first fifty years, WATE pioneered many locally-produced programs like ''The Homemaker Show'' hosted by Mary Starr. Housewives were glued to television sets as Mary showed them the latest recipes and homemaking tips. ''Star Time'', hosted by local businessman Jim Clayton, featured many local country music acts and ''The Cas Walker Show'' was a local country music show hosted by former Knoxville Mayor Cas Walker who also owned a chain of grocery stores in Eastern Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky. The show featured Dolly Parton before she became famous. In 1981, the station premiered ''PM Magazine'' with MayCay Beeler and Calvin Sneed. The popular syndicated show highlighted unusual people, places, and things from the East Tennessee/Southeastern Kentucky area. In 1993, Nationwide sold its three ABC-affiliated television stations (WATE, WBAY-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and WRIC-TV in Richmond, Virginia) to Young Broadcasting. Young Broadcasting emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2010, and the new company was renamed New Young Broadcasting, Inc. As a contingency of the reorganization plan, Young has a limited management Agreement with Gray Television of Atlanta, Georgia to allow that company management all of Young's stations except WATE, WLNS-TV in Lansing, Michigan, and KRON-TV in San Francisco. Gray was not allowed to operate WATE or WLNS because it also owns WVLT in the Knoxville market and WILX-TV in Lansing. Young Broadcasting merged with Media General on November 12, 2013. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WATE-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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