|
WIS, virtual and VHF digital channel 10, is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. The station is owned by Raycom Media. WIS maintains studio facilities located on Bull and Gervais Streets (U.S. 1 and 378) in downtown Columbia, and its transmitter is located on Rush Road (southeast of I-20) in rural southwestern Kershaw County, outside Lugoff.〔http://gallery.bostonradio.org/2003-03/columbia/100-00933-lrg.html WIS-TV tower〕 On cable, the station is available on Time Warner Cable channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 1203. ==History== The station first signed on the air on November 7, 1953. The station's first telecast was a college football game between the University of South Carolina and the University of North Carolina. The station was originally owned by the Broadcasting Company of the South, a subsidiary of the Liberty Life Insurance Company, owners of WIS radio (560 AM, now WVOC). Charles Batson signed the station on the air, and remained the station's president and general manager until his retirement in 1983. It was the fourth television station to sign on in South Carolina and the third in the Columbia market, signing on just four months after WCOS-TV (channel 25) – which ceased operations in 1956 – and two months after WNOK-TV (channel 67, now WLTX on channel 19, where it moved in 1961). WIS is the third-longest continuously operating station in the state, behind WCSC-TV in Charleston and WNOK/WLTX. WIS radio (whose call letters stood for "Wonderful Iodine State," in reference to the abundance of iodine in the South Carolina soil) received the last new three-letter call sign in the U.S. on January 23, 1930, and the call sign was later shared with its television sibling. The station has been an NBC affiliate since its sign-on, owing to its radio sister's longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network. However, until 1961, when channel 25 returned to the air as WCCA-TV (now WOLO-TV), it maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC, airing its programming outside of NBC network timeslots. WIS-TV was a major beneficiary of an exception to the Federal Communications Commission's "2½ + 1" plan for allocating VHF television bandwidth. In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available, and 69 UHF channels (which was later reduced to 56 with the removal of high-band channels 70-83 in the early 1980s). The VHF bands were more desirable because signals broadcasting on that band traveled a longer distance. Because there were only twelve VHF channels available, there were limitations as to how closely the stations could be spaced. With the release of the FCC's ''Sixth Report and Order'' in 1952, the Commission outlined a new allocation table for VHF licenses and opened up the UHF band. Through these initiatives, almost all of the United States would be able to receive two commercial VHF channels plus one non-commercial allocation. Most of the rest of the country ("1/2") would be able to receive a third VHF channel. Other areas of the country would be designated as "UHF islands," since they were too close to larger cities for VHF service. The "2" networks became CBS and NBC, "+1" represented noncommercial educational (public television) stations, and "1/2" became ABC, which, as the weakest network, usually wound up with the UHF allocation where no VHF allocation was available. However, Columbia was sandwiched between Charlotte (which had respectively been awarded channels 3 and 9) to the north; Florence/Myrtle Beach (channel 8, later 13) to the east; Charleston (channels 2, 4, 5, and 7) and Savannah (channels 3, 9, and 11) to the south; and Augusta (channels 6 and 12) to the west. This created a huge "doughnut" in central South Carolina where there could be only ''one'' VHF license. WIS-TV was fortunate to gain that license, providing many people in that part of South Carolina with their first clear reception of a television signal. One of the country's most dominant television stations, it has been the far-and-away market leader for most of its history. Channel 10 originally broadcast from a self-supporting tower atop its studios on Bull Street. In 1959, WIS-TV activated its transmitter tower in Lugoff; the tallest structure located east of the Mississippi River at the time, it more than doubled the station's coverage area and provided at least secondary coverage as far north as Charlotte, as far south as Augusta, as far west as Greenwood and as far east as Florence. This included all but five of the state's 46 counties; in fact, until the arrival of cable television in the market in the late 1970s, channel 10 was one of only two stations that brought a clear signal to much of the outlying portions of the market – the other being WRLK-TV (channel 32), one of the two South Carolina Educational Television stations that serve the area. It would remain the tallest structure in South Carolina until Florence's WPDE-TV activated its tower in 1981. The station's original tower is still used as a backup; it is a longtime fixture of Columbia's skyline and is turned into a "Christmas tree of lights" during the holiday season. For many years, WIS was one of two NBC affiliates that served the Florence/Myrtle Beach market, since that market was one of the few areas on the East Coast without its own NBC affiliate. It was the NBC affiliate of record for the Pee Dee (Florence) side of the market while Wilmington's WECT was the affiliate of record for Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand. However, most cable systems on the Myrtle Beach side of the market began carrying both stations in the mid-1980s. After the Federal Communications Commission passed the syndication exclusivity rule in 1989, WIS set up a "virtual station" for the Florence/Myrtle Beach market that aired separate syndicated programming for the area. It also began selling advertising specific to the market as well, mostly on the Pee Dee side. This ended when Raycom Media signed on an NBC affiliate within that market, WMBF-TV, in August 2008. The Broadcasting Company of the South acquired several other television stations over the years. It was renamed as the Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation in 1965, with WIS radio and television serving as its flagship stations. Later in the decade, Liberty Life reorganized itself as The Liberty Corporation, with Liberty Life and Cosmos as subsidiaries. Cosmos sold WIS radio in 1986, but kept the WIS calls for channel 10. Liberty sold off its insurance businesses in 2000, bringing channel 10 directly under the Liberty Corporation banner. In 1991, after being known on-air as "WIS-TV 10" for most of its history, the station began branding itself as simply "WIS" (this was one year before the "-TV" suffix was officially dropped from its callsign); this lasted until 2003, when it branded as "WIS News 10" for both general and newscast branding purposes. On August 25, 2005, Liberty agreed to merge with Montgomery, Alabama-based Raycom Media. At the time, Raycom had already owned Fox affiliate WACH (channel 57). Raycom could not keep both stations as FCC duopoly rules forbid common ownership of two of the four highest-rated television stations in a single market based on Nielsen total-day ratings data for a given calendar month. Additionally, Columbia has only eight full-power stations, one fewer than what ownership rules allow to legally permit a duopoly in any case. Raycom opted to keep WIS and sold WACH to Barrington Broadcasting. 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「WIS」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|