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WXII-TV, virtual channel 12 (UHF digital channel 31), is an NBC-affiliated television station serving Greensboro, High Point and its city of license Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. The station is owned by the Hearst Television subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation. WXII maintains studio facilities located on Coliseum Drive in Winston-Salem, and its transmitter is located on Sauratown Mountain in Stokes County. The station is carried on cable channel 11 in most parts of the market. ==History== The station first signed on the air on September 30, 1953 as WSJS-TV. It is the third-oldest surviving television station in North Carolina, behind Charlotte's WBTV and channel 12's rival in the Greensboro market, WFMY-TV. The station at first was owned by a subsidiary of Piedmont Publishing (publishers of the ''Winston-Salem Journal'' and ''Twin City Sentinel'', along with WSJS radio – 600 AM, and 104.1 FM, now WTQR) and Hollywood star Mary Pickford and her husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers.〔''The Winston-Salem Journal, Magnolia Trees and Pulitzer Prizes'', by Frank V. Tursi, page 182.〕 Johnny Beckman, an early employee, recalled working at WSJS-TV in those early years: The station has always been affiliated with NBC. ABC programming was shared (through a secondary affiliation) with WFMY until WGHP (channel 8) signed on in September 1963. The station's operations were originally housed from the basement of the WSJS studios on Spruce Street in Winston-Salem. The first broadcast was of the first game of the 1953 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Channel 12 originally broadcast its signal from an antenna near Kernersville. WSJS-TV opened its new transmitter site atop Sauratown Mountain in 1955. In 1959, Piedmont exercised an option agreement to buy out Pickford and Rogers, and gained complete control of the station. The matter ended up in court when Pickford and Rogers felt that Piedmont had undervalued the amount of their shares, but was eventually resolved in Piedmont's favor. When Piedmont Publishing was sold to Media General in 1968, Gordon Gray, the longtime publisher of both papers, held onto WSJS-AM-FM-TV through Triangle Broadcasting. Gray also received the franchise for the city's cable system. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that media companies could not own both a television station and a cable system in the same market. Gray was thus forced to sell WSJS-TV in 1972 to Multimedia Inc., who changed the station's call letters to WXII-TV (the letters "XII" from "WXII" are the Roman numerals for the station's channel number number, "12"). At the time of the call letter change, the station ran a promotional ad parodying the death of Julius Caesar to amplify the Roman numeral theme. Two other stations in the market later switched to Roman numeral call letters (WXLV-TV, channel 45 and WLXI-TV, channel 61; WGSR-LD's previous incarnation also used Roman numerals as WXIV). Multimedia swapped WXII and WFBC-TV (now WYFF) in Greenville, South Carolina to Pulitzer in 1983 in exchange for KSD-TV (now KSDK) in St. Louis. When Pulitzer exited the broadcasting industry in 1997, Hearst-Argyle Television bought the entire group, including WXII. That same year, Hearst bought WETR (830 AM) and changed its callsign to WXII, and switched it to a news radio format that included audio from some WXII newscasts.〔Jeri Rowe, "A Powerful AM Radio Station Gives NBC Affiliate WXII a Bigger Punch Regionwide", ''Greensboro News & Record'', November 6, 1998.〕 On July 9, 2012, Hearst Television became involved in a carriage dispute with Time Warner Cable, resulting in WXII being pulled from the provider's Piedmont Triad systems and being temporarily replaced with Nexstar Broadcasting Group-owned WBRE-TV from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania;〔(Winston-Salem Journal: "WXII off Time Warner Cable, due to contract dispute", July 10, 2012. )〕 Time Warner opted for such a distant signal like WBRE, as it did not have the rights to carry any NBC affiliate closer in proximity.〔(Orlando Sentinel: "WESH off Bright House; Pennsylvania station is substitute", July 10, 2012. )〕 The substitution of WBRE in place of WXII lasted until July 19, 2012, when Hearst and Time Warner reached a new carriage agreement.〔(Broadcasting & Cable: "Hearst TV, Time Warner Cable End Viewer Blackout", July 19, 2012. )〕 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「WXII-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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