WMC-TV

Not to be confused withWindows Media Center.

WMC-TV

Memphis, Tennessee United States
Channels	Digital:5 (VHF), to move to 30 (UHF) Virtual:5
Branding	WMC-TV 5;Action News5
Programming
Affiliations	5.1:NBC for others, see§ Subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Gray Television (Gray Television Licensee,LLC)
Sister stations	WTME-LD
History
First air date	December 11, 1948(1948-12-11)
Former call signs	WMCT (1948–1967)
Former channel number(s)	Analog:4 (VHF, 1948–1952), 5 (VHF, 1952–2009) Digital:52 (UHF, 1999–2009)
Former affiliations	All secondary: CBS(1948–1953) ABC(1948–1955) DuMont(1948–1956)
Call signmeaning	MemphisCommercial Appeal(derived fromWMC radio)
Technical information
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	19184
ERP	34.5kW 515 kW (CP)
HAAT	308 m (1,010 ft) 307.7 m (1,009.5 ft) (CP)
Transmitter coordinates	35°10′7″N89°53′6″W 35°10′9″N89°53′10″W(CP)
Translator(s)	WDDY-LD 15 (UHF)Corinth, MS W20DW-D 20 (UHF)Clarksdale, MS WANF-LD32 (UHF)Dyersburg, TN
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	www.actionnews5.com

WMC-TV(channel 5) is a television station inMemphis, Tennessee,United States, affiliated withNBC.It is owned byGray Televisionalongsidelow-powerTelemundoaffiliateWTME-LD(channel 14). The two stations share studios on Union Avenue inmidtown Memphis;WMC-TV's transmitter is located in northeast Memphis, near the suburb ofBartlett, Tennessee.

History

The station first signed on the air on November 13, 1948, as WMCT, initially transmitting on VHF channel 4. WMCT was also the first television station in the state of Tennessee. This first transmission coincided with being the first football game telecast in Tennessee—the tenth meeting atCrump StadiumbetweenTennesseeandOle Miss.Daily programming for WMCT began on December 11, 1948.The station originally broadcast from studios located inside the Goodwyn Institute Building in Downtown Memphis.It was owned by theE. W. Scripps Company,along with the city's morning newspaper,The Commercial Appeal,the afternoonMemphis Press-Scimitar,WMC radio(790 AM), and WMCF (99.7 FM, nowWLFP). As the only television station in Memphis for its first several years of operation, WMCT aired programming from all four national networks of the time: NBC,CBS,ABCand the now-defunctDuMont Television Network.However, it carried NBC as a primary affiliation, owing to WMC radio's longtime affiliation with theNBC Red Network.It lost CBS programming whenWHBQ-TV(channel 13) signed on in September 1953, but continued to share ABC programming with WHBQ until January 1956, when WREC-TV (channel 3, nowWREG-TV) launched as a full-time CBS affiliate with WHBQ taking over the ABC affiliation full-time. It lost DuMont when that network ceased operations in 1956. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with theNTA Film Network.The station moved to VHF channel 5 on November 23, 1952, due to co-channel interference with fellow NBC affiliate WSM-TV inNashville(now sister stationWSMV) also on channel 4; however, this left WMCT shortspaced to another Nashville station, WLAC-TV (nowWTVF), when that station signed on in 1954.

The 1967-90 incarnation of WMC-TV's riverboat logo.

Since at least the 1950s, WMC-TV's logo has included an illustration of ariverboat,a symbol of theMississippi Riverregion which the station serves. Since that time, its newscasts have opened with a riverboat whistle; its former AM sister used a whistle as its sounder from the 1930s to the 1990s. The station was known as "The Showplace of the South" during the 1960s. It dropped the "T" from its callsign (simultaneously tacking on the "-TV" suffix to it) onJanuary 1,1967 (the co-owned FM station had similarly changed its call letters from WMCF to WMC-FM in 1960). Also in 1967, it began using a "5" logo with a resemblance to the numerical typeface found on a five-dollar bill, which would be used for over two decades.

WMC-TV's current studios and offices at 1960 Union Avenue.

Anchor desk

The WMC stations moved to their current location at 1960 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis in 1959 and celebrated with a broadcast hosted by comedianGeorge Gobel.In 1960, the stations broadcast live remotes ofJohn F. KennedyandRichard Nixon,who both came to Memphis tocampaign for the presidency.WhenMartin Luther King Jr.came to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike that set the stage for hisassassinationin 1968, then-station general manager Mori Greiner established an unprecedented program calledThe 40% Speaks,in an effort to promote racial healing in the community. It was hosted on alternating weeks by Rev. James Lawson, a leader in the civil rights movement and proponent of nonviolent social change, and Rev. Ben Hooks, who went on to become the first Black head of the FCC and then head of the national NAACP. That show was the first time Black people had a television platform in Memphis to talk about community issues. The show evolved intoFace to Face,which ran for two more decades and regularly addressed issues of race and social justice with multicultural panels and crew members.

After many years of solid management, Scripps sold WMC-AM-FM-TV to Atlanta businessman Bert Ellis and his new company, Ellis Communications, on July 19, 1993, for $65 million-a handsome return on Scripps' original investment in WMC radio in 1923.Ellis was a longtime fan of his hometown's long-dominant station,WSB-TV,and styled his new broadcast group after that station. Under Ellis, channel 5 adopted a blue-and-gold color scheme similar to the one used then as now by WSB-TV. Two of WMC's siblings adopted the logo style as well:KSLA-TVinShreveport, Louisiana,andWECTinWilmington, North Carolina.All three stations use modified versions of the same logo style today.

Ellis, in turn, sold the stations to a new broadcasting group formed by theRetirement Systems of Alabama,and subsequently namedRaycom Media(that also purchasedAFLAC's broadcasting unit), in 1996; Raycom sold off the radio stations toInfinity Broadcastingin 2000. (They are now owned byAudacy.)

On June 25, 2018,Atlanta-basedGray Televisionannounced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets (consisting of Raycom's 63 existing owned-and/or-operated television stations, including WMC-TV), and Gray's 93 television stations) under Gray's corporate umbrella. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders acquired preferred stock held by Raycom–resulted in WMC-TV gaining newsister stationsin nearby markets, including theKnoxvilleduopolyof CBS affiliateWVLT-TVandCWaffiliateWBXX-TV(at the time Gray's only Tennessee properties; also while separating it fromWTNZ) and ABC/CW affiliateWTOK-TVinMeridian, Mississippi,in addition to its current Raycom sister stations.The sale was approved on December 20,and was completed on January 2, 2019.

Programming

Past program preemptions and deferrals

Like many NBC affiliates from the 1960s through the 1990s, WMC-TV began preempting a handful of NBC programs, mostly a sizeable portion of the network'sdaytimelineup, in favor of syndicated talk shows,although NBC's daytime reruns of sitcoms would often continue to air in the early morning hours (between 5 and 6 am). Although NBC had traditionally been far less tolerant of preemptions than the other networks, it was more than satisfied with WMC-TV, which then as now was one of NBC's strongest affiliates.

Local programming

In 1979, in an effort to build its viewership forThe Today Show,WMC created a lead-inmorning programtitledWake-Up Call.For the first three years, it was hosted by longtime WMC personality Dick Hawley and Peggy Rolfes. Denise DuBois replaced Rolfes in 1982 and co-hosted for the next ten years. By the mid-1980s,Wake Up Callwas the highest-rated talk show on local television in the U.S., with a 52% share of the viewing audience.

A popular local program on WMC-TV wasMagicland,a live-audience magic series for children, hosted by anchor/announcerDick "Mr. Magic" Williams,which aired Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. from 1966 until Williams' retirement in 1989. It is cited in theGuinness Book of World Recordsas the longest-running magic series in television history, having amassed 1,200 original episodes in its 23-year run. Williams died in 2020 at the age of 92.

Sports programming

One of the station's first broadcasts was afootballgame atCrump Stadiumin Memphis. WMCT first broadcast what was then known simply asChampionshipWrestling(later to becomeUSWAChampionship Wrestlingin 1989) by stringing cables across the street from its studio to the since-demolished Ellis Auditorium in downtown Memphis early in the 1950s. Wrestling returned to Channel 5 in 1977, after several years on WHBQ-TV, and for many years the very popular live in-studio professional wrestling program was broadcast live on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 11:30 am. Some of the wrestlers became regional celebrities from their exposure on the program, includingJerry "The King" Lawler,whose fame earned him his own locally produced Sunday sports program on channel 5 during the 1980s.USWA Championship Wrestlingeventually became the last remaining program of its kind in the U.S., before its cancellation in 1997. Long before nationalPGA Tourbroadcasts began, WMC-TV broadcast live professional golf from theMemphis Open,with a three-camera remote truck providing coverage from three greens.

News operation

WMC-TV presently broadcasts 44 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with seven hours each weekday, and4+1⁄2hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). The station's newsroom is named after longtime employee Ed Greaney, who died on June 19, 2005. Greaney started working at WMCT in 1949, only two months after the station signed on and worked at channel 5 until retiring in late 2000.

Appropriately for a station founded by a newspaper, WMC-TV has a strong local news tradition. For the better part of its first four decades on the air, it was the dominant station in Memphis. However, rival WREG closed the gap in the late 1980s, and for the next two decades the two stations waged a spirited battle in theNielsen ratings.WREG would not overtake WMC until the February 2006 sweeps period with the appointment of former WHBQ anchor Claudia Barr and former WMC morning anchor Richard Ransom as its evening anchors. Since that time, WREG has beaten WMC in the mornings, at 10 p.m. and on weekends. For the May 2013 sweeps period, WREG's newscasts beat WMC's in most timeslots (except at 5 and 6 pm), while WMC beat WREG in the 6 p.m. timeslot by.3 of a point. During the February 2014 sweeps, WMC fell to second place in all timeslots, trailing WREG by several points.

In October 2006, WMC debuted an overhauled news set (the first set update since 1995), along with an updated graphics and music package. On July 2, 2008, WMC-TV became the first television station in the Memphis market and the second in Tennessee (behind WTVF in Nashville) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts inhigh definition.

On August 22, 2011, WMC-TV debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast, which replacedThe Oprah Winfrey Show(which ended its run in May of that year) and competes against WREG's newscast in the same timeslot.On June 26, 2013, WMC-TV debuted an hour-long weekday morning newscast from 7–8 a.m. on itsBounce TV-affiliated second digital subchannel with a heavy emphasis on weather and traffic updates.The 7–8 a.m. Bounce newscast ended in 2017. On September 10, 2018, WMC-TV expanded its weekday morning newscast with an extra half-hour starting at 4 a.m.

Notable former on-air staff

• Dave Brown– chief meteorologist, hostedChampionship Wrestling(1977–2015)
• Jovita Moore– news reporter; moved toWSB-TVin Atlanta in 1998 (died in 2021)
• Lance Russell– freelance host; best known as the host of the liveChampionship Wrestlingprogram on Saturday mornings (joined the station in 1977 fromWHBQ-TV;died in 2017)
• Dick Williams– host ofMagicland(1966–1989; died in 2020)

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal ismultiplexed:

Subchannels of WMC-TV

Channel	Res.	Aspect	Short name	Programming
5.1	1080i	16:9	WMC-NBC	NBC
5.2	480i		Bounce	Bounce TV
5.3			The365	Action News 5 Plus
5.4			Oxygen	Oxygen
5.5			WMC-5	The365

Analog-to-digital conversion

WMC-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, overVHFchannel 5, at 12:01 a.m. on June 12, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television.The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transitionUHFchannel 52, which was among the high band UHF channels (52–69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 5 for post-transition operations.

Out-of-market coverage

WMC-TV was historically the default NBC affiliate on cable and over-the-air in two neighboringmedia markets—Jackson, TennesseeandJonesboro, Arkansas,as NBC never affiliated with any stations in either of these markets. In 2014,WNBJ-LDsigned on the air as the Jackson area's own NBC affiliate. WMC-TV remains intact on the area's cable system of the Jackson Energy Authority. That system also carried Nashville's WSMV until the sign-on of WNBJ.

In late January 2015, WMC's ABC-affiliated sister stationKAIT(channel 8) in Jonesboro converted their second subchannel, KAIT-DT2, into an NBC affiliate for the Jonesboro area. In addition, WMC-TV's over-the-air signal still provides city-grade coverage into both Jonesboro and Jackson. The central and southern portions of the two southernmost counties in the Missouri Bootheel can also still pick up WMC-TV's signal.

External links

• Official website