12/22/2023 0 Comments Action news 5![]() ![]() Under Ellis, channel 5 adopted a blue-and-gold color scheme similar to the one used then as now by WSB-TV. ![]() Ellis was a longtime fan of his hometown's long-dominant station, WSB-TV, and styled his new broadcast group after that station. When Patterson left WMC-TV, his replacement was a white professor from Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis.Īfter many years of solid management, Scripps sold WMC-AM-FM-TV to Atlanta businessman Bert Ellis and his new company, Ellis Communications, on Jfor $65 million-a handsome return on Scripps' original investment in WMC radio in 1923. In an odd illustration of how little real integration had occurred in local television, the first host of this program was news anchor Dave Patterson, who himself was Caucasian. came to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike that set the stage for his assassination in 1968, then-station general manager Mori Greiner established an unprecedented program called The 40% Speaks, in an effort to promote racial healing in the community. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who both came to Memphis to campaign for the presidency. In 1960, the stations broadcast live remotes of John F. The WMC stations moved to their current location at 1960 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis in 1959 and celebrated with a broadcast hosted by comedian George Gobel. ![]() WMC-TV's current studios and offices at 1960 Union Avenue. 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. It dropped the "T" from its callsign (simultaneously tacking on the "-TV" suffix to it) on Janu(the co-owned FM station had similarly changed its call letters from WMCF to WMC-FM in 1960). The station was known as "The Showplace of the South" during the 1960s. 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. Since at least the 1950s, WMC-TV's logo has included an illustration of a riverboat, a symbol of the Mississippi River region which the station serves. The 1967-90 incarnation of WMC-TV's famous riverboat logo. The station moved to VHF channel 5 on November 23, 1952, due to co-channel interference with fellow NBC affiliate WSM-TV in Nashville (now sister station WSMV) also on channel 4 however, this left WMCT shortspaced to another Nashville station, WLAC-TV (now WTVF), when that station signed on in 1954. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. It lost DuMont when that network ceased operations in 1956. It lost CBS programming when WHBQ-TV (channel 13) signed on in September 1953, but continued to share ABC programming with WHBQ until January 1956, when WREC-TV (channel 3, now WREG-TV) launched as a full-time CBS affiliate with WHBQ taking over the ABC affiliation full-time. However, it carried NBC as a primary affiliation, owing to WMC radio's longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network. ![]() 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, ABC and the now-defunct DuMont Television Network. Scripps Company, along with the city's morning newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, the afternoon Memphis Press-Scimitar, WMC radio ( 790 AM), and WMCF (99.7 FM, now WLFP). The station originally broadcast from studios located inside the Goodwyn Institute Building in Downtown Memphis. Daily programming for WMCT began on December 11, 1948. This first transmission coincided with being the first football game telecast in Tennessee-the tenth meeting at Crump Stadium between Tennessee and Ole Miss. WMCT was also the first television station in the state of Tennessee. The station first signed on the air on November 13, 1948, as WMCT, initially transmitting on VHF channel 4. Its studios are located on Union Avenue in midtown Memphis, and its transmitter is located in northeast Memphis, near the suburb of Bartlett, Tennessee. WMC-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Television. ![]()
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