WTBS

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WTBS is a TV station on channel 17 (DTV channel 20) in the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan area.

Originally started with the callsign WJRJ, the station commenced broadcasting on September 1, 1967 and in January 1970, Ted Turner, who ran his father's billboard business and also owned radio stations, bought the low-rated UHF outlet, which was Atlanta's first independent, non-network station. Little did anyone know at the time, himself included, that he would lay the seed for the eventual TBS television empire there.

After using the callsign WTCG for most of its first decade under Turner's ownership, the station became WTBS in 1979 after Turner donated the money for a new transmitter to the MIT student radio station (which then held the WTBS callsign) in exchange for that station getting new call letters (WMBR). [link]

The cable TBS is mostly a simulcast of flagship WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally produced public affairs programming on Sunday mornings, and certain special events. Unlike WTBS, the national TBS is not obligated to carry public affairs or educational "E/I" programming for children, because it is a cable channel.

The DTV channel 20 is diplexed into a master TV antenna at the tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road Northeast, in Atlanta's Midtown neighborhood.

WTCG, which reportedly stood for "Watch This Channel Grow" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System) was one of the first TV stations to broadcast via satellite. It, along with WOR-TV in New York City (now WWOR-TV) and WGN-TV in Chicago, were among America's first "superstations," independent channels distributed to cable systems throughout their respective regions--or the entire country.

At 1 p.m. on December 17, 1976, WTCG's signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to its four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama; and Newton, Kansas. All four cable systems started receiving the sleepy 1948 Dana Andrews - Cesar Romero film Deep Waters, which was already 30 minutes in progress. Instantly, WTCG added 24,000 more households to its viewing audience, which consisted of 675,000 households in metropolitan Atlanta. That number would grow exponentially in the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the South (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball were, and still are, highly popular), but eventually including all of the U.S.

HBO (which eventually would become co-owned with TBS) first began using satellite transmissions to distribute its programming nationally in 1975, but it was a network that required viewers to pay a subscription fee. Ted Turner's innovation signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.

The channel 17 transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (in downtown Atlanta), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower. The building at this site was once home to the studios of WAGA and later channel 17, during the WJRJ years. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the studios were moved to the former Progressive Club site a few blocks west at 1050 Techwood Drive. The Techwood Drive studios also served as the studio facilities for WTBS' Saturday night wrestling programs Georgia Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling.

For more information on national TBS programming, see the TBS article.

Screengrab of WTBS 17 Atlanta regional ident from 1981

External links

• [WTBS (Atlanta)]
• [Query the FCC's TV station database for WTBS]