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WTVA

Encyclopedia : W : WT : WTV : WTVA

WTVA is the NBC television affiliate for the Tupelo-Columbus-West Point, Mississippi television market. The station is owned by the Spain family. Its transmitter is located 2.1 miles northwest of Woodland, Mississippi.

Contents

History

Channel 9 was the brainchild of Frank K. Spain, who graduated from Mississippi State University at the age of 19 with a degree in engineering and had helped build WRC-TV in Washington, DC. While serving as technical director at WHEN-TV in Syracuse, New York (now WTVH); he dreamed of bringing a television station to Tupelo, where he'd spent most of his childhood.

Spain applied for a license in 1953, which was granted in 1956. The station first signed on the air on March 18, 1957, with the call letters WTWV. The station's equipment (antenna, transmitter, cameras, etc.) were all hand-built in Spain's garage, backyard and basement in Syracuse.

Spain hoped to parlay his good relations with NBC officials into getting his new station an NBC affiliation. However, several NBC executives believed that Tupelo was not a desirable place for a local station because of its rural location, dozens of miles away from cities such as Memphis and Birmingham. Nonetheless, they told Spain that if he could figure out a way to obtain a network signal, he could carry it. Spain allegedly negotiated under-the-table deals with WMC-TV in Memphis, and set up a network of microwave relays and repeater systems to carry the WMC-TV signal to Tupelo. Station engineers then switched back and forth between the WMC-TV signal when network programming aired. This setup, necessary in the days before satellites, enabled WTWV to bring NBC programming to northeast Mississippi.

In the mid-1960s, WTWV was approached about market affiliation with the ABC network. Spain, who was still receiving "bootleg" NBC programming, told NBC executives that ABC was willing to pay him. This prompted NBC to negotiate a formal deal with Spain, and WTWV officially became an NBC affiliate. Still, the station did carry some ABC programming in off hours until WVSB (now WLOV) in nearby West Point began operating on channel 27 in 1983. Ironically, WTVA now has an LMA with that station (see below).

WTWV built a brand-new tower in 1979 that not only brought a city-grade signal to Columbus for the first time, but gave the station one of the largest coverage areas in the country. Also in 1979, it changed its call letters to WTVA, in honor of Tupelo's recognition as the first Tennessee Valley Authority city in the Southeast. The WTWV callsign was later used on a radio station in Mashpee, Massachusetts, a station unrelated to the current WTVA.

The station is still owned by the Spain family today. Frank Spain died on April 25, 2006, at the age of 78. Frank was the former CEO of WTVA, Inc.; his wife Jane, the current station manager, has now assumed the CEO position, continuing the Spain family ownership.

Innovations

WTWV was the first commercial television station in Mississippi to devote the entire morning broadcast schedule to educational, or children's, programming. The station also made history as the first television station in Mississippi to broadcast a live basketball game.

Newscast titles

Weekday programs

Weekend programs

High-Definition, Digital Television, and the FCC

Though WTVA has been assigned a digital channel, the station currently only broadcasts in analog. All NBC HD network programming is shown as 4:3 letterbox, such as Late Night With Conan O'Brien. At this time, the station does not have the ability to transmit digitally or in high-definition (its audio signal is mono as well). By comparison, WTVA's sister station, FOX affiliate WLOV, broadcasts network programming in high-definition over an in-house HD transmitter. The transmitter's maximum range is unknown.

It is expected that WTVA will be required to make the changeover soon, as the FCC's deadline for nationwide affiliate conversion to HD is January 7, 2007.

Current Personalities

Criticisms

One criticism among some WTVA viewers is the use of an on-screen logo at a corner of a television screen, commonly referred to as a station bug. WTVA, as well as WLOV and WKDH, displays its bug on-screen at almost all hours of their broadcasting day, including during commercials. Most stations that have a local bug use it only for news and syndicated programming, removing it for commercials, infomercials, or brokered and network programming.

Though the bug can be removed by the station's master control operator, such operation would be tedious if done manually. Many stations have a trigger system that switches off the bug automatically when local commercials air; WTVA, WLOV, and WKDH do not. Because of this, it is standard operating procedure for master control operators to leave the bug in at all times, except during news broadcasts (a custom time/temp logo display is used for WTVA newscasts) and during network prgramming, where the bug is repositioned and changed to fit with the network bug.

In accordance with NBC network guidelines, the station bug can be displayed during network programming only during the first act of a television program, and only for the first fifteen seconds. The network bug (in this case, the NBC peacock logo) fades in after fifteen seconds. WTVA, WLOV, and WKDH all display a bug alongside the network logo, giving a crowded appearance on the television screen.

Affiliated stations

WTVA, Inc., the parent company that controls and manages WTVA, also controls and manages two other stations in the Tupelo-Columbus-West Point market. These stations are the FOX affiliate WLOV and ABC affiliate WKDH. WTVA, Inc. manages the other two stations through an LMA, or local marketing agreement. Each station has its own station manager and owner, in accordance with FCC policy.

References

External links


Broadcast television in the Columbus / Tupelo / West Point market  [(Nielsen DMA #132)]
WMAB 2/WMAE 12 (PBS/MPB) - WCBI 4 (CBS/UPN) - WTVA 9 (NBC) - W25AD 25 (TBN) - WLOV 27 (FOX) - WFIQ 36 (PBS/APT) - W39CD 39 (UBN) - WKDH 45 (ABC) - W53AF 53 (UBN)
NBC Network Affiliates in the state of Mississippi
WLBT 3 () - WDAM 7 () - WTVA 9 () - WGBC 30 ()
See also: , , , , , and stations in Mississippi

 

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