WXIA-TV

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WXIA-TV is the NBC network affiliate serving the Atlanta, Georgia television market. It is owned by the Gannett Company. The station's transmitter is located at 110 Arizona Avenue Northeast in Atlanta. Studios and offices are located at 1611 West Peachtree Street on the north end of Atlanta's Midtown area.

History

The station signed on the air on September 30, 1951. It is the third-oldest station in Atlanta. Its original call letters were WLTV. It was also originally an ABC affiliate, broadcasting on channel eight. It was orignally owned by the Cincinnati-based Crosley Broadcasting Corporation, owners of that city's NBC affiliate, WLWT. In 1953, the station changed its call letters to WLWA-TV, signifying its co-ownership with WLW-AM in Cincinnati. The station also moved to channel 11. It was purchased in 1962 by Richard Fairbanks of Indianapolis, Indiana. This was part of a settlement between Crosley and Fairbanks. Crosley had started WLWI-TV in Indianapolis in 1957. However, Fairbanks insisted that the last VHF allocation in Indianapolis should go to a local owner. Eventually, the two companies agreed to what amounted to a trade, in which Crosley kept WLWI (now WTHR) while Fairbanks bought WLWA. The Atlanta station's calls then became WAII-TV, using the slogan "The Eyes of Atlanta", which was a play on the two "I's" in the callsign.

The station began using the branding "News Watch 11" in 1963. The station then began broadcasting news in color for the first time in March 1967. The following year, the station was sold to Pacific & Southern Broadcasting, and changed its call letters once again to WQXI-TV, after WQXI-AM. A few years later, Pacific & Southern merged with the Phoenix-based Combined Communications. The station changed its call letters one last time to WXIA-TV in 1974. It began to use the legendary 11 Alive branding in 1976, its sister stations also used the Alive branding. In 1979, Combined merged with the Gannett Company. At that time, it was the biggest media merger in history.

In 1981, WXIA swapped affiliations with market leader WSB-TV, and became an NBC affiliate. This could be traced to ratings, as ABC was in first place for most of the mid-to-late 1970's. NBC, meanwhile, had slid to a very poor third place. During the summer of 1980, the two stations conducted an experiment unusual for a large market: WXIA aired NBC daytime shows in the morning and ABC daytime shows in the afternoon, while WSB aired ABC shows in the morning and NBC shows in the afternoons. WXIA was NBC's flagship station for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

An unusual situation occurred in 1999. The station's former weekend weather forecaster had left, but his replacement hadn't arrived at the station yet. Four years earlier, Gannett bought CBS affiliate WLTX in Columbia, South Carolina; which was located 200 miles east of Atlanta. It had recently hired Jim Gandy from WIS, but Gandy could not appear on WLTX for one year under the terms of a non-compete clause in his contract. However, there was nothing in his contract that said Gandy couldn't work anywhere else. As such, Gandy was named a consultant to the meterological department at Gannett' television unit to work around the ban. Gannett hired Gandy as the temporary weather forecaster on weekends at WXIA in order to fill in until the new forecaster arrived. That, and the proximity of the two stations, permitted the two Gannett stations to share doppler radars, calling itself the "Double Doppler" at WLTX.

WXIA also airs the NBC Weather Plus service on its digital on-air signal, as well as on Comcast's digital cable system in the Atlanta area. For a number of years, WXIA had a partnership with The Weather Channel (headquartered in Atlanta) to use their weather forecasters and provide local forecasts.

WXIA began airing their daily local newscasts in HDTV, the first Atlanta station to do so, on February 2, 2006. To signal the conversion to HD, a HD-friendly new studio from Production Design Group, Ltd. was built and graphics from Giant Octopus (similar to those used on Gannett-sister station WUSA) were created.

On June 5, 2006, Gannett agreed to purchase WATL from the Tribune Company, currently affilated with the WB Television Network, but will join My Network TV once the WB ceases operation in September 2006. The purchase price was $180 million. If the sale is completed, Gannett will own Atlanta's first television duopoly, as it already does in Denver (KUSA-TV and KTVD) and Jacksonville (WTLV and WJXX). [link]. Since WATL is not among Atlanta's four largest TV stations, the FCC permitted this sale. And WATL may take up airing NBC programs when WXIA is not able to in a news-related emergency.

\"11 Alive\"

11 Alive has been WXIA's on-air branding since 1976, when then-owner Combined Communications adopted the practice of using the word "Alive" as part of the monikers at most of their stations. The use of "Alive" in station names was popular in the mid-to-late-1970s -- New York's WPIX used the legendary "11 Alive" nickname themselves from 1977 to 1986.

After Gannett acquired Combined in 1979, many of the former Combined stations stopped using "Alive" in their names, though WXIA continued calling itself "11 Alive", as it was a strong brand name for their station. Fort Wayne's WPTA, another ex-Combined station, continues to call itself "21 Alive" today.

Briefly in the mid-1990s, Gannett dropped the "11 Alive" moniker as part of an image makeover. Many Atlanta-area viewers, however, were angry about the change, as they would not accept WXIA as anything but "11 Alive". A short time later, WXIA began calling itself "11 Alive" once again.

News programming

Weekdays

• 11Alive News Today - 5:00 - 7:00AM
• 11Alive News at Noon - Noon - 12:30PM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• The Evening News with Brenda Wood - 7:00 - 7:30PM
• 11Alive News at 11:00 - 11:00 - 11:35PM

Saturdays

• 11Alive Saturday Today - 6:00 - 8:00AM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• 11Alive News at 11:00 - 11:00 - 11:30PM

Sundays

• 11Alive Sunday Today - 7:30 - 9:00AM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• 11Alive News at 11:00 - 11:00 - 11:35PM

See also

• WXIA-TV personalities
• WQXI (AM)
• WQXI-FM

External links

• [11 Alive Homepage]
• [Query the FCC's TV station database for WXIA-TV]