WLBT

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WLBT is the NBC-affiliated television station for Jackson, Mississippi. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 30 (or virtual channel 3.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter on Thigpen Road in Raymond. The station can also be seen on Comcast channel 2 and Cable ONE channel 3. There is a high definition feed provided on Comcast digital channel 432 and Cable ONE digital channel 465. Owned by Raycom Media, it operates American Spirit Media-owned Fox affiliate WDBD, and MyNetworkTV outlet WLOO.

Although technically owned by Tougaloo College, WLOO is actually controlled by American Spirit and in turn Raycom Media through a separate joint sales agreement (JSA). All three television outlets share studios on South Jefferson Street in Downtown Jackson. Syndicated programming on WLBT includes Entertainment Tonight, The Doctors, and Judge Joe Brown among others.

History

The station was founded on December 19, 1953 as WJBT by Lamar Life Insurance Company. It is Jackson's second-oldest television station, following WJTV (channel 12), which debuted in January 1953. Channel 3 is also Mississippi's third-oldest television station (WTOK-TV in Meridian went on the air three months earlier). A few weeks after its debut, the station was renamed WLBT - which stands for Lamar Broadcasting Television - because the original call letters sounded similar to WJTV.

It has always been an NBC affiliate, though it shared ABC with WJTV until WAPT-TV (channel 16) started broadcasting in 1970. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.

Opposition to civil rights

The station attained notoriety for its aggressive support of racial segregation in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. Lamar had close ties to the state's white political and business elite and with segregationist groups, such as the White Citizens' Council. It went as far as to coordinate opposition to civil rights with these groups. For instance, the station allowed the WCC to operate a bookstore in the lobby of its studios in downtown Jackson. and the station manager editorialized on the air against the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, arguing that states should determine who should and should not be allowed to attend their schools.

For the most part, the station ignored the Civil Rights movement, cutting out coverage of it from the NBC News feed (largely by pretending that technical problems were the cause of interruptions). It also pre-empted NBC programs that even mildly referred to racial justice or featured African American actors prominently. At the same time, it provided a platform on its local newscasts and public affairs programs for individuals advocating resistance to efforts by the federal government to enable African Americans to vote and gain access to basic amenities such as non-segregated public schools.

Many television stations in the South felt chagrin at network coverage of the Civil Rights movement, especially WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama and WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although some Southern stations severed their ties with their networks in order to prevent being forced to air coverage of the movement, Channel 3 kept its affiliation with NBC, even though that network historically had an extremely low tolerance towards local pre-emptions at the time. Indeed, many NBC stars, like Bonanza's Pernell Roberts, were speaking out on behalf of civil rights. This was largely because WLBT's only competition was CBS affiliate WJTV, a situation that lasted until 1970, when the market picked up a full-time ABC affiliate in WAPT.

Over the years, NBC—along with civil rights groups and the United Church of Christ—sent numerous petitions to the FCC to complain of WLBT's flagrant bias. The FCC issued several warnings to Lamar, but these went unheeded. Finally, in 1964, Reverend Everett Parker and the UCC's Office of Communication formally petitioned the FCC to revoke WLBT's license. The FCC ruled that the petitioners had no standing because they had no economic interest in the station or were not subject to electronic interference from WLBT's signal. The UCC appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 1966, the court, in an opinion by Warren Burger, later to become Chief Justice of the United States, ruled that the public had the right to take part in FCC hearings in order to protect the public interest. At a new hearing held in 1967, the FCC again ruled in favor of Lamar. The UCC again appealed to the Appeals Court, which found Lamar's record to be beyond repair and ordered the FCC to revoke Lamar's license in 1969. Lamar appealed, but lost in 1971. To this day, WLBT remains one of only two television stations that has ever lost its license for violating FCC regulations on fairness. The other station, WJIM-TV (now WLNS-TV) in Lansing, Michigan, had its license reinstated on appeal.

While hearings were held for a permanent licensee, the FCC gave control of the station to a bi-racial, non-profit foundation called "Communications Improvement, Inc." However, it retained the WLBT call letters and claimed the original station's history as its own. It also retained the NBC affiliation. The group promised to make the station a beacon of tolerance. While most WLBT employees were retained, a new group of managers, including some of the first African American television executives in the South, recreated the station as a far more neutral news source.

WLBT today

WLBT was one of the first television stations in the South to devote a significant block of airtime and dedicated personnel to the production of local investigative, documentary style news. Probe was a 30 minute program that aired weekly. It garnered numerous awards, including a George Foster Peabody award in 1976 for a segment called "Power Politics in Mississippi."

On January 9, 1980, Communications Improvement sold WLBT to TV-3, Inc., a group of five companies who had competed for the license. In 1984, Frank Melton (who later became mayor of Jackson) formed Civic Communications and bought WLBT.

From 1982 to 1991, the station operated a low-powered satellite in Meridian, Mississippi, WLBM; that station is now a stand-alone station, WGBC. In 2000, Melton sold the station to Liberty Corporation, who in turn merged with Raycom Media in 2006.

Tower tragedy

On Thursday, October 23, 1997, three Canadian men from Canada's LeBlanc & Royal were preparing to replace the guy wires of WLBT's 1,999-foot (609 m) transmission tower near Raymond when the tower collapsed, killing them. The workers were at the 1,500-foot (460 m) level and held on to the tower as it fell.

The tower's collapse knocked WLBT and the local PBS/Mississippi ETV Network affiliate WMPN off the air for several hours. WLBT was able to resume broadcasting on a 100-foot (30 m) secondary tower, which only reached about half of its normal viewing area until a new 2,000-foot (610 m) tower was completed in 1999.

The 1,999-foot (609 m) tower was actually the second WLBT transmission tower to fall at their Raymond site. WLBT's original transmission tower collapsed on March 3, 1966 when the Candlestick Park Tornado, one of only two F5 tornadoes in Mississippi's history, struck the tower and transmitter building. WLBT engineers salvaged what they could of the transmitter and operated on the same stand by tower as it would operate with later after the second tower collapse. When the 1,999-foot (609 m) replacement tower was completed later in 1966, the new tower was one of the tallest structures east of the Mississippi River and was in service until the second collapse in 1997.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming
3.1	1080i	16:9	WLBT-DT	Main WLBT programming / NBC
3.2	480i	4:3	WLBT-BNC	Bounce TV
3.3			WLBT-ESC	Escape

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLBT shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal moved its pre-transition to VHF channel 7, using PSIP to display WLBT's virtual channel as 3 on digital television receivers.

On January 14, 2010, WLBT moved to UHF channel 30, because of viewers having difficulty receiving their signal on VHF Channel 7. Some stations solved the problem with the power increase, but WLBT could not due to potential interference to another station. The former channel 7 transmitter was later moved to its sister-station in Laurel, WDAM-TV.

News operation

For most of the last 30 years, WLBT has been the dominant news station in Jackson. It currently has the market's only helicopter used for breaking news gathering and traffic reports. The station launched a weekday afternoon 4 p.m. newscast in March 2008; this was the first of its kind in Jackson. In October 2010, WLBT began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition becoming the second television outlet in the area to make the upgrade.

After American Spirit Media completed its acquisition of WDBD and entered into the shared services agreement with WLBT, the Fox station's news department was shut down resulting in several members of the WDBD staff being laid-off. Production of its newscasts was assumed by WLBT on November 12, 2012 with all of the news programming retained (except for the 10 p.m. show on WUFX, now WLOO, since it would compete with WLBT). In addition, WDBD added Saturday and Sunday editions of its prime time broadcast at 9.

All newscasts on WDBD currently originate from WLBT's primary set at the South Jefferson Street studios except with separate on-air duratrans and graphics indicating the Fox-branded newscasts. Although it shares a majority of on-air personnel with WLBT, WDBD maintains a separate additional news anchor for the weekday morning and weeknight shows. WLBT and WDBD operate a combined news department under the "Mississippi News Now" branding very similar to Raycom partnerships in Tucson, Arizona (with Belo-owned KMSB) and Toledo, Ohio (with American Spirit Media-owned WUPW).

Notable former on-air staff

• Nanette Workman - (1950s)
• Randall Pinkston - (reporter and anchor from 1971 to 1974; now CBS News correspondent)
• Woodie Assaf - weather reporter from 1953 to 2001, making him the longest serving weather reporter in the United States.

See also

• Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement
• On the Front Lines: Television and African-American Issues From the Museum of Television & Radio; includes info on WLBT in the 1960s

Further reading

• Kay Mills (2004). Changing channels: the civil rights case that transformed television. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-519-6. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
• Steven D. Classen (2004). Watching Jim Crow: the struggles over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3341-8. Retrieved 30 August 2011.

External links

• Official website
• WLBT-DT3 website
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