Relaunch
In June 1964, businessman Cy Bahakel—who moved from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte—bought the dormant channel 36 license and facilities from Century for $175,000.[14][15] An addition would be made to the studio building as part of Bahakel's efforts to return the station to the air.[16]
Bahakel returned the station to air on November 1 of that year as WCCB-TV (for "Charlotte Cy Bahakel"). The call letters had recently been used by what is now WNCF in Montgomery, Alabama, which was acquired by Bahakel earlier that year. Logically, it should have returned as a full-time ABC affiliate. Charlotte had only two network-affiliated stations, CBS affiliate WBTV and NBC affiliate WSOC-TV. On paper, Charlotte had been large enough to support three full network affiliates since the 1950s. However, WCCB's signal, like its predecessor, was nowhere near adequate for a market that stretched from the Sandhills in the east to the High Country in the west. Its signal only operated at 200,000 watts, essentially limiting its coverage area to Charlotte proper and its inner suburbs. Additionally, the FCC had only begun requiring television sets to have all-channel tuning a few months before, and most Charlotte households did not yet have UHF-capable sets. Under the circumstances, ABC decided to retain its secondary affiliation agreements with WBTV and WSOC. WCCB was forced to settle for a secondary affiliation with all three networks, airing most of the network shows that WBTV and WSOC chose to turn down.[17] As of March 1965, the nine-county area had 42,887 homes with UHF, with the number increasing by 3,000 per month. Bahakel said this "exceeds our expectation".[18] For the next three years, WCCB split most of NBC and ABC's programming roughly equally with WSOC. It also picked up some CBS shows from WBTV, which still cleared a few ABC shows.
On November 1, 1966, WCCB moved from channel 36 to channel 18, broadcasting from a new tower located on Newell Hickory Grove Road in northeast Charlotte.[19] The new channel 18 facility was capable of 1.35 million watts of power, giving WCCB a coverage area comparable to those of WBTV and WSOC-TV. In 1967, WSOC-TV dropped all ABC programming and became a full-time NBC affiliate, leaving WCCB-TV to be the exclusive ABC affiliate. It took Charlotte 18 years to finally gain full service from all three major networks of the time. The state's largest market thus got a full-fledged ABC affiliate after the state's two smallest markets, Greenville–New Bern–Washington and Wilmington, received ABC affiliates of their own (WCTI-TV and WWAY respectively). However, despite the stronger signal and the first consistent airing of all network programs in Charlotte TV history, WCCB-TV remained a distant third in the ratings.[20]
In 1977, ABC announced that it had lured away WSOC-TV to be its new outlet in the Charlotte market beginning July 1, 1978, replacing WCCB. That decision set off a two-station showdown between WCCB and nine-year-old independent WRET-TV (channel 36, now WCNC-TV) for the NBC affiliation in Charlotte.[21] WCCB was initially seen as the favorite. Unlike WRET, it had a news department.[22] Sources at NBC were said to see channel 36 as their last option, behind WCCB, with its stronger signal, and long-dominant WBTV, which the network was trying to woo from CBS to no avail.[23]
However, WRET owner Ted Turner promised NBC officials that he would spend $2.5 million on station improvements if the network affiliated with channel 36. Of that total, $1 million would go toward starting a news department within one year. The proposed news department would employ 22 people, almost double the size of WCCB's 12-person news operation and almost as large as WSOC's 22-person department.[24] On April 29, news broke that WRET-TV had been selected for the NBC affiliation, with the network preferring it to WCCB based on Turner's record of turning around the station and his ownership of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks.[25][26]
With the decision, WCCB became an independent station.[27] It bought a large chunk of syndicated programming from WRET, including cartoons and older sitcoms. For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after-school cartoons (Afternoon Express) were hosted by the costumed Sonic Man space alien character, played by Larry Sprinkle, who has been a staple in Charlotte radio and television, including serving as a weather anchor for channel 36 since the 1980s. WCCB carried on for almost a decade as a typical UHF general entertainment independent station.
