WGWG

WGWG (channel 4) is a television station in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with the multicast network MeTV. The station is owned by Howard Stirk Holdings. WGWG's transmitter is located near Awendaw, South Carolina.

From 1962 through 2014, what is now WGWG was the original home of WCIV, and had been Charleston's ABC affiliate since 1996; however, in August 2014, WCIV owner Allbritton Communications was acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of MyNetworkTV affiliate WMMP (channel 36) and operator of Fox affiliate WTAT-TV (channel 24, owned by Cunningham Broadcasting). Due to ownership conflicts with WMMP and WTAT, and a recent crackdown on joint sales agreements by the FCC, Sinclair elected to sell the WCIV channel 4 license to Howard Stirk Holdings, and moved WCIV's ABC programming and news operation to a subchannel of WMMP's channel 36 signal. At the same time, the two stations also switched call signs, with WCIV moving to channel 36 and channel 4 becoming the new WMMP, though the MyNetworkTV affiliation remains on channel 36.1 and did not move to channel 4.

The FCC approved HSH Charleston's purchase of channel 4 on December 4, 2014;[1]

History

WGWG began operations on October 23, 1962, as WCIV, the third commercial outlet in Charleston.[3] The original license was granted to WTMA-TV but the call letters were later changed to WCIV before it signed on. It took the NBC affiliation from WCBD-TV (known as WUSN-TV at the time), leaving that station to become a full-time ABC affiliate. The station was originally owned by First Charleston Corporation, led by Harold E. Anderson, who also owned WCCA-TV in Columbia and WCCB-TV in Montgomery,[4] it was later sold in 1966 to the Washington Star Company.[5] In 1976, businessman Joe Allbritton bought the Star and sold off the non-television assets in 1978 to form Allbritton Communications.

In May 1994, Birmingham ABC affiliate WBRC was sold to New World Communications, which signed an affiliation agreement with eleven other stations which would become Fox affiliates. WBRC, along with Piedmont Triad ABC affiliate WGHP, were placed in a blind trust in the fall of 1994, as the FCC prohibited a company from owning more than twelve television stations at the time.[6][7] Both stations were sold to Fox directly in July 1995, but Fox was forced to run WBRC as an ABC affiliate for over a year after the sale, as WBRC's affiliation contract with ABC did not expire until August 1996. Before WBRC became a Fox owned-and-operated station, Allbritton purchased WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV, and made them full power satellites of WBMA-LP; this prompted Allbritton to sign a groupwide affiliation deal with ABC which caused WCIV and Brunswick sister station WBSG-TV (now Ion Television O&O WPXC-TV) to become ABC affiliates. The latter had joined ABC as a semi-satellite of WJXX, which replaced WJKS as Jacksonville's ABC affiliate upon its 1997 sign-on).[8][9] WCIV became an ABC affiliate on August 19, 1996; the NBC affiliation subsequently returned to WCBD on that day. The last NBC program to air on WCIV was an NBC Sunday Night Movie presentation of A Friend to Die For at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on August 18, while the first ABC program to air on the station was Good Morning America at 7 a.m. Eastern Time on August 19.

Sale to Howard Stirk Holdings; ABC and MeTV move to channel 36

On July 29, 2013, Allbritton Communications announced that it would sell its entire television group, including WCIV, to Sinclair.[10] As part of the deal, Sinclair was planning to sell the license assets of WMMP to Howard Stirk Holdings (owned by conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams), but would still operate the station through shared services and joint sales agreements.[11] However, in December 2013, FCC Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman ruled that "the proposed transactions would result in the elimination of the grandfathered status of certain local marketing agreements and thus cause the transactions to violate our local TV ownership rules."[12][13]

While Sinclair attempted to sell WMMP and planned to terminate an SSA with the Cunningham-owned Fox affiliate WTAT, as well as foregoing any operational or financial agreements with the buyers of the stations being sold to other parties,[14]

callsign	WGWG
branding	MeTV Charleston
digital	34 (UHF)
virtual	4
atsc3	yes
affiliations	4.1: MeTV for others, see
country	United States
airdate	October 23, 1962
location	Charleston, South Carolina
callsign meaning	Graham Williams Group (consulting firm co-owned by HSH owner Armstrong Williams)'
former callsigns	WCIV (1962–2014) WMMP (2014–2015)
former channel numbers	Analog: 4 (VHF, 1962–2009)
owner	Howard Stirk Holdings
licensee	HSH Charleston (WCIV) Licensee, LLC
former affiliations	NBC (1962–1996) ABC (1996–2014) ZUUS Country (2014–2015) Heroes & Icons (2015−2022)
erp	630 kW
haat	522 m
facility id	21536
coordinates	32.92472°N, -79.69917°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.howardstirkholdings.com/stations

History

Sale to Howard Stirk Holdings; ABC and MeTV move to channel 36

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

External links

References