WSJS-TV: Early years
The Piedmont Publishing Company, publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal and Twin City Sentinel newspapers and owner of radio station WSJS, filed in May 1949 for channel 6, then assigned to Winston-Salem.[1][2] The other application for channel 6 came from the actress Mary Pickford, who filed concurrently for stations at Winston-Salem and Durham. These applications were left to wait for the Federal Communications Commission to end its then-prevailing freeze on new television station grants.[3][4] When the FCC changed its allocations ahead of lifting the freeze in April 1952, it instead gave Winston-Salem channel 12. Piedmont Publishing petitioned the FCC to restore channel 6, to no avail.[5][6] The end of the freeze brought a third applicant into the channel 12 fight: Winston-Salem radio station WTOB, which filed in June but had been planning a television station since 1947.[7] WTOB opted at the start of 1953 to switch its application from channel 12 to UHF channel 26.[8]
On May 26, 1953, Piedmont Publishing and Pickford agreed to combine their applications, with Pickford receiving a one-third stake in the Triangle Broadcasting Corporation, the proposed licensee of channel 12.[9] The move appeared to speed up the arrival of channel 12 until the owner of WAAA, Community Broadcasting, tendered its own application days later.[10] Recognizing that this application would stall the availability of television in Winston-Salem, Community president F. Roger Page Jr. withdrew his company's application, and the FCC awarded a permit for WSJS-TV on July 9, 1953. The new station was announced to broadcast from the WSJS-FM site east of Winston-Salem.[11] WSJS-TV began broadcasting on September 30, 1953, airing the 1953 World Series and NBC network programming. It was the second TV station to go on the air in Winston-Salem in four days, with WTOB-TV starting service on September 26 and airing ABC and DuMont programs.[12] In 1955, the station relocated its transmitter facility to Sauratown Mountain in Stokes County and increased its
The station went through many staff in its early days as television was a new industry in itself. Local programs such as The Johnny Comas Show and the news attracted audiences; staff moved back and forth between radio and television. The cramped quarters prompted the lobby to become storage for appliances shown in commercials, and the air conditioning system could not compensate for the hot studio lights.[17] Johnny Beckman, who later was a meteorologist for several stations in Atlanta, joined the WSJS-TV staff in 1954 and recalled working in its early years:[18]
"There were three of us, and we all did multiple jobs—the weather, commercials, a teenage dance party. We were all scrambling around trying to make a living. Broadcasting was not high-paying then. The pay has certainly improved, but it was a more enjoyable career than it has become now."
Piedmont Publishing held an option to buy out Pickford's stake in WSJS-TV and exercised it in 1956. However, in April 1958, Piedmont Publishing sued Pickford in Los Angeles County Superior Court in California, alleging that Pickford and her husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers had turned down the $126,812 in checks sent to them—on an initial investment of $50,000—as not enough money.[19] The case went to trial in March 1959; lawyers for Pickford and Rogers stated that their clients valued their stake in the station at $1 million.[20] Pickford claimed that she was made to believe that Piedmont would never exercise the option.[21] After 11 weeks, the judge ordered Pickford and Rogers to sell their stock for $133,243, a price just above what Piedmont had paid for it.[22] Pickford petitioned for this amount to be increased but lost.[23] The matter was settled in 1966, when Pickford and Rogers sold their stake back to Piedmont Publishing for an undisclosed price.[24]
In January 1963, Piedmont Publishing purchased a parcel of land on Coliseum Drive for future expansion use by the WSJS stations.[25] Construction began on a 33408 ft2 studio facility in May 1965. The new building offered two television studios, up from one, as well as an internal courtyard capable of being used as a studio.[26] WSJS-TV began operating from the new building, known as Broadcast House, in November 1966.[27] Though WSJS-TV had broadcast network color programs since 1954, the new equipment at Broadcast House included color studio cameras, allowing local news and other programs to be presented in color.[28] The newspapers were spun off to separate ownership in 1969 when they merged with Richmond Newspapers Inc. to form Media General.[29]
