Channel 36 went dark in March 1955, and DuMont shut down roughly a year later in August 1956. However, channel 36's signal was severely weak, and NBC continued to allow WBTV to cherry-pick its stronger programming. It was nominally an NBC affiliate, sharing a secondary ABC affiliation with channel 3. WBTV's only competition in its early years came from a UHF station on channel 36, known as WAYS-TV and then WQMC-TV, which broadcast briefly from 1953 to 1955. The studio address, One Julian Price Place, is named in honor of the executive who effectively founded Jefferson Standard/Jefferson-Pilot through an early-20th century merger. In 1955, WBT and WBTV moved to a then state-of-the-art facility on a hill atop Morehead Street, where both stations are still based today. It is the only commercial television station in the market that has never changed its primary affiliation.Ĭhannel 3 had originally operated from a converted radio studio in the Wilder Building, alongside its sister radio station. However, WBTV has always been a primary CBS affiliate, owing to WBT radio's long affiliation with the CBS Radio Network. As such, it was Charlotte's only VHF station for eight years, carrying affiliations with all four major networks of the time- CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont. WBTV received one of the last construction permits issued before the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) "freeze" on new television licenses, which lasted until the Commission released its Sixth Report and Order in 1952. In 1970, the media interests were folded into a new subsidiary, Jefferson-Pilot Communications. Jefferson Standard merged with Pilot Life in 1968 (although it had owned controlling interest since 1945) and became Jefferson-Pilot Corporation. Shortly before the television station went on the air, its call letters were modified from WBT-TV to WBTV.
Jefferson Standard had purchased WBT from CBS in 1947. At the time, the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company also had a 16.5% interest in the Greensboro News Company, licensee of WFMY-TV, which signed on from Greensboro two months after WBTV. WBTV was originally owned by the Greensboro-based Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, owners of WBT (1110 AM), the city's oldest radio station and the first fully licensed station in the South. Veteran Charlotte broadcaster Jim Patterson was the first person seen on the station, and remained employed there until his death in 1986. When it debuted, WBTV was the 13th television station in the United States and the first in the Carolinas it is the oldest television station located between Richmond and Atlanta. The station first signed on the air on July 15, 1949. In addition, WBTV's studios continue to house the operations of its former sister radio stations currently owned by Urban One: WBT-AM/ FM and WLNK, as well as WFNZ, which was previously owned by CBS Radio prior to its acquisition by Beasley Broadcast Group in 2014, followed by Entercom (now known as Audacy) in late 2017 and then Urban One in 2020 under a local marketing agreement. The station's studios are located off Morehead Street, just west of Uptown Charlotte, and its transmitter is located in north-central Gaston County. WBTV (channel 3) is a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with CBS and owned by Gray Television.
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