A little history: By the late '60s, UHF TV stations in many markets were beginning to show signs of life. Nearly 100 UHF stations had gone dark since the FCC opened up high band frequencies for TV stations in 1952. There were technical issues around signal strength and practical issues such as televisions being sold without UHF capacity until 1964.
WTBS signed on in September 1967 as WJRJ, call letters that reflected the station's owner John Rice. WJRJ showed old movies, a few syndicated shows like "Target: the Corrupters" and at one point carried "Medical Center" from CBS because the local Atlanta affiliate blocked CBS's Wednesday night programming for years to run its own movie. When Medical Center went to #1, WAGA took it away from WJRJ.
In 1968, US Communications launched WATL "Atlanta's Perfect 36" and spent a million dollars on programming like first-run game shows and more recent off-network fare like Lost in Space. WATL's real hit was a weekend-long music video show called "Now Explosion," which resembled MTV. Even though WJRJ "didn't spend a million dollars on anything," competition put the station on the ropes, financially.
It turned out, WATL was in deeper trouble that WJRJ. Ted Turner, who inherited his father's billboard company, bought WJRJ, preventing its failure...stole "Now Explosion" from WATL and by the end of March 1969, had the commercial UHF dial in Atlanta to himself. WATL and US Communications' other properties folded with a week's notice. WATL ran :60 second spots in that final week announcing its departure from the airwaves, panning across studios and offices, concluding with a black slide that said, "Thank You."
Turner changed WJRJ's calls to WTCG ("Watch This Channel Grow," although the newspaper article at the time said it stood for "Turner Communications Group.") The rest is history.
For a while, federal regulations made WTBS' channel 17 over the air signal critical to the national feed. Atlanta got the same feed as the rest of country, for the most part, except for local commercial pods.
Then a couple of years ago, TimeWarner split the two. The cable network retained the "TBS" brand while Channel 17 Atlanta became WPCH "Peachtree TV." (WPCH had long been the city's beautiful music FM station but abandoned the format a decade ago.) Peachtree TV offers Seinfeld, . The Office, My Name is Earl, Meet the Browns from sister property TBS, Family Guy, movies and other standard fare. You can see the schedule at peachtreetv.com. There is very little that identifies the station as an Atlanta property.
In recent weeks, TimeWarner started the process of turning over operations of Channel 17 to Meredith, which operates struggling Channel 46 CBS in the market. Signs point to Meredith acquiring Channel 17 someday.
Channel 46, by the way, signed on in 1971 as religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's second station (WHAE, for "Heaven and Earth"). In its early days, Jim and Tammy Bakker performed as hosts of an afternoon children's show. Robertson sold the station to Tribune in 1984.
