WLBT

WLBT (channel 3) is a television station in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Media, which also operates American Spirit Media–owned Fox affiliate WDBD (channel 40) and Vicksburg-licensed WLOO (channel 35)—an independent station with MyNetworkTV—under shared services agreements (SSAs). WLOO's license is owned by Tougaloo College, with American Spirit actually operating the station through a separate joint sales agreement (JSA); in turn, Gray provides WLOO with limited engineering support. The three stations share studios on South Jefferson Street in downtown Jackson; WLBT's transmitter is located on Thigpen Road southeast of Raymond, Mississippi.

Originally a pro-segregationist station, in 1969, it became the first station stripped of its right to broadcast for failing to serve the public interest. It was then relaunched under different ownership, becoming a pioneer in racial equality among Southern broadcasters.

History

The station was founded on December 19, 1953, as WJBT by the Lamar Life Insurance Company, owners of radio station WJDX. It is Jackson's second-oldest television station, following WJTV (channel 12), which debuted in January 1953. Channel 3 is also Mississippi's third-oldest television station (now-sister station WTOK-TV in Meridian went on the air three months earlier). A few weeks after its debut, the station was renamed WLBT—which stands for Lamar Broadcasting Television—because the original call letters sounded similar to WJTV.

It has always been an NBC affiliate, given WJDX's affiliation with that network, though it shared ABC with WJTV until WAPT (channel 16) started broadcasting in 1970. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.

Opposition to civil rights

thumb|A 1962 WLBT editorial protesting the admission of [[James Meredith to the University of Mississippi.]]

The station gained notoriety for its aggressive support of racial segregation in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. Lamar had close ties to the state's white political and business elite and with segregationist groups, such as the White Citizens' Council. Indeed, a number of station executives, including general manager Fred Beard, were Citizens' Council members. It went as far as to coordinate opposition to civil rights with these groups. Station manager Fred Beard editorialized on the air against the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, arguing that states should determine who should and should not be allowed to attend their schools. Beard later declared he had pulled the interview, saying that television networks had become instruments of "Negro propaganda".

Owners and staffers at several other television stations in the South did not like network coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, including WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, and WUSN-TV (now WCBD-TV) in Charleston, South Carolina. Although some Southern stations severed their ties with their networks in order to prevent being forced to air coverage of the movement (WRAL and WUSN both switched from NBC to ABC in 1962), WLBT kept its affiliation with NBC, even though that network historically had an extremely low tolerance towards local preemptions at the time. To this day, WLBT remains one of only two television stations that has ever lost its license for violating FCC regulations on fairness. The other station, WJIM-TV (now WLNS-TV) in Lansing, Michigan, had its license reinstated on appeal.

While hearings were held for a permanent licensee, WLBT's license was transferred to Communications Improvement, Inc.—an integrated, non-profit group that promised to make the station a beacon of tolerance, on June 14, 1971, at 3 a.m. A new group of managers, including some of the first African American television executives in the South, recreated the station as a far more neutral news source. However, it retained the WLBT callsign and claimed the original station's history as its own. It retained the NBC affiliation and most of its employees, and also donated revenue to charities. The FCC filing stated that, since Mounger was affiliated with a segregation academy, he was not fit to hold a broadcast license. In 1974, the FCC rejected the complaint on the grounds that the complaint was untimely since the evidence of Mounger's association with the school and the school's discriminatory practices was available from at least 1969.

WLBT today

WLBT was one of the first television stations in the South to devote a significant block of airtime and dedicated personnel to the production of local investigative, documentary-style news—these blocks typically aired during off-network hours. Probe was a 30-minute program that aired weekly. It garnered numerous awards, including a George Foster Peabody award in 1976 for a segment called "Power Politics in Mississippi".

As the hearings dragged out through the 1970s, the five competing groups concluded that nothing was to be gained from further proceedings. They merged as TV-3, Inc., a consortium with Blacks holding controlling interest and headed by a majority-Black board. The merged group was awarded the license in late 1979, The sale was approved on December 20, and was completed on January 2, 2019.

Tower collapse

On October 23, 1997, three Canadian men from Canada's LeBlanc & Royal were preparing to replace the guy wires of WLBT's transmission tower near Raymond when the tower collapsed, killing them. The workers were at the level and held on to the tower as it fell.

The tower's collapse knocked WLBT and the local PBS/Mississippi ETV Network station WMPN off the air for several hours. WLBT was able to resume broadcasting on a secondary tower, which only reached about half of its normal viewing area until a new tower was completed in 1999.

The 1,999-foot tower was actually the second WLBT transmission tower to fall at their Raymond site. WLBT's original transmission tower collapsed on March 3, 1966, when the Candlestick Park Tornado, one of only two F5 tornadoes in Mississippi's history, struck the tower and transmitter building. WLBT engineers salvaged what they could of the transmitter and operated on the same stand by tower as it would operate with later after the second tower collapse. When the replacement tower was completed later in 1966, the new tower was one of the tallest structures east of the Mississippi River and was in service until the second collapse in 1997.

Programming

There were two noteworthy preemptions made by WLBT after the start of its 1971 license. One was the miniseries Freedom Road (which was filmed in nearby Natchez) and another was the short-lived animated sitcom God, the Devil and Bob. The latter was mostly preempted due to the controversy it stirred within the religious community.

On December 30, 2023, WLBT parent company Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with the New Orleans Pelicans to air 10 games on the station during the 2023–24 season.

On September 17, 2024, Gray and the Pelicans announced a broader deal to form the Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network, which will broadcast nearly all 2024–25 Pelicans games on Gray's stations in the Gulf South, including WLBT.

News operation

For most of the last 30 years, WLBT has been the dominant news station in Jackson. It currently has the market's only helicopter used for breaking news gathering and traffic reports. The station launched a weekday afternoon 4 p.m. newscast in March 2008; this was the first of its kind in Jackson. In October 2010, WLBT began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition becoming the second television outlet in the area to make the upgrade.

After American Spirit Media completed its acquisition of WDBD and entered into the shared services agreement with WLBT, the Fox station's news department was shut down resulting in several members of the WDBD staff being laid-off. Production of its newscasts was assumed by WLBT on November 12, 2012, with all of the news programming retained (except for the 10 p.m. show on WUFX, now WLOO, since it would compete with WLBT). In addition, WDBD added Saturday and Sunday editions of its prime time broadcast at 9.

All newscasts on WDBD currently originate from WLBT's primary set at the South Jefferson Street studios except with separate on-air duratrans and graphics indicating the Fox-branded newscasts. Although it shares a majority of on-air personnel with WLBT, WDBD maintains a separate additional news anchor for the weekday morning and weeknight shows. WLBT and WDBD operate a combined news department under the Mississippi News Now branding very similar to Raycom partnerships in Tucson, Arizona (with Tegna-owned KMSB) and Toledo, Ohio (with WUPW; those stations are no longer sisters of WLBT).

Notable former on-air staff

Woodie Assaf – weather reporter (1953–2001)
Randall Pinkston – reporter and anchor (1971–1974)

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

{| class="wikitable"

|+Subchannels of WLBT

! scope="col" | Channel

! scope="col" | Res.

! scope="col" | Short name

! scope="col" | Programming

! scope="row" | 3.1

| 1080i || WLBT-DT || NBC

! scope="row" | 3.2

| rowspan=6| 480i || Bounce || Bounce TV

! scope="row" | 3.3

| GCSEN || Gulf Coast SEN

! scope="row" | 3.4

| Laff || Laff

! scope="row" | 3.5

| Mystery ||Ion Mystery

! scope="row" | 3.6

| DABL || Dabl

! scope="row" | 3.7

| The365 || 365BLK

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLBT shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal relocated its pre-transition to VHF channel 7, using virtual channel 3.

On January 14, 2010, WLBT moved to UHF channel 30, because of viewers having difficulty receiving their signal on VHF channel 7. Some stations solved the problem with the power increase, but WLBT could not due to potential interference to another station. The former channel 7 transmitter was later moved to its sister station in Laurel–Hattiesburg, WDAM-TV.

References

External links

WLBT-DT3 website