WFMY-TV

WFMY-TV (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Piedmont Triad region. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Phillips Avenue in Greensboro and a transmitter in Randleman, North Carolina.

WFMY began broadcasting in 1949; it was the second television station in North Carolina after WBTV in Charlotte and the first to originate a live broadcast. It was owned by the Greensboro News Company, publishers of the Greensboro Daily News and Daily Record. It aired programming from all major networks in its early years, when it was the only station in the Triad, though it was always primarily a CBS affiliate. WFMY became the highest-rated station in the market and the traditional ratings leader, with such regionally popular local shows as The Old Rebel Show and The Good Morning Show. Beginning in the late 1990s, sharper competition from the other major stations in the market has reduced and at times eliminated the lead WFMY-TV once had.

The Greensboro News Company, publisher of the Greensboro Daily News and Daily Record newspapers, began its foray into broadcasting with FM radio. On January 8, 1947, ground was broken on a tower for a new FM radio station, WFMY, near the Daily News building on Davie Street. Construction proceeded slowly; the tower was not completed until December, and WFMY made its first broadcast on March 14, 1948, on 97.3 MHz.

A month before WFMY radio debuted, the Greensboro News Company applied on February 26, 1948, for authority to build a television station. The Federal Communications Commission approved the request on June 2, but preparations for the new station began in earnest in April 1949, after final construction approval for changes. Among the last items was a modification to the existing WFMY radio tower, which was set back by the failure of a cable, causing the antenna to drop and be damaged.

WFMY-TV made its first test broadcasts on August 18, 1949. At 6:10 p.m., viewers saw staff announcer Don Hardison; the newscast did not start correctly with sound, and the first words viewers heard Hardison say were "Judas Priest". This was the first live television broadcast in North Carolina; while WBTV in Charlotte was already on the air, it lacked the capability to originate local broadcasts. Full programming began on September 22, 1949, and the station initially aired six days a week, going off the air every Saturday. WFMY-TV was a primary affiliate of CBS, but it had arrangements to use programming from all four networks of the day, including NBC, ABC, and DuMont Television Network. Network programs were presented by kinescopes—filmed recordings of telecasts as seen in New York—until September 1950, when network coaxial cable service reached Greensboro. WFMY radio closed on April 19, 1953, with its studio space and personnel absorbed into the growing television operation.

WFMY and WBTV were the only authorized television stations in North Carolina prior to the FCC's freeze on new television station awards, which lasted from October 1948 to July 1952. As a result, channel 2 was the first television station to provide dependable service not only to the Triad but areas of east-central North Carolina; this included Durham and the state capital, Raleigh, which did not get a local station until July 1953. Even then, WNAO-TV was an ultra high frequency (UHF) station and required a converter to view, so many households in Raleigh continued to mostly watch WFMY until WTVD began in Durham in September 1954. The end of the freeze also brought new stations to the Triad. WFMY-TV became a sole CBS affiliate in September 1953 when two new stations went on the air in Winston-Salem. First on air was WTOB-TV (channel 26), an affiliate of ABC and DuMont, followed by NBC affiliate WSJS-TV (now WXII-TV) on channel 12. WTOB-TV closed in 1957, and channels 2 and 12 split ABC programming until WGHP began on channel 8 in 1963.

Beginning at the end of 1953, WFMY-TV built new facilities and a new tower, 659 feet (201 m) high plus a 101-foot (31 m) antenna, at its present studio site at Phillips and Summit avenues. The new building was six times larger than the 4,500-square-foot (420 m²) facility on Davie Street and boasted two studios, each larger than the original studio of 14 by 26 feet (4.3 by 7.9 m). The station moved to the new studios on January 2, 1955, and simultaneously increased its power to the maximum of 100,000 watts.

Over the course of the 1950s, WFMY-TV launched three long-running local programs. In 1951, the station debuted the children's show Six-Gun Playhouse. It was hosted by George Perry, who noted a fad of Confederate fashion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and adopted a "Rebel cap" for his character. The Old Rebel Show—filmed before a live studio audience of dozens of children—remained on the station for 26 years, first in afternoons and then in mornings before becoming a weekly Saturday program in its final year. What's Cooking Today, a cooking series hosted by Cordelia Kelly, ran for 18 years from 1953 to 1971.