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WSPA-TV
WSPA-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States, serving Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Asheville, North Carolina–licensed CW station WYCW (channel 62). WSPA-TV and WYCW share studios on International Drive (next to the I-26 and I-85 Business/Veterans Parkway interchange) in Spartanburg; both stations broadcast from an antenna on Hogback Mountain in northeastern Greenville County (southwest of Tryon, North Carolina).
WSPA-TV began broadcasting in April 1956 amid a controversy that spanned a decade over the station's proposed transmitter site. Owned by the locally based Spartan Radiocasting Company (renamed Spartan Communications in 1995) for more than four decades, it was a CBS affiliate from its inception and the second VHF television station in Upstate South Carolina. Its original studios in downtown Spartanburg were destroyed by fire in 1960; the station rebuilt at another site downtown but constructed its present facilities in 1979. Spartan Communications was acquired by Media General in 2000; under Media General, the station enjoyed strong local news ratings performances, moving from its traditional second-place to first against traditional news ratings leader WYFF. Nexstar acquired Media General in 2017; the station has since slipped back to second place in news ratings.
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended its multi-year freeze on television stations in April 1952, it allotted very high frequency (VHF) channel 7 to Spartanburg instead of the state capital of Columbia. Two radio station owners in Spartanburg made plans to apply for the channel: the Broadcasting Company of the South, owner of WSPA (950 AM), and the Spartan Radiocasting Company, owner of WORD (910 AM). Spartan's owner, Walter J. Brown, had been instrumental in getting channel 7 assigned to Spartanburg and not Columbia; when a proposed table of allotments threatened to leave Spartanburg without any VHF channels, he pressed South Carolina's governor, fellow Spartanburg resident James F. Byrnes, to use his influence with the FCC to move channel 7 from Columbia to Spartanburg. Spartan Radiocasting attempted to have Broadcasting Company of the South disqualified once it received the construction permit for WIS-TV on channel 10 at Columbia due to alleged overlap, which the FCC dismissed.
The dispute between the two station owners ended in an unusual settlement. On November 26, 1953, Broadcasting Company of the South announced an agreement with Spartan Radiocasting under which, if Spartan were granted channel 7, it would acquire WSPA and its FM sister station from Broadcasting Company of the South and sell off the stations it already owned. The commission agreed to the transaction, which saw Spartan owner Walter J. Brown sell off one station he founded (WORD) to acquire another (WSPA). A deal to sell off WORD was agreed in January 1954. Originally designated WORD-TV, the call sign on the channel 7 construction permit was changed to WSPA-TV in March 1954.
Channel 7 was originally designated to operate from a site on Hogback Mountain, 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Spartanburg and 24 miles (39 km) northeast of Greenville. But in January 1954, the FCC permitted a temporary operation from the former WFBC-FM transmitter site on Paris Mountain, 6 miles (9.7 km) from Greenville, until Hogback was ready, so that Spartan could bring television to Spartanburg sooner. This application was vociferously opposed by two operating television stations and a third permittee, all in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band: WGVL (channel 23) of Greenville, WAIM-TV (channel 40) of Anderson, and the unbuilt WSCV (channel 17) of Spartanburg. They feared that, were the station to go on the air, it would be in effect a Greenville station, and they claimed that the Paris Mountain move would be permanent and would cause them economic injury by encouraging CBS to affiliate with the new VHF station. The WSCV permittee had noted that CBS was unwilling to grant WSPA-TV an affiliation if it broadcast from Hogback to protect the service area of WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. Days later, CBS signed an affiliation agreement with WSPA-TV. The UHF stations continued to fight against the channel 7 permit. Wilton E. Hall, the owner of WAIM-TV, alleged that in the short time between the granting of the Paris Mountain permit and February 8, his station had lost nearly $60,000 in network revenue and advertising contracts. A senator joined the UHF stations in their plea: Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, who decried the damage done to not only the operating WAIM-TV and WGVL but the unbuilt WSCV.
After the FCC denied their pleas, the UHF stations took their fight to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. While WSPA-TV, in response to the court ruling against it, initially gave up the temporary authority to build on Paris Mountain with the stated aim of instituting a regular and not an interim service, it then asked to modify its primary construction permit for the same site. The FCC by majority vote approved this modification on April 30, 1954, finding that it met the technical standards for separation and signal strength in Spartanburg. The two operating UHF stations, WGVL and WAIM-TV, each protested the grant. The FCC initially rebuffed their requests for a review, but the appeals court in March 1955 ordered the commission to hold a hearing, noting that both stations were CBS affiliates in danger of losing their network affiliation. The stations made their economic injury claims in three days of hearings in April, with WGVL and WAIM-TV each opening their books to describe their mounting losses and near-zero network revenues. Hall also made an unsuccessful plea that channel 7 be moved out of Spartanburg entirely to Knoxville, Tennessee, or another city, forcing WSPA-TV to a UHF channel.
In an initial decision released in September 1955, FCC chief hearing examiner James D. Cunningham proposed to affirm the Paris Mountain grant. Cunningham found that it mattered little from where the station broadcast because the effect of its transmissions would be the same from either site in Greenville and Anderson. WGVL and WAIM-TV appealed this ruling to the full FCC, but the FCC issued a final decision favoring WSPA-TV on March 9, 1956, and Brown announced that the station—its studios complete with closed-circuit telecasting underway since late 1955—would go on the air the next month. In its ruling, the FCC found that even after getting authority for Paris Mountain, Brown tried to "sell" CBS on the Hogback site like a "vacuum sweeper salesman" and rejected the claims of economic injury.
When the Court of Appeals gave final approval for WSPA-TV to begin from Paris Mountain on April 29, 1956, WGVL and WAIM-TV announced that they would leave the air. WSPA-TV was the sixth VHF television station in South Carolina with coverage of parts of three states. WGVL left the air that day, while WAIM-TV only briefly left the air before returning.
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WSPA-TV
WSPA-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States, serving Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Asheville, North Carolina–licensed CW station WYCW (channel 62). WSPA-TV and WYCW share studios on International Drive (next to the I-26 and I-85 Business/Veterans Parkway interchange) in Spartanburg; both stations broadcast from an antenna on Hogback Mountain in northeastern Greenville County (southwest of Tryon, North Carolina).
WSPA-TV began broadcasting in April 1956 amid a controversy that spanned a decade over the station's proposed transmitter site. Owned by the locally based Spartan Radiocasting Company (renamed Spartan Communications in 1995) for more than four decades, it was a CBS affiliate from its inception and the second VHF television station in Upstate South Carolina. Its original studios in downtown Spartanburg were destroyed by fire in 1960; the station rebuilt at another site downtown but constructed its present facilities in 1979. Spartan Communications was acquired by Media General in 2000; under Media General, the station enjoyed strong local news ratings performances, moving from its traditional second-place to first against traditional news ratings leader WYFF. Nexstar acquired Media General in 2017; the station has since slipped back to second place in news ratings.
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended its multi-year freeze on television stations in April 1952, it allotted very high frequency (VHF) channel 7 to Spartanburg instead of the state capital of Columbia. Two radio station owners in Spartanburg made plans to apply for the channel: the Broadcasting Company of the South, owner of WSPA (950 AM), and the Spartan Radiocasting Company, owner of WORD (910 AM). Spartan's owner, Walter J. Brown, had been instrumental in getting channel 7 assigned to Spartanburg and not Columbia; when a proposed table of allotments threatened to leave Spartanburg without any VHF channels, he pressed South Carolina's governor, fellow Spartanburg resident James F. Byrnes, to use his influence with the FCC to move channel 7 from Columbia to Spartanburg. Spartan Radiocasting attempted to have Broadcasting Company of the South disqualified once it received the construction permit for WIS-TV on channel 10 at Columbia due to alleged overlap, which the FCC dismissed.
The dispute between the two station owners ended in an unusual settlement. On November 26, 1953, Broadcasting Company of the South announced an agreement with Spartan Radiocasting under which, if Spartan were granted channel 7, it would acquire WSPA and its FM sister station from Broadcasting Company of the South and sell off the stations it already owned. The commission agreed to the transaction, which saw Spartan owner Walter J. Brown sell off one station he founded (WORD) to acquire another (WSPA). A deal to sell off WORD was agreed in January 1954. Originally designated WORD-TV, the call sign on the channel 7 construction permit was changed to WSPA-TV in March 1954.
Channel 7 was originally designated to operate from a site on Hogback Mountain, 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Spartanburg and 24 miles (39 km) northeast of Greenville. But in January 1954, the FCC permitted a temporary operation from the former WFBC-FM transmitter site on Paris Mountain, 6 miles (9.7 km) from Greenville, until Hogback was ready, so that Spartan could bring television to Spartanburg sooner. This application was vociferously opposed by two operating television stations and a third permittee, all in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band: WGVL (channel 23) of Greenville, WAIM-TV (channel 40) of Anderson, and the unbuilt WSCV (channel 17) of Spartanburg. They feared that, were the station to go on the air, it would be in effect a Greenville station, and they claimed that the Paris Mountain move would be permanent and would cause them economic injury by encouraging CBS to affiliate with the new VHF station. The WSCV permittee had noted that CBS was unwilling to grant WSPA-TV an affiliation if it broadcast from Hogback to protect the service area of WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. Days later, CBS signed an affiliation agreement with WSPA-TV. The UHF stations continued to fight against the channel 7 permit. Wilton E. Hall, the owner of WAIM-TV, alleged that in the short time between the granting of the Paris Mountain permit and February 8, his station had lost nearly $60,000 in network revenue and advertising contracts. A senator joined the UHF stations in their plea: Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, who decried the damage done to not only the operating WAIM-TV and WGVL but the unbuilt WSCV.
After the FCC denied their pleas, the UHF stations took their fight to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. While WSPA-TV, in response to the court ruling against it, initially gave up the temporary authority to build on Paris Mountain with the stated aim of instituting a regular and not an interim service, it then asked to modify its primary construction permit for the same site. The FCC by majority vote approved this modification on April 30, 1954, finding that it met the technical standards for separation and signal strength in Spartanburg. The two operating UHF stations, WGVL and WAIM-TV, each protested the grant. The FCC initially rebuffed their requests for a review, but the appeals court in March 1955 ordered the commission to hold a hearing, noting that both stations were CBS affiliates in danger of losing their network affiliation. The stations made their economic injury claims in three days of hearings in April, with WGVL and WAIM-TV each opening their books to describe their mounting losses and near-zero network revenues. Hall also made an unsuccessful plea that channel 7 be moved out of Spartanburg entirely to Knoxville, Tennessee, or another city, forcing WSPA-TV to a UHF channel.
In an initial decision released in September 1955, FCC chief hearing examiner James D. Cunningham proposed to affirm the Paris Mountain grant. Cunningham found that it mattered little from where the station broadcast because the effect of its transmissions would be the same from either site in Greenville and Anderson. WGVL and WAIM-TV appealed this ruling to the full FCC, but the FCC issued a final decision favoring WSPA-TV on March 9, 1956, and Brown announced that the station—its studios complete with closed-circuit telecasting underway since late 1955—would go on the air the next month. In its ruling, the FCC found that even after getting authority for Paris Mountain, Brown tried to "sell" CBS on the Hogback site like a "vacuum sweeper salesman" and rejected the claims of economic injury.
When the Court of Appeals gave final approval for WSPA-TV to begin from Paris Mountain on April 29, 1956, WGVL and WAIM-TV announced that they would leave the air. WSPA-TV was the sixth VHF television station in South Carolina with coverage of parts of three states. WGVL left the air that day, while WAIM-TV only briefly left the air before returning.
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