WTAT-TV

WTAT-TV (channel 24) is a television station in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. The station is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, a partner company of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. However, although Sinclair effectively owns WTAT-TV (as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith), making it an effective sister to dual MyNetworkTV/ABC affiliate WCIV (channel 36), WTAT-TV is operated outright by Cunningham (outside of a news share agreement with WCIV), and is one of only two Cunningham stations not operated by Sinclair (the other is fellow Fox affiliate WYZZ-TV in Peoria, Illinois, which is operated by the Nexstar Media Group as virtual sister station of that market's CBS affiliate WMBD-TV). WTAT-TV's studios are located on Arco Lane in North Charleston, and its transmitter is located in Awendaw, South Carolina.

The station began operations on September 7, 1985, as Charleston's first independent station, under the ownership of Charleston Television Community Ltd., a local group led by Terry Trousdale, who also had the construction permit for the station. It aired an analog signal on UHF channel 24 from a transmitter near Awendaw. On October 9, 1986, as part of a deal between WTAT's owner and News Corporation, it became a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox network. WTAT would have been the obvious choice as Charleston's Fox affiliate even without that affiliation deal, as it was the area's only general-entertainment independent station at the time.

In 1987, Charleston Television Community Ltd. sold WTAT-TV to Act III Broadcasting, owner of WNRW-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for $3.3–3.7 million; this was Act III's second station acquisition.

Abry Communications bought the Act III group in 1995, and formed Sullivan Broadcasting to operate the stations. WTAT carried UPN as a secondary affiliation from 1995 until 1997 when former WB affiliate WMMP joined UPN. In 1998, Sullivan Broadcasting sold its stations to Sinclair Broadcast Group. However, earlier that year, Sinclair acquired WMMP from Max Media. As a result, Sinclair sold WTAT-TV, along with WRGT-TV and WVAH-TV to Glencairn, Ltd. That company was owned by Edwin Edwards, a former Sinclair executive, and appeared to be a minority-owned company. However, nearly all of Glencairn's stock was controlled by the Smith family, founders of Sinclair. In effect, Sinclair now had a duopoly in the Charleston market in violation of FCC regulations. Glencairn and Sinclair further circumvented the rules by crafting a local marketing agreement with WMMP as the senior partner, allowing Sinclair to continue operating WTAT.

Sinclair tried to acquire Glencairn's stations outright in 2001. It could not legally own both WTAT and WMMP because Charleston has only six full-power stations—too few to legally permit a duopoly. Although WTAT was longer-established, Sinclair opted to keep WMMP instead of acquiring WTAT and selling WMMP to another company.

In 2001, the FCC fined Sinclair $40,000 for illegally controlling Glencairn. Later that year, this was renamed Cunningham Broadcasting. However, nearly all of Cunningham's stock is still controlled by trusts in the names of the children of the Smith brothers. Then as now, all of Cunningham's stations are located in markets where Sinclair cannot legally form a duopoly, and are operated by Sinclair stations via LMAs. Glencairn, and later Cunningham, have been accused of serving as a shell corporation that allows Sinclair to circumvent FCC ownership rules. On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension of the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WTAT, allowing them to continue carrying Fox programming until at least 2017.

On March 20, 2014, as part of a restructuring of Sinclair's August 2013 deal to purchase Allbritton Communications (owner of ABC affiliate WCIV, then on channel 4) in order to address ownership conflicts with the deal involving WMMP's local marketing agreement with WTAT, Sinclair announced that it planned to terminate the shared services agreement with Cunningham Broadcasting (which would have made WTAT the first Cunningham station in which Sinclair would not hold any operational interest). Cunningham, which was to have acquired the non-license assets of WTAT, sought a shared services agreement with the prospective owner of WMMP, which Sinclair was to have sold in order to receive approval of its purchase of WCIV. This plan never materialized as Sinclair retained WWMP (to which Sinclair moved WCIV's ABC affiliation and call sign), and WTAT continued to be operated by Sinclair until some point in 2019 or 2020, when Cunningham took full control of the station although it continues its news share agreement with WCIV.

In the early-1990s, Fox required most of its major market affiliates to add local newscasts or face disaffiliation. As a result, WTAT entered into a news share agreement with CBS affiliate WCSC-TV (channel 5, then owned by Crump Communications). The partnership resulted in a nightly half-hour prime time broadcast to debut on this station (currently titled The Fox 24 News at 10).