WXII-TV (channel 12) is a
television station
A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...
licensed to
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem is a city in Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the List of municipalities in North Carolina, fifth-most populous ...
, United States, serving the
Piedmont Triad region as an affiliate of
NBC. It is owned by
Hearst Television alongside
Lexington-licensed
CW affiliate
WCWG (channel 20). WXII-TV and WCWG share studios on Coliseum Drive in Winston-Salem; through a
channel sharing agreement, the stations transmit using WXII-TV's spectrum from an antenna on
Sauratown Mountain in
Stokes County.
History
The station first signed on the air on September 30, 1953, as WSJS-TV. It is the third-oldest surviving television station in North Carolina, behind
Charlotte's
WBTV and channel 12's rival in the
Greensboro market,
WFMY-TV. The station at first was owned by a partnership of Piedmont Publishing, publishers of the ''
Winston-Salem Journal'' and ''
Twin City Sentinel'', and Hollywood star
Mary Pickford and her husband
Charles "Buddy" Rogers. It took its calls from Piedmont Publishing's WSJS radio (
600 AM and 104.1 FM, now
WTQR), which in turn took them from the newspapers' initials.
Johnny Beckman, an early employee, recalled working at WSJS-TV in those early years:
The station has always been affiliated with NBC.
ABC programming was shared (through a secondary affiliation) with WFMY until
WGHP (channel 8) signed on in October 1963. The station's operations were originally housed from the basement of the WSJS studios on Spruce Street in Winston-Salem. The first broadcast was of the first game of the
1953 World Series between the
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Am ...
and the
Brooklyn Dodgers. Channel 12 originally broadcast its signal from an antenna near
Kernersville. WSJS-TV opened its new transmitter site atop Sauratown Mountain in 1955. In 1959, Piedmont exercised an option agreement to buy out Pickford and Rogers, and gained complete control of the station. The matter ended up in court when Pickford and Rogers felt that Piedmont had undervalued the amount of their shares, but was eventually resolved in Piedmont's favor.
In 1968, Glenn Scott joined the station at a time when weather reporters "climbed" the
Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
Weather Tower, used by TV stations around the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
Piedmont Publishing was sold to
Media General in 1968. By this time, the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) was giving serious thought to barring common ownership of newspapers and broadcast outlets.
Gordon Gray, the longtime publisher of both papers, thus formed Triangle Broadcasting to hold onto WSJS-AM-FM-TV. Gray also received the franchise for the city's cable system, Summit Cable. However, soon afterward, the FCC ruled that media companies could not own both a television station and a cable system in the same market. Gray was thus forced to sell WSJS-TV in 1972 to
Multimedia, Inc., earning a handsome return on his purchase of the ''Journal'' and ''Sentinel'' in 1937. The new owners changed the station's call letters to WXII-TV on October 2 (the letters "XII" from "WXII" are the
Roman numeral
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...
s for the station's channel number, "12"). At the time of the call letter change, the station ran a promotional ad parodying the death of
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...
to amplify the Roman numeral theme. Two other stations in the market later switched to Roman numeral call letters (
WXLV-TV, channel 45 and
WLXI-TV, channel 61;
WGSR-LD's previous incarnation also used Roman numerals as WXIV).
Multimedia swapped WXII and WFBC-TV (now
WYFF) in
Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville ( ; ) is a city in Greenville County, South Carolina, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of municipalities in South Carolina, sixth-most pop ...
, to
Pulitzer in 1983 in exchange for
KSDK in
St. Louis. Pulitzer sold its entire broadcasting division, including WXII, to Hearst-Argyle Television, now Hearst Television, in 1998.
That same year, Hearst bought
WETR (830 AM) and changed its callsign to WXII, and switched it to a
news radio format that included audio from some WXII newscasts.
On July 9, 2012, Hearst Television became involved in a
carriage dispute with
Time Warner Cable, resulting in WXII being pulled from the provider's
Piedmont Triad systems and being temporarily replaced with
Nexstar Broadcasting Group-owned
WBRE-TV from
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Wilkes-Barre ( , alternatively or ) is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It ...
; Time Warner opted for such a distant signal like WBRE, as it did not have the rights to carry any NBC affiliate closer in proximity. The substitution of WBRE in place of WXII lasted until July 19, 2012, when Hearst and Time Warner reached a new carriage agreement.
News operation
WXII presently broadcasts hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with hours each weekday and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays).
Long a distant runner-up to WFMY-TV, channel 12's newscast ratings began to increase following a series of severe weather events in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, WXII has regularly traded the number one spot in the ratings with WFMY.
On February 12, 2010, after the
opening ceremony of the
Winter Olympics, WXII began broadcasting its local newscasts in
16:9 widescreen
Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratio (image), aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ...
standard definition, becoming the third station to do so after WGHP and WFMY. In-studio segments and news video was presented in widescreen. For a few months after the switch, weather graphics were still presented in the
4:3 format with blue-colored pillarboxing, but were later upgraded to the 16:9 widescreen format. In 2012, WXII began broadcasting its local newscasts in
high definition.
On August 13, 2012, WXII debuted a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast on its
MeTV-affiliated subchannel on digital channel 12.2, to compete with the longer-established hour-long 10 p.m. newscast on
Fox affiliate WGHP. On March 4, 2013, WXII started simulcasting its weeknight 6 p.m. newscast on its former sister radio station, WSJS. The two properties also entered into a news sharing agreement in which members of WSJS's reporting staff provide stories on WXII's newscasts while members of channel 12's news staff would also report for WSJS.
On July 26, 2017, WXII announced that it would move its 10 p.m. newscast to its new sister station WCWG beginning July 31 and expanded it to a full hour on weeknights while remain as a half-hour on weekends.
On September 5, 2017, WXII added an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast, expanding its early-evening news block to two-and-a-half hours from 4 to 6:30 p.m.
Notable former on-air staff
*
John Beard – anchor/reporter (1976–1977)
*
Paul Dellegatto – chief meteorologist (1986–1990)
*
Monica Malpass – anchor/reporter
*
Bonnie Schneider – meteorologist
*
Jennie Stencel – traffic reporter
Technical information
Subchannels
WXII added
This TV
This TV (also known as This TV Network and alternately stylized as thisTV) was an American free-to-air television network owned by Allen Media Broadcast Networks, LLC, part of the Allen Media Group division of Entertainment Studios. Originally ...
on digital subchannel 12.2 on June 1, 2009. On July 24, 2012, Hearst Television renewed its affiliation agreement with MeTV to maintain existing affiliations with eight Hearst-owned stations already carrying the digital multicast network through 2015. As part of the renewal, Hearst also signed agreements to add the network as digital subchannels of WXII-TV and four other stations in
Sacramento,
Baltimore
Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
,
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
, and
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Oklahoma, most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat ...
. Digital subchannel 12.2 replaced This TV with MeTV on August 6, 2012.
Analog-to-digital conversion
WXII-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over
VHF channel 12, on June 12, 2009, as part of the FCC-mandated
transition to digital television for full-power stations.
[List of Digital Full-Power Stations](_blank)
/ref> The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 31, using virtual channel 12.
As part of the SAFER Act, WXII kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.
Out-of-market cable and satellite carriage
In recent years, WXII has been carried on cable
Cable may refer to:
Mechanical
* Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof
* Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...
in areas outside of the Greensboro television market including cable systems within the Charlotte market in North Carolina and the Roanoke market in Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
. On DirecTV
DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...
, WXII has been carried in multiple areas within the Roanoke market in Virginia.
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wxii-Tv
1953 establishments in North Carolina
Hearst Television
MeTV affiliates
NBC affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1953
XII-TV