WCTV was Tallahassee and southwest Georgia's first television station. On October 13, 1954, the
Tallahassee Democrat first reported on plans for the new station. On August 29, 1955, the station began airing a test pattern. It signed on for the first time on September 15, 1955, from studios on North Monroe Street in Tallahassee. WCTV was originally owned by John H. Phipps. Although it has always considered itself a Tallahassee station, it was licensed to Thomasville because the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had allocated only one
VHF channel to Tallahassee, channel 11.
Florida State University had managed to have the FCC reserve channel 11 for
noncommercial use so it could put
WFSU-TV on the air. UHF was not considered viable at the time. Until the 1964 FCC requirement that all new sets have all-channel capability, UHF stations were unviewable without a converter, and even with one, the picture quality was marginal at best. Additionally, the FCC had just collapsed a large portion of southwest Georgia into the Tallahassee market, and UHF stations have never carried well across large areas. Hoyt Wimpy, owner and founder of
WPAX radio in Thomasville, persuaded the FCC to grant the Phipps family a license for channel 6 in Thomasville, the nearest city to Tallahassee that had a VHF allocation available. This could provide city-grade coverage of Tallahassee and north central Florida as well as southwestern Georgia. By this time, the FCC had changed its regulations to allow a station to operate its main studio outside its city of license. As a result, WCTV has been a Tallahassee station from the very beginning. However, it has always identified as serving "Thomasville–Tallahassee", and has operated a live studio,
news bureau and advertising sales office in Thomasville for many years. The station originally carried programming from all three networks, but was a primarily an
NBC affiliate. This resulted in duplication with
WALB-TV in nearby
Albany, Georgia, which was also a primary NBC affiliate; any time either station wanted to carry a CBS program, both stations had to agree to it. As a result, WCTV was forced to air some CBS programs on as much as a two-week delay, while some shows, including popular ones like
I Love Lucy, were not seen at all. To resolve this issue, WCTV switched its primary affiliation to CBS on September 20, 1959; however, it continued to carry a secondary
ABC affiliation while airing some NBC shows on a per-program basis. It was still the only commercial VHF station in the market (the only other VHF stations were
PBS members WFSU-TV on channel 11, and
Georgia Public Broadcasting's WXGA-TV on channel 8). It was the only commercial station in the area until WECA-TV (channel 27, now
WTXL-TV) began operations in 1976 and took the ABC affiliation. The Phipps family sold channel 6 to Gray Communications, now Gray Television, in 1996. Gray's purchase of WCTV forced the company to sell WALB, its flagship station in Albany, because WALB's signal has city-grade quality in most of the Georgia side of the market (including Thomasville and
Valdosta). WALB had served as one of the default NBC affiliates for Tallahassee for many years until
WTWC-TV (channel 40) signed on in April 1983. In 2004, Gray purchased
WSWG in Valdosta, a
UPN affiliate for the Albany market. The station joined CBS in 2005 as a
semi-satellite of WCTV (see below). The acquisition created a strong combined signal with just under 50% overlap. WCTV had been the default CBS affiliate for Albany for many years. In March 2006, WCTV moved from its longtime studios on County Road 12 in northern
Leon County (approximately midway between Tallahassee and Thomasville) to new facilities on Halstead Boulevard in Tallahassee. The location formerly housed the now-defunct
Florida's News Channel, a cable-only operation. On February 17, 2009, WCTV shut off its analog signal on channel 6, and became digital-exclusive on UHF channel 46. On June 25, 2018,
Gray Television announced that it would acquire
Raycom Media, who had owned ABC affiliate WTXL-TV since 2017. Because the FCC prohibits a direct duopoly between two of the top four stations in the same market, Gray opted to retain ownership of WCTV and sell WTXL to a third party. On August 20, 2018, Gray announced that they would sell both WTXL-TV and
KXXV (along with semi-satellite
KRHD-CD in
Bryan) to the
E. W. Scripps Company for $55 million. The deal was completed on January 2, 2019.
Former semi-satellite From 2005 until 2019, WSWG operated as a semi-satellite of WCTV. As such, that station cleared all network programming as provided through its parent and simulcast most of WCTV's local newscasts (see below), but aired a separate offering of syndicated programming; there were also separate
station identifications and commercial inserts. Although
master control and most internal operations of WSWG were based within WCTV's facilities, that outlet does currently maintains offices on Pine Avenue in Albany; it previously maintained a
news bureau and advertising sales office on 2nd Avenue Southwest in
Moultrie, Georgia. Even though WSWG technically serves as the CBS affiliate for the Albany
market, its over-the-air broadcasting radius falls just short of Albany proper. This forces the station to rely on
cable and
satellite for most of its viewership. However, WCTV's more powerful digital signal reaches into Albany. Despite WSWG once being a semi-satellite of WCTV, it operates two digital subchannels (serving as the MyNetworkTV/
MeTV and
CW affiliates for the Albany market) that are programmed separately. With the sale of WSWG to
Marquee Broadcasting (enabling Gray to re-acquire WALB as part of its buyout of Raycom Media), that arrangement was formally broken in April 2019 after a transitional period. ==News operation==