media day The station began operations on July 18, 1970. It was the fourth television station to launch in Savannah and immediately became the area's first-ever primary ABC affiliate. Prior to channel 22 signing on,
CBS affiliate
WTOC-TV (channel 11) and
NBC affiliate
WSAV-TV (channel 3) shared secondary affiliations with ABC. Originally owned by former Savannah mayor and avid amateur radio operator
Julius Curtis Lewis Jr. (whose initials provided the call sign), the station marked many "firsts". At the time, it built the tallest broadcast tower in the
market rising some above
sea level. Local color news film and reel-to-reel videotape were introduced to the Savannah market by WJCL. It claims to have been the first station in the area to televise a live event (
President Richard Nixon's Savannah visit and ride in a parade on Skidaway Road) as well as broadcasting in
stereo. WJCL-TV and
WJCL-FM (96.5 FM) were both run by Lewis Broadcasting's
executive vice president, J. Fred Pierce, from 1972 until the television station's first sale in 1999. Channel 22 dropped the "-TV" suffix from the callsign in 1981. In 1982, WJCL swapped affiliations with WSAV (due to the latter's action) and became an NBC affiliate. In 1985, WSAV was one of several ABC affiliates nationwide unhappy with the network's weak prime time programming offerings. That year, WJCL returned to ABC, while WSAV reverted to being an NBC affiliate full-time. When Lewis purchased the
WNOK television and radio stations in
Columbia, South Carolina in 1977, he quickly sold off WNOK radio (for an undisclosed price) and immediately changed the television outlet's callsign to
WLTX. In 1982, he purchased WYEA in
Columbus, Georgia from
AFLAC and changed its calls to
WLTZ to follow a similar call letter format used for his station in South Carolina's capitol ("LT" meaning "Lewis Television"). In the early 1990s, Lewis sold two of his radio stations,
WSTZ-FM and
WZRX in
Jackson, Mississippi, for an undisclosed price. In 1999, Lewis Broadcasting sold WJCL to Grapevine Communications, which merged with
Piedmont Television around the same time. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Lewis decided to divest an even larger portion of his media interests and sold four of his combined eight owned and/or previously owned radio and television stations including WJCL,
WTGS, WJCL-FM, and WLTX. Lewis died in 2005, and on May 1, 2007, Lewis Broadcasting, by then owned by his son, Julius Curtis Lewis III, entered into an agreement with
SagamoreHill Broadcasting to sell-off its last remaining television station, WLTZ. In 1995, WJCL became a charter
UPN affiliate as a secondary basis until 1997 when former
WB affiliate
WUBI took over the UPN affiliation. In 2001, WJCL partnered with Carleton Public Relations, Inc. to produce
ABC 22 LawCall. Radio on-air personality Lexie Kaye was hired by Carleton Public Relations as producer of the weekly live, legal call-in show. The program featured Mike Avery as host along with attorneys from the Carter & Tate firm with a weekly guest and various topics. This was the first legal call-in show in the nation to use the "LawCall" name. The show aired until June 2006 on Sundays from 11 to 11:30 p.m. WJCL and WTGS were sold to
New Vision Television (in an ironic twist, a prior incarnation of New Vision once owned rival WSAV) and Parkin Broadcasting respectively in 2007. The station unveiled a new blog-based website in June 2007. On November 2, 2007, it was announced that with the recent acquisition of WJCL by New Vision, a brand new website was on the way. The revamped website (operated largely in-house with technology borrowed from Broadcast Interactive Media) featured the usual news, weather, and sports along with
streaming video. In January 2009, the websites of WJCL and several of its sister stations migrated to the Inergize Digital Network platform (with
KOIN in
Portland, Oregon, being the first station in the New Vision group featuring it). The station is the setting of the second season of
TV Guide Network's
Making News which began airing on June 4, 2008. On May 7, 2012,
LIN TV Corporation announced that it would acquire the New Vision Television station group for $330.4 million and the assumption of $12 million in debt. Along with the outright ownership of WJCL, the agreement included the acquisition of New Vision's shared services agreement with Parkin Broadcasting, giving LIN operational control of WTGS. On October 2, the FCC approved the proposed sale to LIN TV. The transaction was completed on October 12. On March 21, 2014, LIN Media entered into an agreement to merge with
Media General in a $1.6 billion deal. Because Media General already owned NBC affiliate WSAV-TV, the companies were required to sell either WSAV or WJCL to another station owner in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to those rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibit
sharing agreements. On August 20, 2014, Media General announced that it would keep WSAV and sell WJCL, along with
WVTM-TV in
Birmingham, Alabama, to
Hearst Television, with WTGS going to
Sinclair Broadcast Group. The sale was completed on December 19, and Hearst closed on its purchase of WJCL and WVTM on December 22. ==News operation==