The station first signed on the air on September 30, 1968, as WCWB-TV. It was the first commercial television station to start up in the Macon
market since
CBS affiliate
WMAZ-TV (channel 13) debuted on September 27, 1953, fifteen years and three days earlier. The station was founded by
Dothan, Alabama, broadcaster and perennial
Alabama political candidate
Charles Woods, who owned the station for about six years. WCWB's original studio facilities were located at its transmitter site, located east of Macon, on what local residents refer to as the "
Cochran Short Route". Channel 41 has been an NBC affiliate since its debut. however, unlike many stations in (then) two-station markets, WCWB did not assume a secondary affiliation with
ABC. Instead, WMAZ aired select ABC shows during time periods when the station was not carrying CBS programming; Macon would not receive a full-time ABC affiliate of its own until
WGXA (channel 24, now a dual
Fox/ABC affiliate) signed on in April 1982. In 1974, Woods sold channel 41 to station president F. E. Busby, who headed a local investor group known as Bibb Television, Inc. Busby proved no more successful at making WCWB profitable than Woods had been, and current owner
Morris Multimedia bought the station from Bibb four years later, in 1978. Channel 41's early years of struggle were caused in large part because the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had implemented the
All-Channel Receiver Act only four years before the station signed on the air. Macon is a fairly large market geographically, and UHF stations are usually not received well across wide areas, even though much of
Middle Georgia's terrain is fairly level. Many area households probably did not upgrade their sets to newer UHF-compatible models (or purchase expensive converters) until well into the early 1970s, meaning that, in WCWB's first years of operation, some viewers could not watch the station even had they wanted to, a situation greatly handicapping the young station's promotional efforts. Many (if not most) viewers in Middle Georgia did not get a clear picture from the station until
cable arrived in the area in the late 1970s. Even so, most Middle Georgia viewers instinctively turned to WMAZ out of long-standing habits for years, ignoring WCWB even after UHF compatibility became universal on sets (the only other UHF station available then was WDCO-TV (now
WMUM-TV), a satellite of
Georgia Public Television). Further complicating matters, WCWB had to compete with longer-established NBC affiliates in the VHF band that were easily viewable on the outer portions of the market.
WSB-TV in
Atlanta put out at least a
grade B signal into much of the northern portion of the market, while
WALB-TV in
Albany and
WSAV-TV in
Savannah could be picked up in the respective portions of the southwestern and southeastern portions of WCWB's viewing area. The station changed its call letters to WMGT (for "Middle Georgia Television") on December 1, 1983, to reflect the area of Georgia that it serves (the old WCWB call letters would later be used by channel 22 in
Pittsburgh from 1998 to 2006 during its affiliation with
The WB; that station is now
WPNT). In 2000, the station moved its operations from unincorporated
Bibb County into a renovated two-story warehouse in Downtown Macon, which promised to aid the revitalization of the historic area and signify future growth for the station. Morris maintains its corporate headquarters on the second floor of WMGT's studio facility. The station's legal call sign was modified in 2003 to include a "-TV" suffix to disambiguate itself from a
Minnesota radio station that also held the WMGT calls. On April 3, 2006, WMGT retired its "41" logo (which resembled the 1993 to 2001 logo used by fellow NBC affiliate and former
sister station KARK-TV in
Little Rock) and "41 NBC" branding, introducing a new logo and rebranding as "Today's MGT"; the "41 NBC" brand was restored on March 23, 2009, with the introduction of a new logo.
1988 World Series intrusion An unknown technician from WMGT was fired after the station was hijacked during a live broadcast of
Game 1 of the
1988 World Series between the
Oakland Athletics and the
Los Angeles Dodgers that aired on October 15, 1988, replacing 30 seconds of the second inning with a scene from a random black and white
pornographic film, while the audio from the game is playing. Many viewer complaints came in from the
Macon Telegraph and News after the station couldn't get through with the calls. A couple days afterwards, station manager L. A. Sturdivant told
Macon Telegraph and News that the matter was under investigation, and stated that the incident had been an accident and not deliberately planned. ==WMGT-DT2==