WJHL-TV

WJHL-TV

Tri-Cities, Tennessee-Virginia United States
City	Johnson City, Tennessee
Branding	NewsChannel 11 ABC Tri-Cities (on DT2)
Slogan	In your corner.
Channels	Digital: 11 (VHF) Virtual: 11 (PSIP)
Subchannels	11.1 CBS 11.2 ABC
Owner	Media General (sale to Nexstar Broadcasting Group pending) (Media General Communications Holdings, LLC)
First air date	October 26, 1953 (1953-10-26)
Call letters' meaning	John H. Lancaster (founder of WJHL radio)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 11 (VHF, 1953–2009) Digital: 58 (UHF, 1998–2009)
Former affiliations	All secondary: DuMont (1953–1956) NBC (1953–1956) ABC (1953–1969)
Transmitter power	34.5 kW
Height	708 m
Facility ID	57826
Transmitter coordinates	36°25′54.8″N 82°8′15.1″W / 36.431889°N 82.137528°W / 36.431889; -82.137528
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	WJHL.com

WJHL-TV, channel 11, is a television station licensed to Johnson City, Tennessee, USA. WJHL-TV is owned by Richmond, Virginia-based Media General, and serves as the CBS and ABC television network affiliate for the Tri-Cities area of northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. The station has studios on East Main Street in downtown Johnson City, and its transmitter is located on Holston Mountain.

Although the station is located in Johnson City, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires it to include Kingsport and Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia in its legal station identification.^[1]

History

WJHL-TV began broadcasting on October 26, 1953.^[2] It was owned by Hanes Lancaster, Sr. his son Hanes, Jr. and Jesse W. "Jay" Birdwell along with WJHL radio (910 AM, now WJCW; and FM 101.5, now WQUT). All three stations took their calls from John H. Lancaster, Sr. (Hanes, Sr.'s father and Hanes, Jr.'s grandfather) who had founded WJHL radio in 1938.

In the summer of 1953, WJHL-TV was on track to be the first television station to sign on in East Tennessee, projecting to begin operations on October 1. At the time, the station's original transmission tower was being constructed on Tannery Knob in downtown Johnson City. With just a few weeks before sign-on, the guy wires snapped, sending the 300-foot (91 m) tower and its antenna crashing to the ground. This enabled WROL-TV in Knoxville (now WATE-TV) to beat WJHL-TV to the air by almost a month. Since many advertisers and banks were already skeptical about television's viability (the tower crash did not help), the Lancasters had to scramble for funding. They were able to get the station on-the-air but had to side-mount a much smaller replacement antenna on a wooden power pole the Johnson City Power Board installed at the last minute.

In 1955, Birdwell sold his interests in WJHL-AM-FM-TV, which ended his broadcasting interests. Birdwell had already sold WBIR in Knoxville (now WIFA) eleven years earlier to a Cincinnati, Ohio-based consortium, which retained the call letters Birdwell initiated, reflecting the first three letters of his name. In 1956, that same consortium launched WBIR-TV, which retains Birdwell's original call letters to this day.

Originally, WJHL-TV was affiliated with all four television networks of the time—CBS, NBC, ABC, and the DuMont. However, its primary affiliation has always been with CBS, due to that network's long-time affiliation with WJHL radio. In 1954, the WJHL-TV transmitter was relocated to Buffalo Mountain southwest of Johnson City, which is 1,200 feet (370 m) higher than Tannery Knob. From that location, the station was able to better reach Bristol, Kingsport and other areas of Eastern Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, and Western North Carolina. To this day, WQUT-FM (the former WJHL-FM) still broadcasts from WJHL-TV's old tower on Buffalo Mountain. Meanwhile, NBC moved to WCYB-TV in Bristol when that station signed-on in 1956. WJHL lost Dumont soon afterward when that network shut down. WJHL and WCYB shared ABC until 1969 when WKPT-TV in Kingsport signed-on and became the market's ABC affiliate.

The Lancasters sold off their radio interests in 1960, and in turn sold WJHL-TV to Roy H. Park Broadcasting in 1964--earning a handsome return on John H. Lancaster's original investment from 26 years earlier.^[3] Around this time, the station adopted a logo featuring a U.S. highway sign with an "11" inside it, which remained in use until around 1987. The logo was already well known in the area, since alternate routes of U.S. Highway 11, U.S. Highways 11-E and 11-W pass through most of the major cities and towns in the Tri-Cities. The shields were, and still are, quite prevalent in the area and became an instant promotional link for the station. Park Broadcasting was renamed Park Communications in the 1970s.

Hanes Lancaster, Jr. had succeeded his father as station manager in 1954, and remained as station manager after the sale to Park. In 1989, Lancaster, Jr. was succeeded by Jack Dempsey, who held the post until June 2012, when he went to crosstown rival WCYB. Dan Cates was appointed General Manager of WJHL in August 2012, after being the news director of sister station WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Many of its employees have stayed on for thirty years or more, which is unusual for such a small market (it is currently the 93rd market, the smallest in the state with three full big three affiliates).

Some of the more well-known TV anchors and personalities on WJHL include: Dick Ellis, Al Gregory, Red Kirk, Kathryn Willis, Eddie McKinney, Bob Carlton, Ed Carter, Bob Lewis, Don Garland, Ron Rankins, Claude Wood, Judy Rothe, Ray Stockard, Tony Treadway, Mary Ellen Plubell (Miller), Mark Reynolds, Jim Bailey, Kenny Hawkins, and Tim Cable.

In 1969, WJHL moved its transmitter once again 800 feet (240 m) higher and further east, this time side-by-side with WKPT on the lower end of Holston High Point on Holston Mountain. With an antenna now at 2,224 feet (678 m) above average terrain, it was necessary to reduce full power analog visual to 245,000 watts from the normal 316,000 watts allocated to stations between VHF channel 7 to 13 with antennas below 2,000 feet (610 m) above average terrain.

Logo used from 2009 to October 2012.

Media General acquired Park Communications and WJHL in 1997 and dropped its longtime brand of "TV 11" in favor of "NewsChannel 11". The station began broadcasting a digital signal on UHF channel 58 in 1998. In May 2009, WJHL switched its branding from "NewsChannel 11" to "11 Connects." WJHL reverted to the "NewsChannel 11" branding in October 2012.

Under federal must-carry rules, broadcasters can either allow cable systems in their market to carry their signals for free or charge a fee under retransmission consent provisions. On December 3, 2008, it was announced that Inter Mountain Cable (IMC), a cable provider serving parts of Eastern Kentucky, announced that it would drop WJHL from its lineup unless an agreement was reached over retransmission consent.^[4] According to The Mountain Eagle, this dispute has caused concern among officials in the city of Fleming-Neon where IMC holds the cable television franchise there.^[5] The city council in Fleming-Neon have stated that the removal of WJHL will violate IMC's franchise agreement.^[5]

Hanes Lancaster, Jr.

Hanes Lancaster, Jr., was a Chattanooga native and the son of Walter Hanes Lancaster, Sr. and Evelyn Hurt Lovelace Lancaster. Lancaster was a 1942 graduate of the McCallie School, where he was the squadron commander and recipient of the Grayson Medal, the school’s highest honor. After a single term at Washington and Lee University, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He served as a gunner aboard B-29 bombers and saw action in China-Burma-India theater of operations and on Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands, from where bombing missions were launched against the Japanese home islands.

Following his honorable discharge from service, Mr. Lancaster returned home and completed his degree at Washington and Lee. He and his wife, Barbara B. Lancaster, moved to Johnson City in 1948.

Lancaster joined his father operating radio station WJHL and later founded WJHL television in 1953. W. Hanes Lancaster, Jr., just aged 89, Johnson City, died January 27, 2014 at the Johnson City Medical Center.^[6]

Ironically, at the time when Lancaster sold WJHL-TV to Roy H. Park Broadcasting, that company had just purchased WDEF-TV, Chattanooga, the CBS station in Lancaster's home town.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WJHL-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 11, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 58, which was among the high band UHF channels (52-69) that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 11.^[8]

ABC Tri-Cities (WJHL-DT2)

WJHL-DT2 was established in late 2006 as a simulcast of its 24-hour cable weather channel. In August 2011, WJHL-DT2 established a general entertainment format as a MeTV affiliate.

On January 4, 2016, Media General and ABC announced that WJHL-DT2 would become the Tri-Cities' ABC affiliate on February 1 of that year, branded as ABC Tri-Cities, ending that network's affiliation in the Tri-Cities on WKPT-TV and MeTV's affiliation with WJHL-DT2. The move reunited the network with WJHL, which had a secondary affiliation with ABC until WKPT's launch in 1969. MeTV was promptly picked up by WKPT's sister station WAPK-CD, while that station's MyNetworkTV affiliation moved to WKPT.^[9][10][11]

WJHL-DT2 clears the entire ABC schedule, except for Litton Entertainment's Litton's Weekend Adventure E/I block which is designed mainly for carriage by ABC affiliates. That block continues to air on WKPT, since it is syndicated by Litton and is separate from that station's expired contract with ABC. Instead, WJHL-DT2 combines content from Xploration Station, which was turned down by Fox affiliate WEMT, and the open syndication market for their E/I contribution.

Out-of-market cable carriage

In recent years, WJHL has been carried on cable in multiple areas outside of the Tri-Cities media market. That includes cable systems within the Knoxville, TN market in Kentucky, and the Asheville and Charlotte markets in North Carolina.^[12] According to Zap2it, WJHL has been carried on cable in College Grove, which is within the Nashville market.^[13]

News operation

WJHL's newscasts were simulcast on WKPT for four years. That station shut down its news department in February 2002. The simulcasts ceased in September 2006 (WKPT later restarted its own news operation, which itself shut down January 29, 2016). In late-2006, WJHL-TV launched a 24-hour cable weather channel. It was seen on most cable outlets in the area via digital cable and on digital channel 11.3; in 2015, the channel was replaced by Ion Television as a result of an affiliation deal between Media General and Ion. On August 11, 2008, Channel 11 debuted a new daytime show, Daytime Tri-Cities. The show is hosted by Morgan King (a former weatherman at WKPT and WCYB) and Amy Lynn (who was an anchor at WCYB). In the November 2008 ratings period, WJHL's 11 P.M. news took over the ratings lead from WCYB for the first time in thirty years.

On April 21, 2010, WJHL management announced that the station will convert Channel 11 newscasts to high definition.^[14] On October 4, 2010, WJHL became the second station in the Tri-Cities market to convert its newscast in high definition.^[15]

WJHL-TV is in what the media industry calls a converged newsroom, meaning Media General online print (The Bristol Herald Courier) and broadcast (WJHL) operations work together closely. Herald Courier reporters are trained to occasionally deliver webcasts of Bristol news, conduct TV "talk-backs" with WJHL and gather audio for daily stories. News Channel 11 reporters often have bylined stories that appear in the Herald Courier news pages. Both operations provide content for TriCities.com, a subsidiary of Media General's Digital Media Department.

When WJHL-DT2 switched from Me-TV to ABC on February 1, 2016, WJHL's morning, 11 p.m., and weekend newscasts began simulcasting on the subchannel. In addition, WJHL-DT2 airs newscasts at 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., with ABC World News Tonight broadcast in between the two newscasts on a 30-minute tape-delay at 7 p.m. The newscasts are branded ABC Tri-Cities News and are exclusive to WJHL-DT2.

References

External links

• Official website
• ABC Tri-Cities
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WJHL-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WJHL-TV