WATL (channel 36) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is programmed primarily as an independent station, but maintains a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV. WATL is owned by the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group alongside NBC affiliate WXIA-TV (channel 11) and the two stations share studios at One Monroe Place on the north end of midtown Atlanta. WATL's transmitter shares a broadcast tower with several other local stations near North Druid Hills, just northeast of the city.
History
Early history In the fall of 1952, Robert Rounsaville, the owner of radio station WQXI (790 AM) in Atlanta, applied for a construction permit to build the first UHF station in the city on channel 36, which was granted on November 19, 1953. The station began test broadcasts on October 13, 1954. On October 26, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a special temporary authority to begin commercial operation under the call sign WQXI-TV. Actual full-time programming began on December 18, 1954, as Atlanta's fourth-oldest television station. Rounsaville also had construction permits for UHF stations in Louisville, Kentucky (WQXL-TV), and Cincinnati, Ohio (WQXN-TV), which were never placed in operation. An article on the history of WQXI-TV relates how the station shared a house in the northeast Atlanta area of Buckhead at 3165 Mathieson Drive with WQXI radio. In addition, the programming included old movies, live interview shows, a Saturday-evening barn dance and a live bingo game show. Because expensive UHF converters were required, the station could not attract enough viewers to make it successful; as a result, WQXI-TV signed off on May 31, 1955, after less than six months on the air. (The WQXI call sign was later used on channel 11, now-sister station WXIA-TV, from 1968 to 1974.) Despite being off the air, the call letters were changed to WATL-TV in early 1956.
On August 17, 1964, the FCC announced that an application had been filed to transfer the WATL-TV construction permit from Robert Rounsaville to Daniel H. Overmyer for a price of $100,000; FCC approval of the transfer was granted on May 12, 1965. At the time of the FCC sale approval, Overmyer owned construction permits for two UHF stations, WDHO-TV in Toledo and WNOP-TV in Cincinnati. In addition, he was in the process of buying existing construction permits for two other UHF stations in San Francisco (KBAY-TV, channel 20) and Pittsburgh (WAND-TV, channel 53), as well as applying for new UHF stations in Houston and Dallas. Neither of the Overmyer-owned stations had signed on by the time of the FCC approval of the channel 36 purchase. Under Overmyer, the station permit bore the call letters WBMO-TV, for his daughter, Barbara Morton Overmyer; it was to have been one of the owned-and-operated stations of the new Overmyer Network, (later United Network), which folded at the end of May 1967 after only a single month of broadcasting.
Channel 36 would remain dark until the station was relaunched on August 16, 1969, having returned to the WATL-TV call letters. It was jointly owned by the U.S. Communications Corporation station group of Philadelphia, a subsidiary of AVC, holding an 80 percent interest and the remaining 20% by Overmyer. Overmyer had previously sold the majority interest (80%) in the construction permits for Atlanta, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Houston to AVC on March 28, 1967, with FCC approval of their sale coming December 8, 1967. None of the stations were on the air at the time of their sale to AVC, but U.S. built all but one: WATL-TV, WXIX-TV, KEMO-TV and WPGH-TV, in addition to owning Philadelphia's WPHL-TV. The Houston station (KJDO-TV) was never constructed; the permit was deleted by the FCC in October 1971.
U.S. Communications reportedly spent $1 million on programming in the first year, including Lost in Space and a block of dinnertime game shows. Ted Turner's WTCG (channel 17, later WTBS and now WPCH-TV), which had been operating two years longer, spent far less on programming and survived. WATL was also the first station in the country to run music videos all weekend, on a show called The Now Explosion.
On March 24, 1971, Frank Minner Jr., the president of U.S. Communications Corporation, announced at an Atlanta press conference that, due to low advertising revenue, WATL-TV (and KEMO-TV) would go off the air on March 31. The last full broadcast day was March 31, 1971, and the station signed off in the early morning hours of April 1. For about a week before it left the air, the station ran :30-second announcements with a photograph of its studios at 1810 Briarcliff Road. Turner's first move after acquiring WTCG, the UHF station that would serve as the foundation of his media empire, was to take The Now Explosion from WATL.
In July 1971, U.S. Communications Corporation put WATL-TV and KEMO-TV up for sale.
Stability, then transition from independent station to Fox On July 17, 1974, two and a half years after filing to buy the station, the Briarcliff Communications Group received FCC approval to purchase the construction permit for WATL-TV from U.S. Communications Corporation for $23,500. Briarcliff Communications was partially owned (30.5%) by Don Kennedy, a well-known broadcaster in Atlanta; Kennedy started WKLS-FM in the early 1960s and also the Georgia News Network, providing statewide news to radio stations. He was also the host known as Officer Don of the children's TV show The Popeye Club on WSB-TV from 1956 until switching the show to Officer Don's Club House on WATL-TV in 1969. On July 5, 1976, Kennedy returned channel 36 to the air for good. The existing transmitter facilities were used, but the studios were now located at 1800 Peachtree Road, rather than the previous Briarcliff Road location.
Channel 36 ran public domain movies, financial news, low-budget local shows, religious programs, and a blend of CBS, NBC and ABC shows pre-empted from WAGA-TV, WSB-TV and WXIA-TV, respectively. One popular local program in 1976–77 was The Kids' Show with Otis, where segments featuring a puppet named Otis, played by a teenaged puppeteer named Steve Whitmire, played as interstitials between public-domain black-and-white cartoons. Whitmire's work on the show won him an audition with Jim Henson and led to a nearly four-decade-long career with the Muppet organization, playing iconic characters such as Rizzo the Rat, Bean Bunny, Wembley Fraggle, and (after Henson's death in 1990) Kermit the Frog and Ernie.Irwin, Jon. "On the Other Hand." Published September 2015 on longreads.com. Retrieved January 1, 2021. The station also made a brief venture into subscription television with a trial in late 1980 and early 1981, but it opted not to move forward after the trial.
The station introduced several program changes, including daily business programming from the Financial News Network, in late 1981, but financial difficulties caused Briarcliff to search for a buyer. In 1982, the station was sold to Sillerman Morrow Broadcasting, an owner of radio stations formed by Robert F. X. Sillerman and Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow. In the fall of 1983, WATL moved toward a more traditional independent schedule with a couple cartoons, a few westerns, and a few classic sitcoms plus more movies. Then in 1984, the station was sold again, this time to Outlet Communications; the sale closed in early 1985, having been intentionally delayed to allow buyer and seller to take advantage of new tax breaks. Gradually, WATL acquired stronger programming such as Cheers, Webster, and Family Ties, as well as newer syndicated cartoons as these became abundant by 1985. Outlet also built new studios for the station. Even though competing independent WGNX (channel 46, now WANF) billed more than twice WATL in 1986, it was WATL that became one of the charter affiliates of the newly launched Fox Broadcasting Company on October 9, 1986. All of this upgrading left the station $65 million in debt by 1989, $43 million of which was already on the books when Outlet purchased the station.
Outlet continued to own the station until 1989, when Outlet sold WATL, along with WXIN in Indianapolis, to Chase Broadcasting for $120 million. By then, the station was called "Fox 36". In 1992, WATL and WXIN were included in Chase's merger with Renaissance Communications. Less than a year later, WATL was sold to Fox Television Stations outright and channel 36 became a Fox owned-and-operated station—the first network-owned station in Atlanta. Fox was in the planning stages for a news department at the station, and WATL had even gone as far as hiring a news director. However, on May 22, 1994, New World Communications announced an affiliation agreement with Fox, months after the network won the broadcast rights to the NFL's National Football Conference. In this deal, most of New World-owned longtime "Big Three"-affiliated stations, including Atlanta's longtime CBS affiliate WAGA, would switch over to the Fox network. As a result, Fox canceled the plans for a newscast on WATL and put the station up for sale.
CBS, which was losing WAGA as an affiliate, made an offer to buy WATL, but backed out after Fox demanded $120 million, far more than CBS was willing to spend on the soon-to-be independent station. At that point, it almost seemed likely that WATL would join the soon-to-launch United Paramount Network (UPN) in early 1995. Rival station WGNX, then owned by Tribune Broadcasting was already slated to join The WB and had turned CBS down, forcing CBS to make a deal to buy WVEU. Eventually, however, Tribune agreed to let WGNX join CBS, and WVEU became the UPN affiliate.
Changing affiliations and owners Fox programming moved from WATL to WAGA on December 11, 1994, with WATL briefly reverting to an independent station under the branding "WATL 36". Not long after that, Fox subsequently sold the station to Qwest Broadcasting, a company partially owned by musician Quincy Jones and Tribune Broadcasting (Fox would not be without an owned-and-operated station in Atlanta for long, as it bought WAGA and the other New World stations in late 1996). Although it lost the Fox affiliation, WATL kept Fox Kids programming, which was not cleared by WAGA; outside of the loss of the prime time Fox shows and weekend sports, channel 36's programming was largely unchanged. WATL did affiliate with The WB in January 1995; since the sale to Qwest Broadcasting would not be finalized until December 14, 1995, the station ended up under the unusual distinction of being affiliated with one network while owned by another, as for nearly a year WATL operated as a WB affiliate (under the branding "WB 36") owned by Fox. In 1999, Tribune sold WGNX to the Meredith Corporation; the company then purchased WATL outright in February 2000. WATL continued to air Fox Kids programming until September of that year, when it moved to WHOT (channel 34, now Univision O&O WUVG). In 2004, the station rebranded from "WB 36" to "WATL, Atlanta's WB".