The American cable channel TBS originated as the superstation feed of what is now WPCH-TV (channel 17), a UHF television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Known as WTCG when uplinked to satellite in 1976 and renamed WTBS in 1979, the feed was converted to a basic cable channel in 1998, with the local Atlanta station being spun off in 2007.

Prehistory as an Atlanta UHF station

WJRJ-TV signed on at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, September 1, 1967. Owned by Atlanta businessman Jack M. Rice, the station's studios were located at 1018 West Peachtree Street N.E., the former home of WAGA-TV. A steel lattice tower was erected next to the studios; the construction of which encountered several delays that caused WJRJ's sign-on date to be delayed three times. It was the first ultra high frequency (UHF) station in the market since WQXI-TV (channel 36) was taken dark in 1955. In addition to a schedule of reruns and feature films, WJRJ-TV carried network programming rejected by WAGA-TV (CBS), WAII-TV/WQXI-TV (ABC) and WSB-TV (NBC); this ranged from the NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies, the ABC Evening News, and National Hockey League telecasts from CBS. WJRJ also aired a local weekly country and western music show, J.R. Jamboree.

The station lost $305,000 during its first six months of operation. To secure additional funds, Rice issued an initial public offering of 130,000 shares of stock, 35 percent of Rice Broadcasting's outstanding stock, at $4.75 per share. The losses continued despite this, and by August 1969, WJRJ-TV lost a combined $800,000. During the spring of 1969, WJRJ-TV utilized billboards operated by Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who was aggressively expanding his late father's advertising business throughout the southern United States and purchased a radio station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, using empty billboards to promote it. WJRJ's billboard usage caught Turner's attention, who theorized that he could use his billboards to promote the station and thus generate profits. Despite grave financial warnings from his advisors, Turner announced on March 3, 1969, a preliminary agreement to merge his Turner Communications Corporation into Rice Communications. While Rice was purchasing Turner, it was structured as a $2.5 million deal in stock, where Turner shareholders held 77 percent ownership of the new company, renamed Turner Communications Group. Ted Turner himself held a 48.2 percent stake in company stock while Jack Rice had 6.8 percent interest. The merger closed on January 26, 1970.

Under Turner management, the station began a total programming overhaul, dubbed "17 Changes on 17". The station added rock music showcase The Now Explosion in June 1970, picking it up from WATL, a UHF competitor that signed on during the Rice-Turner merger. Initially a weekend program, The Now Explosion expanded to weeknights within a month. The station's sign-on was moved to a daily 7 a.m. time, allowing for a morning block of cartoons. On July 27, 1970, the station was renamed WTCG, formally standing for "Turner Communications Group" but with a hidden second meaning of "Watch This Channel Grow". The station also began to call itself "Super 17" but as tongue-in-cheek, as financial losses continued despite the multiple changes. Turner lost $900,000 during his first year of owning channel 17. WATL suspended operations on March 31, 1971, due to low advertising revenue; believing this to be a great victory for WTCG, Turner hosted a two-hour special thanking viewers, with a band playing live music and featuring impromptu interviews with station staff. Georgia Championship Wrestling moved from WQXI-TV to WTCG on December 25, 1971, airing on Saturday evenings. By 1973, WTCG turned a profit for the first time.

In 1972, Turner was approached by Andy Goldman, marketing director for TelePrompTer's cable systems in Alabama, about distributing WTCG to their 200,000 subscribers. The station had added telecasts of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, and Goldman saw WTCG as "a product worth someone putting up $4.95 for". This occurred as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented a rules package for the cable industry, allowing as many as two out-of-market stations to be imported by systems in the top 100 markets. WTCG was not compensated for the carriage on cable but did benefit from direct response advertising, and was soon distributed to systems in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida via microwave relay. By June 1976, WTCG was carried by 95 cable systems in six Southeastern states, reaching an estimated 440,000 households.

Uplinking WTCG to satellite Goldman, promoted to TelePrompTer's vice president of marketing, again approached Turner in 1975, this time to inform him of premium cable service Home Box Office (HBO)'s plans to transmit nationwide using communications satellites, elevating it from a regional channel. Concurrently, the FCC repealed "leapfrogging rules" limiting cable systems to select distant signals based on closeness to the system; the FCC's Cable Television Bureau argued superstations were unlikely to form due to a lack of evidence television stations economically benefited from being on cable. Distant signals were also allowed to be imported by cable systems during the overnight hours as a timeshare. Turner learned through research that WTCG could be uplinked via their transmitter to satellite and made available to cable and C-band satellite services across the country, providing cable operators desiring additional channels with his programming, all while being a cost-effective alternative from microwave and telephone landlines.

HBO was uplinked to satellite for the first time to carry the "Thrilla in Manila" boxing match on October 1, 1975. The following month, at the 1975 Western Cable Show in Anaheim, California, Turner announced WTCG was looking at a satellite uplink of their own. After signing a deal with RCA American Communications for transponder space, Turner established Southern Satellite Systems (SSS) as a common carrier uplink provider to serve as WTCG's redistributor. Turner raised enough capital to support SSS through loans by First Chicago Bank, Chase Bank and Chemical Bank, and pension funds like TIAA. To bypass FCC rules requiring a common carrier need to be a middleman between WTCG and cable providers, Turner sold SSS in March 1976 to former Western Union vice president of marketing Edward L. Taylor for $1. After the deal closed, Turner and SSS signed an agreement to uplink WTCG to Satcom 1, while SSS leased a Series 8000 Satellite Earth Terminal from Scientific Atlanta.

While announcing the SSS distribution deal, Turner suggested WTCG could potentially become the impetus for a fourth television network, an idea he continued to hold into the early 1980s. Turner testified before the House Subcommittee on Communication in June 1976, and advocated for cable systems to be able to import additional signals to benefit the consumer, and saw WTCG as a safe, family-friendly alternative that leaned on classic movies and sports. The Copyright Act of 1976, passed by Congress in October 1976, contained a section granting cable systems a compulsory license allowing them to retransmit stations across the country regardless of consent, with the U.S. Copyright Office establishing the Copyright Royalty Tribunal (CRT) to administer royalty fees.

WTCG first used a satellite uplink on October 27, 1976, to feed an Atlanta Hawks–Los Angeles Lakers game back to the station. The FCC approved SSS's request to serve as a common carrier for WTCG on December 17, 1976, and praised the proposal as "an innovative combination of new technology and established practices". At 1 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT) that afternoon, WTCG was uplinked and transmitted to cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska, Newport News, Virginia, Troy, Alabama, and Newton, Kansas. WTCG's first national broadcast was the 1948 Dana Andrews–Cesar Romero film Deep Waters, which started 30 minutes earlier on channel 17. SSS initially charged cable systems 10 cents per subscriber to transmit WTCG full-time and 2 cents per subscriber to carry it as an overnight, post-sign-off timeshare, which WTCG itself did not earn any profit from. Turner spent about $6 million of WTCG's $14 million in annual gross revenue at the time on satellite transmission.

WTCG's growing availability on cable led the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), concerned about potential financial losses on programs distributed by MPAA members that aired on superstations, to petition the FCC in 1977 for an investigation. The MPAA was supported by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) along with Kelly Broadcasting, McGraw-Hill Broadcasting and Taft Television & Radio Company; WHIZ-TV in Zanesville, Ohio, considered superstations as "threatening" and the FCC's approval of them as "unconstitutional". The MPAA also lodged an effort to deny SSS's application to grant an expansion of WTCG's service to Puerto Rico, Alaska and Canada. In turn, Turner vowed to air increased amounts of highbrow and educational programming over WTCG and institute twice-hourly news updates beyond the bare minimum of news the station had been notorious for. Unlike other superstations that were uplinked to satellite (including WOR-TV in New York City, WGN-TV in Chicago and KTVU in Oakland–San Francisco) WTCG marketed itself to their cable audience, becoming an "active" superstation; WOR, WGN and KTVU were "passive" superstations that remained focused on their home markets. By June 1977, WTCG was available to 800,000 homes in 17 states, and available on TelePrompTer's New York City systems in October 1978, when their rate card was adjusted to better reflect the national cable audience.

WTBS: centerpiece of the Turner networks

WTCG changed its call sign to WTBS on August 27, 1979, alongside with a corporate name change to Turner Broadcasting System. Turner also registered a trademark on "Superstation". The name change was possible after Turner donated $25,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which held the WTBS calls for their student-run radio station, followed by another $25,000. When the switch happened, WTBS was available on 1,000 cable systems nationwide and 80 percent of the station's measured audience came from outside of Georgia, prompting the new corporate name. The initials "TBS" held a strong similarity to CBS, leading the Atlanta Journals Jeff Denberg to suggest it was Turner's "... more grandiose scheme to rock the establishment CBS, ABC and NBC". Turner's previous pledge to upgrade the quality of channel 17's programming came with acquisitions of Upstairs, Downstairs, The Search for the Nile and The Ascent of Man, children's shows Romper Room and Gigglesnort Hotel (both without commercials) and various panel discussion shows in prime time.

With the renaming, reports surfaced that the personnel Turner hired to launch CNN in the summer of 1980 were also considering a nightly newscast over WTBS. Outside of short news bulletins, channel 17's previous efforts at news were limited to 17 Update Early in the Morning, a 3 a.m. ET newscast anchored by Bill Tush that bordered on satirical comedy with comedy skits intended to skirt around existing FCC public service regulations. 17 Update had a cult following; in 1979, the town of Valdez, Alaska, invited Tush to be the grand marshal of their annual winter parade. The development of CNN prompted Turner to urge Tush to present the news more seriously, and offered Tush a sketch comedy show Tush, which ran for 22 episodes on WTBS starting in 1980.