Burlington Daily News ownership
Channel 3 traces its roots to WCAX radio, Vermont's oldest radio station, which signed on as an experimental station run by students at the University of Vermont (UVM) on May 20, 1922,[2][3] and began full-time operations on October 10, 1924.[4]
By 1931, UVM realized it was in over its head operating a radio station, so it sold WCAX to the Burlington Daily News, which relaunched it that November as a commercial radio station.[3][5] Charles P. Hasbrook bought the Daily News in 1939.[6] He sold the Daily News in 1941 (the paper is now defunct), but kept WCAX.[7]
On September 26, 1954, Hasbrook signed on Vermont's first television station, WMVT, originally licensed to the state's capital city of Montpelier.[8] In December 1954, the stations' parent company, WCAX Broadcasting Corporation, was renamed Mount Mansfield Television, after the location of channel 3's transmitter and tower.[9]
Move to Burlington
In May 1955, WMVT moved its community of license from Montpelier to Burlington, the state's largest city.[10] Burlington is just a few miles from Mount Mansfield. One month later, the station's call letters were changed to WCAX-TV to match its radio sister station.[11] In 1958, Hasbrook turned over the station's ownership to his stepson, Dr. Stuart T. "Red" Martin Jr. Martin was an engineer by trade who assisted his stepfather in building the station from the ground up. He had already been serving as general manager since the station signed on.[12]
Red Martin sold off WCAX radio in 1963; it is now WVMT.[13] Martin continued to own channel 3 until his death in 2005, and was succeeded by his oldest son, Peter R. Martin.
In September 1965, WCAX-TV became the third station in its market (after WPTZ-TV and WMTW-TV), and the first in Vermont, to broadcast in color.
CBS and Fox affiliation
WCAX radio had been a CBS Radio affiliate since 1940, so channel 3 became a CBS television affiliate. It has been with the network ever since. As such, until 2017, WCAX-TV was one of the few stations in the United States (not counting network owned-and-operated stations) that has had the same owner, channel number, and primary network affiliation throughout its history. The station did hold a secondary Fox affiliation from 1994 through 1997, carrying that network's sports and children's programming.
Through this arrangement, WCAX-TV was able to carry Fox's NFL coverage, which consisted of the rights to NFC games that had been held by CBS (and thus aired on WCAX-TV) until 1994. The secondary Fox affiliation ended when WFFF-TV (channel 44) signed on in 1997.[14] On October 25, 2006, WCAX-TV upgraded its digital signal to broadcast CBS programming in high definition.
Gray Television
On May 4, 2017, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced its intent to acquire WCAX-TV for $29 million–a handsome return on Charles Hasbrook's purchase of WCAX radio in 1939. Gray assumed operational control of the station on June 1, 2017, under a local marketing agreement (LMA).[15][16]
The sale was completed on August 1. That ended the Hasbrook/Martin family's 62-year-long stewardship of the station.[17]
2019 antenna fire
On November 19, 2019, WCAX-TV, NBC affiliate WPTZ (channel 5) and CW+ affiliate WNNE (channel 31) were knocked off the air by a fire at their shared antenna on Mount Mansfield. The cause of the fire was unknown. The outage affected over-the-air and satellite viewers.
Cable subscribers in Vermont and New York continued to receive the three stations via direct fiber feeds.[18][19] Vidéotron. a cable company in Quebec, temporarily replaced WCAX with Detroit CBS owned-and-operated station WWJ-TV.[20]
WCAX-DT2
In 2007, WCAX-TV began to operate a 24-hour local weather and news channel on a new digital subchannel. Originally called "Weather 3.2", and later "WCAXtra", it featured news updates and live local weather along with the FCC-required three hours of E/I-compliant children programming per week.
On weekends, if sports events ran long, the news could be found on the secondary channel, though that practice ended a few years later. A 10 p.m. newscast was seen for a while exclusively on 3.2. After it was canceled, the 5:30 program The :30 was run as a repeat in that timeslot. On April 30, 2015, the channel was replaced with the Movies! network.[21]
