History
The station first signed on the air on September 9, 1984, as WNEG-TV (the call letters representing Northeast Georgia); operating as a commercial independent station at the time, the station was originally owned by Toccoa businessman Roy Gaines and his Stephens County Broadcasting Company along with longtime local radio station WNEG (630 AM). Gaines felt that northeast Georgia received very little local news coverage from stations in the adjacent Atlanta, Augusta, and Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville markets, and launched WNEG in order to fill this void.[1] However, the station struggled to make money, as there were barely enough viewers or advertisers in its primarily rural area for it to be viable. Virtually the only program that generated ratings on the station was the popular Billy Dilworth Show; it and WNEG radio's ratings were all that kept channel 32 afloat. Gaines campaigned tirelessly to have WNEG added to area cable systems, often buying antennas and offering technical assistance in exchange for adding WNEG to their channel line-ups.
Gaines ultimately gave up on trying to make the station viable in 1990, and decided to put channel 32 up for sale.[2] However, he was unable to find any buyers until August 1995, when it entered into a time brokerage agreement with Spartan Communications, making WNEG a sister station to Spartan's television flagship, WSPA-TV (channel 7) in Spartanburg. Spartan bought the station outright two years later[2] (WNEG radio still exists, but operates separately from and maintains different ownership than the former WNEG-TV).
Through the deal with Spartan, WNEG was able to gain an affiliation with CBS, restoring that network to areas of northeast Georgia that had lost access to CBS programming one year earlier, when longtime Atlanta affiliate WAGA-TV switched to Fox as a result of then-owner New World Communications' groupwide affiliation agreement with Fox. The new Atlanta CBS affiliate, WGNX (channel 46, now WANF), was located on UHF, and did not have nearly the signal coverage that WAGA had in northeast Georgia.[2] Many areas of northeast Georgia were among the few areas where cable still did not have much penetration. Spartan also beefed up WNEG's news department,[2] and changed the station's (and by extension, its newscasts) branding to NewsChannel 32, using a logo similar to the one that WSPA used from 1994 to 2001 (which was also used by another sister station, WJBF in Augusta, around the same time period). WNEG and the rest of Spartan's properties were acquired by Media General in 2000. When WSPA and WJBF switched to Media General's standardized logo design, WNEG retained its Spartan-era logo.
On October 29, 2007, Media General announced that it was exploring the sale of WNEG.[3] This was followed on June 25, 2008, with an announcement that the station would be sold to the University of Georgia Research Foundation, with plans to use channel 32 as a training facility for students in the university's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.[4] The university took control on October 15; at that time, CBS programming was dropped[5] and replaced with programming from the America One and This TV networks.[6] UGA moved the operations of WNEG-TV from its studios in Toccoa to the university campus in Athens in the fall of 2009, and also added more locally produced programming.[7] As a result of WNEG dropping CBS, WSPA now serves as northeast Georgia's default CBS affiliate, while WGCL-TV (the former WGNX) became the exclusive CBS affiliate for the Atlanta market.
Among the syndicated programs acquired by the station after the University of Georgia took over operations included reruns of Degrassi: The Next Generation and Family Feud (the latter of which had aired on MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYA-TV (channel 40, now a Dabl affiliate) for seven years at the time of its move).
On December 23, 2010, UGA announced it would enter into a programming partnership with the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, which would provide programming from Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) to WNEG, with most of the content coming from its GPB Knowledge subchannel.[8] The university subsequently filed an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to convert the station's license to non-commercial status;[9] UGA cited a reduction of advertising revenue, resulting from the economic downturn and the loss of the station's CBS affiliation.[10] The station also announced its intention to change its call letters to WUGA-TV.[11] On January 6, 2011, WNEG announced that it would undergo a staff reorganization, with twelve permanent staff members and five temporary staffers being laid off in the restructuring;[12] the station also eliminated its news operation, with a student-produced newscast, UGA Newssource, replacing it on January 31[13]
At 5:30 a.m. on May 1, 2011, the station began broadcasting programming from World through GPB's "GPB Knowledge" network. The station's call letters were officially changed to WUGA-TV the following day on May 2.[15][16]
On March 25, 2015, the University of Georgia agreed to sell WUGA-TV to Marquee Broadcasting, owner of WMDT in Salisbury, Maryland, for $2.5 million. Under the terms of the deal, Marquee returned channel 32 to commercial operation and changed the station's call letters to WGTA (in reference to its "Greenville to Atlanta" coverage area).[17][18] UGA had considered selling the station as early as November 2013,[19] and on March 27, 2014, announced that it would eliminate WUGA-TV's local programming (which comprised only one percent of channel 32's schedule) effective July 1; this resulted in six staffers being laid off.[20] At the time of the cutback, the university stated that it was not actively attempting to sell the station.[20] The change to WGTA took place on July 1, 2015,[21] when the sale to Marquee was completed; at the same time, the station dropped all GPB Knowledge and World programming and began broadcasting
Effective March 25, 2017, WGTA's primary channel became the Atlanta affiliate for the MeTV network, replacing WSB-TV, with Heroes & Icons moving to the station's second subchannel, Decades to third subchannel and Movies! to a new fourth subchannel.[23]
