WNCF

callsign	WNCF
branding	ABC 32; Action 8 News Montgomery's CW (on DT2)
digital	31 (UHF)
virtual	32
affiliations	32.1: ABC 32.2: CW+
country	United States
airdate	March 24, 1962
location	Montgomery, Alabama
callsign meaning	"Where News Comes First", former slogan
former callsigns	WCCB-TV (1962–1964) WKAB-TV (1964–1989) WHOA-TV (1989–1999)
former channel numbers	Analog: 32 (UHF, 1962–2009) Digital: 51 (UHF, 2001–2009), 32 (UHF, 2009–2011)
owner	SagamoreHill Broadcasting
licensee	Channel 32 Montgomery LLC
operator	Bahakel Communications
sister stations	WBMM, WAKA
erp	720 kW
haat	478 m
facility id	72307
coordinates	32.14917°N, -86.74528°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.waka.com/about-us/our-stations/abc-32/

WNCF (channel 32), branded ABC 32, is a television station in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by SagamoreHill Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Bahakel Communications, owner of Selma-licensed CBS affiliate WAKA (channel 8) and Tuskegee-licensed CW+ affiliate WBMM (channel 22), for the provision of certain services. The three stations share studios on Harrison Road in north Montgomery; WNCF's transmitter is located in Gordonville, Alabama.

History

Construction and Bahakel ownership

The First Alabama Corporation—a sister company to the First Carolina Corporation, responsible for building WCCA-TV in Columbia, South Carolina[1]

Buy 8, sell 32

In 1984, WSLA, then a low-powered CBS affiliate in Selma, was approved for a major upgrade of its transmitter facility (activated in 1985) that would allow it to cover the Montgomery area—a concept long opposed by WCOV and WKAB, the two UHF stations in Montgomery. It changed its call letters to WAKA in advance of the move. That November, Bahakel announced it intended to buy WAKA and sell off WKAB to do so.[14] The Bahakel acquisition immediately sparked speculation about a potential affiliation shuffle in the Montgomery market, with rumors of ABC making the move to WAKA.[15] This did not occur. When Bahakel reached a $10 million deal to sell to Washington, D.C.–based Terrapin Communications Corporation, the company included a clause that prevented WAKA from switching to ABC within three years of the sale.[16] The Terrapin name in the seller indicated the Maryland roots of the firm's largest shareholder, former U.S. senator Joseph Tydings.[17]

Frey Communications acquired WKAB-TV from Terrapin in 1988 and embarked on a $2.5 million project to build a new, 2049 ft tower in Lowndes County, which would give channel 32 an over-the-air signal in Selma for the first time ever.[18] In advance of the commissioning of the new mast, the call letters were changed to WHOA-TV, for "We're the Heart of Alabama", in August 1989, a change cited by management as a "fresh start" for channel 32.[19] The fresh start, however, had turned sour by 1992, when the station filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization; the largest creditor, Concord Commercial Corporation, was owed $8.3 million, and most of the money owing consisted of payments for programming.[20] In 1993, bankruptcy court approved a reorganization plan that conveyed substantially all of channel 32's assets to Concord, which Frey would then lease back.[21]

Two years later, Ventura Entertainment Group and its affiliate Soundview Media Investments acquired WHOA-TV with an eye to creating a new station group.[22] Soundview, however, held on to the station for less than a year. Deciding that further improvements to channel 32 required more capital than it had available, the company opted to sell it to Park Communications; the $6 million deal included all of the related assets except the tower.[23] Later that same year, Park was purchased by Media General.[24]

News operation

Compared with the area's other television stations (WSFA, WCOV, and WAKA), WNCF has never had much success operating a news department of its own. Under Bahakel, in 1978, the station put emphasis into growing its newsroom, but a lack of response by viewers led the station to trim back to news updates and drop its 30-minute early evening newscast in 1982. Under Terrapin, the station started again with a 6 p.m. newscast in 1986. After WCOV—which had been stripped of its CBS affiliation in the wake of WAKA's move-in to Montgomery—scrapped local news, WKAB added a 5 p.m. edition.[34] The 6 p.m. program was ultimately dropped and not reinstated until 1997.[35]

Broadcast Media Group scrapped the existing news operation on May 31, 1999, and it set out to build a new one, which debuted that November. The new "ABC 32 News" was helmed by Bob Howell, a longtime anchor for WSFA who had left that station in 1998. However, ratings out of the gate were poor; channel 32, which was already rating behind WCOV while airing Living Single reruns in November 1998, lost more than half its audience with its new late newscast in place.[36] After three and a half years, the news operation was scrapped in July 2003, with the only remaining news presence being news cut-ins during Good Morning America; one staffer and former WSFA-TV editorial reader said of competing against his former employer, "You can't compete with the 800-pound gorilla".[37]

SagamoreHill made a fourth attempt at a news service for channel 32. In August 2005, WNCF partnered with the Independent News Network (INN), a company that produced local newscasts for stations across the United States from its studios in Davenport, Iowa, to start weekday local news and weather updates. Included in the outsourcing agreement were cut-ins during Good Morning America and a 10-minute newscast at 10 p.m., known as ABC 32 News 10 at Ten. Two reporters in Montgomery contributed local news stories that were read by the Iowa-based presenting team. In 2010, WNCF expanded its partnership with INN to produce a full-length 10 p.m. newscast and a 9 p.m. newscast for WBMM, which had previously aired a program produced by WAKA.

WNCF and WAKA officially debuted their combined local news operation—known as the Alabama News Network—on February 2, 2013, replacing the INN news on WNCF. The two stations simulcast weekday morning, 10 p.m., and weekend newscasts, with WNCF-exclusive newscasts at 5:30 p.m.

WNCF

History

Construction and Bahakel ownership

Buy 8, sell 32

WNCF

News operation

Technical information

Subchannels

Analog-to-digital conversion

External links

References