WSPA-TV

WSPA-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States, serving Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Asheville, North Carolina–licensed CW station WYCW (channel 62). WSPA-TV and WYCW share studios on International Drive (next to the I-26 and I-85 Business/Veterans Parkway interchange) in Spartanburg; both stations broadcast from an antenna on Hogback Mountain in northeastern Greenville County (southwest of Tryon, North Carolina).

WSPA-TV began broadcasting in April 1956 amid a controversy that spanned a decade over the station's proposed transmitter site. Owned by the locally based Spartan Radiocasting Company (renamed Spartan Communications in 1995) for more than four decades, it was a CBS affiliate from its inception and the second VHF television station in Upstate South Carolina. Its original studios in downtown Spartanburg were destroyed by fire in 1960; the station rebuilt at another site downtown but constructed its present facilities in 1979. Spartan Communications was acquired by Media General in 2000; under Media General, the station enjoyed strong local news ratings performances, moving from its traditional second-place to first against traditional news ratings leader

Early years

Permitting

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended its multi-year freeze on television stations in April 1952, it allotted very high frequency (VHF) channel 7 to Spartanburg instead of the state capital of Columbia.[1] Two radio station owners in Spartanburg made plans to apply for the channel: the Broadcasting Company of the South, owner of WSPA (950 AM), and the Spartan Radiocasting Company, owner of WORD (910 AM).[2] Spartan's owner, Walter J. Brown, had been instrumental in getting channel 7 assigned to Spartanburg and not Columbia; when a proposed table of allotments threatened to leave Spartanburg without any VHF channels, he pressed South Carolina's governor, fellow Spartanburg resident James F. Byrnes, to use his influence with the FCC to move channel 7 from Columbia to Spartanburg.[3] Spartan Radiocasting attempted to have Broadcasting Company of the South disqualified once it received the construction permit for WIS-TV on channel 10 at Columbia due to alleged overlap, which the FCC dismissed.[4]

The dispute between the two station owners ended in an unusual settlement. On November 26, 1953, Broadcasting Company of the South announced an agreement with Spartan Radiocasting under which, if Spartan were granted channel 7, it would acquire WSPA and its FM sister station from Broadcasting Company of the South and sell off the stations it already owned.[5] The commission agreed to the transaction, which saw Spartan owner Walter J. Brown sell off one station he founded (WORD) to acquire another (WSPA).[6] A deal to sell off WORD was agreed in January 1954.[7] Originally designated WORD-TV, the call sign on the channel 7 construction permit was changed to WSPA-TV in March 1954.[8]

The Paris Mountain dispute

Channel 7 was originally designated to operate from a site on Hogback Mountain, 25 mi northwest of Spartanburg and 24 mi northeast of Greenville. But in January 1954, the FCC permitted a temporary operation from the former WFBC-FM transmitter site on Paris Mountain, 6 mi from Greenville, until Hogback was ready, so that Spartan could bring television to Spartanburg sooner. This application was vociferously opposed by two operating television stations and a third permittee, all in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band: WGVL (channel 23) of Greenville, WAIM-TV (channel 40) of Anderson, and the unbuilt WSCV (channel 17) of Spartanburg. They feared that, were the station to go on the air, it would be in effect a Greenville station, and they claimed that the Paris Mountain move would be permanent and would cause them economic injury by encouraging CBS to affiliate with the new VHF station.[9] The WSCV permittee had noted that CBS was unwilling to grant WSPA-TV an affiliation if it broadcast from Hogback to protect the service area of WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina.[10] Days later, CBS signed an affiliation agreement with WSPA-TV.[11]

Spartan ownership (1956–2000)

After beginning operations, WSPA-TV initially operated for seven hours a day, later 12, from its studios on Main Street. In addition to CBS programs, it presented local shows including The Jane Dalton Show, Carolina Showtime, Cousin Bud's Settin' Room, Dancetown, and Tim the Squirrel.[47][48] On the morning of May 16, 1960, a fire started in the air conditioning system and swept through the building shared by the WSPA radio and television stations, gutting it in what was deemed one of the worst fires in Spartanburg history to date. Operations continued unimpeded; Charlotte's WBTV and Greenville's WFBC-TV (now WYFF-TV) loaned equipment, and all television broadcasting shifted to Paris Mountain.[49] In order to replace the lost studios, Spartan Radiocasting leased a former Colonial Stores grocery store on Converse Street and refitted it as a television studio within less than two months.[50] This facility was expanded and remodeled in 1966,[51] enabling WSPA-TV to be the first in the market to begin live local color broadcasting that September.[52]

WSPA-TV left downtown Spartanburg in April 1979, when it relocated to a new, 43000 ft2 building near the interchange of Interstate 85 and Interstate 26 that had been under construction since 1977.[53][54]

Walter J. Brown, who had been the president of Spartan Radiocasting since 1947, became its chairman in 1988. The company was renamed Spartan Communications in September 1995,[55] shortly before Brown's death that November.[56]

During the late 1990s, Spartan Communications and WSPA-TV embarked on a series of relevant regional expansions. The first was a 1995 local marketing agreement with WNEG-TV (channel 32) in Toccoa, Georgia, which returned over-the-air CBS access to northeast Georgia after an affiliation switch in Atlanta the year prior.[57] In 1997, Spartan Communications teamed with Pappas Telecasting to relaunch WASV-TV (channel 62) as an affiliate of The WB and UPN, operating the new station under a local marketing agreement.[58]

callsign	WSPA-TV
city	Spartanburg, South Carolina
branding	7 News
digital	11 (VHF), shared with WYCW
virtual	7
translators	see
affiliations	7.1: CBS 7.3: Ion Television
owner	Nexstar Media Group
licensee	Nexstar Media Inc.
location	Spartanburg–Greenville– Anderson, South Carolina Asheville, North Carolina
country	United States
airdate	April 29, 1956
callsign meaning	Spartanburg
sister stations	WYCW
former callsigns	WORD-TV (CP, 1953–1954)
former channel numbers	Analog: 7 (VHF, 1956–2009) Digital: 53 (UHF, 2000–2009), 7 (VHF, 2009–2020)
former affiliations	The WB (secondary, 1995–1997)
erp	33.5 kW
haat	674.2 m
facility id	66391
coordinates	35.17019°N, -82.2905°W
licensing authority	FCC
website	https://www.wspa.com/

Early years

Permitting

The Paris Mountain dispute

Spartan ownership (1956–2000)

Media General and Nexstar ownership

News operation

Notable former on-air staff

Technical information

Subchannels

Translators

External links

References