WAAY-TV - History

History

The station's first broadcast was on August 1, 1959 as WAFG-TV. It was Alabama's first primary ABC affiliate. There was only one other station in the area at the time, Decatur's WMSL-TV (now Huntsville's WAFF), an NBC affiliate. This was an unusual arrangement for a two-station market, especially one as small as Huntsville was at the time. When the station was sold to Smith Broadcasting (owners of WAAY now WLOR radio) in 1963, the call sign was changed to WAAY-TV. It switched network affiliation to NBC in January 1968 but returned to ABC nearly ten years later, on December 11, 1977, citing higher network ratings and the lack of a duplicate ABC affiliate in Florence (where WOWL, now WHDF, was then an NBC affiliate) as reasons.

Despite ABC's fall from first place in the 1980s in favor a renewed NBC, WAAY still routinely came in first or second place in the ratings during the 1980s and 1990s. However, despite having left full NBC affiliation behind back in 1977, WAAY would once again clear some NBC programming during the 1980s, most notably Late Night with David Letterman and Friday Night Videos, which WAFF preempted in favor of evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's daily program at 11:30 p.m. It was only when Swaggart had to discontinue his weekday show in the aftermath of his sexual scandal in 1988 that WAFF resumed carrying Letterman and FNV. Since that time, WAAY has remained a strictly ABC affiliate, clearing most if not all its programs.

Smith Broadcasting sold WAAY-TV to GOCOM Broadcasting (later renamed Piedmont Communications) in 1999. The Smith family, who previously owned broadcasting properties in Birmingham before coming to Huntsville, was the last local owner of a Huntsville television station as rivals WHNT-TV and WAFF had been sold to larger corporations years before. WZDX, which was the first station in Northern Alabama not affiliated with the traditional networks or the educational television system, has always belonged to outside interests. The Smith family also owned radio stations in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and South Pittsburg, Tennessee. At one time, all three of Huntsville's major-network affiliates (WAAY included) had studios located beside its transmitters and towers on Monte Sano.

After a 1982 fire gutted the building of WAFF, that station and later WHNT moved offices and production facilities into the city itself employing microwave relays to send signals to the transmitters. Only WAAY continues to maintain its full operations on Monte Sano Boulevard. WHIQ-TV, which is a PBS affiliate, serves as a translator relay of Alabama Public Television with programming originating from Birmingham, not Huntsville. On September 4, 2003, the 1,000 foot broadcasting tower leased by WAAY collapsed killing three people.

In 2006, Piedmont Broadcasting agreed to sell WAAY to Calkins Media which is a Pennsylvania-based mass media company that owns several small newspapers in Pennsylvania and two other television stations, (WWSB in Sarasota, Florida and WTXL in Tallahassee, Florida). The sale to Calkins became official on February 1, 2007. WAAY is Calkins' first broadcasting property outside of Florida. On February 17, 2009, WAAY-TV ended its analog service on UHF channel 31, the station remains to provide digital service on its current pre-transition channel 32.