WAPT (TV) - History

History

The station began broadcasting on October 3, 1970 with ABC's coverage of an University of Mississippi football game; newscasts debuted in 1971. Prior to its debut, ABC was limited to off-hours coverage on NBC affiliate WLBT and CBS affiliate WJTV, even though Jackson had been big enough since the 1950s to support three full network affiliates. In fact, Jackson was one of the largest (if not the largest) markets with only two network stations. It has long been speculated that the Federal Communications Commission delayed granting licenses to any potential broadcasters in central Mississippi because of WLBT's blatant bias against African-Americans in news coverage and advocacy against the civil rights movement.

A more likely reason, however, has to do with geography. The Jackson market is a fairly large market, covering a large swath of west-central Mississippi. Jackson had been allocated only two VHF frequencies—channels 3 and 12, occupied by WLBT and WJTV respectively. UHF stations initially didn't cover large stretches of territory very well. Even after the FCC mandated all-channel tuning in 1964, it took a long while for UHF to be a viable option to cover large areas. With Jackson sandwiched between New Orleans and Monroe/El Dorado and with several VHF stations already operating elsewhere in Mississippi, it is not likely there would have been room to drop in a third VHF allocation in Jackson.

WAPT was founded by the American Public Life Insurance Company, an insurer which is still in business today but is now an affiliate of American Fidelity Assurance. American Public Life sold the station to Clay Communications in 1979. That company then sold its television stations—WAPT, plus KJAC-TV (now KBTV-TV) in Port Arthur, Texas, KFDX-TV in Wichita Falls, Texas and WWAY in Wilmington, North Carolina--to Price Communications in 1987. Price Communications sold three of its stations—WAPT and then-sister stations WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan and WNAC-TV in Providence, Rhode Island--to the newly-founded Northstar Television Group in 1989. Northstar Television was bought out by Argyle Television Holdings II, a company which was formed in late 1994 by a group of managers and executives who left the first incarnation of Argyle Television (the former Times-Mirror Broadcasting) after that company sold all of its stations to New World Communications, in January 1995.

In August 1997, Argyle merged with the Hearst Corporation's broadcasting unit to form what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television (now Hearst Television after the Hearst Corporation became sole owner of the group in mid-2009). In the 1990s, WAPT became one of many ABC affiliates (mostly in rural and Southern markets like Jackson) to ban Steven Bochco's controversial crime drama NYPD Blue. However, in January 1995, some sixteen months after its premiere, the station lifted its ban on the show. In 2004, all of Hearst-Argyle's ABC affiliates, including WAPT, preempted the network's airing of Saving Private Ryan. In 2005, WAPT was the victim of a prank by Sacha Baron Cohen for the mockumentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. WAPT shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the DTV transition in the United States. The station remained on its pre-transition channel 21, using PSIP to display WAPT's virtual channel as 16.