WNCF - History

History

The station signed-on as WCCB-TV in 1962 with unknown owners. This venture failed shortly thereafter and the station went dark. Few recall this short beginning of channel 32's history. Bahakel Communications, headed by Cy Bahakel (a native Alabamian), purchased the dormant channel 32 license and returned it to the air in early 1964 as WKAB-TV (standing for "Kasner and Bahakel", referring to Bahakel's engineering partner and close friend, Don Kasner) as the fourth television station in the Montgomery area. Bahakel wound up taking the original WCCB calls for his flagship station in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The station was an ABC affiliate right from the start but faced competition and duplication from the network's original outlet, WSLA in Selma (channel 8, now WAKA). Even after the launch of this station, WSLA continued broadcasting ABC programming to the western parts of the market because of UHF's limited coverage area at the time. WSLA would not drop the affiliation until 1968 when the station went dark due to a fire that completely destroyed the WSLA facility.

After that, WKAB made power improvements to the channel 32 signal, boosting effective radiated power to just over 1 million watts. This put it on par with CBS affiliate WCOV-TV, but was still far inferior to NBC affiliate WSFA-TV. Bahakel sold channel 32 in 1985 in order to buy the more powerful WAKA (which returned to the air in 1973 as a CBS affiliate) and began to move the WAKA facility to Montgomery.

WKAB adopted the call sign WHOA-TV (for "Heart Of Alabama") on September 4, 1989. The station has gone through several owners after Bahakel Communications including Media General among others. It became WNCF on July 1, 1999 coinciding with a short-lived return to the local news race. It originally aired a digital signal on UHF channel 51 from a transmitter at its North Montgomery studios. On April 20, 2009 as part of the DTV transition, the station returned to channel 32 and its transmitter (by now moved to Gordonville as a center-of-market location) for digital-exclusive operations.

In September of 2012, as part of the "beefing up" process of the station afforded by the relationship with WAKA, WNCF increased its power from 50kw to 720kw from a new transmitter located at the WAKA tower and transmitter facility. This new location was only 2 miles from the old WNCF tower, which had been sold to a tower company years ago to help out WNCF's bottom line. At that point, WNCF was merely a tennant of that tower, which continues to hold other tennants.

It was announced on July 7, 2011 that Bahakel will purchase WBMM from SagamoreHill Broadcasting. Even before the sale receives approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Bahakel will immediately enter into a shared services agreement (SSA) with SagamoreHill resulting in WNCF being operated by WAKA. SagamoreHill will retain responsibility for WNCF's programming, personnel, and finances while Bahakel will provide this station with sales and administrative services as well as production and technical services. Despite being the senior partner in the proposed agreement, WAKA will vacate its current location in South Central Montgomery and consolidate into WNCF's studios at some point in 2012. This is most likely due to the fact (and the irony) that Bahakel has always owned the channel 32 facility, leasing it to SagamoreHill and previous owners after selling the channel 32 license in 1985 to obtain WAKA.

To restate and clarify a rather confusing chain of events: Bahakel owned and operated WNCF as WKAB until 1985, when it purchased the more desirable WAKA. However, FCC rules at the time prevented dual TV ownership in a market. To solve this problem, Bahakel sold channel 32's license, but continued to own its studios. In addition, the WNCF property offers more space for WAKA to upgrade to a full high-definition operation.