WXIA-TV

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WXIA-TV is the NBC television affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia. It is owned by Gannett. The station's transmitter is located at 110 Arizona Avenue Northeast in Atlanta. Studios and offices are located at 1611 West Peachtree Street on the north end of Atlanta's Midtown area.

Contents 1 History 2 "11 Alive" 3 Original programming 4 See also 5 External links

History

The station signed on the air on September 30, 1951 as WLTV, an ABC affiliate on channel 8 within 1952. In 1953, the station changed its call letters to WLWA-TV & moved to channel 11. In 1960 it came under the ownership of Crosley Broadcasting. It was purchased in 1962 by Richard Fairbanks of Indianapolis and officially became WAII-TV with the slogan "The Eyes of Atlanta".

The station introduced its "News Watch" branding in 1963 and began broadcasting the news with its first color camera in March 1967. The station was sold to Pacific & Southern Broadcasting in 1968 and became known as WQXI-TV. The station assumed the WXIA-TV call letters in 1974 and became known on-air as 11 Alive in 1976. The station's parent company, Combined Communications Corporation has merged with the Gannett Company in 1979 and Gannett has owned WXIA ever since.

On Labor Day, 1980, the station changed network affiliation from ABC to NBC (ABC went to WSB-TV). During the summer of 1980, WXIA aired NBC daytime shows in the morning and ABC daytime shows in the afternoon. Conversely, WSB aired ABC shows in the morning and NBC shows in the afternoons. WXIA-TV was NBC's flagship station for the Olympic Games in 1996.

An unusual situation occurred in 1999, when the station's former weekend weather forecaster had left, and the new weekend weather forecaster had not started. In the time, Gannett had acquired Columbia, SC station WLTX, 200 miles east of Atlanta, and because Jim Gandy was under a one-year noncompete agreement in the Columbia market after leaving WIS, and could not be assigned to WLTX under terms of the agreement, Gandy was named a consultant to the meterological department at Gannett Television to work around the ban. Gannett hired Gandy as the temporary weather forecaster on weekends at WXIA in order to fill in until the new forecaster arrived. That, and the proximity of the two stations, has permitted the two Gannett stations to share doppler radars, calling itself the "Double Doppler" at WLTX.

WXIA also airs the NBC Weather Plus service on their digital on-air signal as well as on the local Comcast digital cable system.

WXIA began airing their daily local newscasts in HDTV, the first Atlanta station to do so, on February 2,2006. To signal the conversion to HD, a HD-friendly new studio from FX Group was built and graphics from Giant Octopus (similar to those used on Gannett-sister station WUSA-TV) were created.

"11 Alive"

11 Alive has been a well-known brand name for WXIA since 1976, when then-owner Combined Communications adopted the practice of using the word "Alive" as part of the monikers at most of their stations. The use of "Alive" in station names were popular in the mid-to-late-1970s -- New York's WPIX used the legendary "11 Alive" nickname themselves from 1977 to 1986.

After Gannett acquired Combined in 1979, many of the former Combined stations quit using "Alive" in their names, though WXIA continued calling themselves "11 Alive", as it was a strong brand name for their station. And it remains so to this day. (Fort Wayne's WPTA-TV, another ex-Combined station, continues to use their moniker, "21 Alive", today.)

Briefly in the mid-1990s, Gannett dropped the "11 Alive" moniker when WXIA underwent an image makeover. Many Atlanta-area viewers, however, were angry about the change, as they would not accept WXIA as anything but "11 Alive". A short time later, Gannett brought the "11 Alive" name back to WXIA.

Original programming

Weekdays

• 11Alive News Today - 5:00 - 7:00AM
• Atlanta and Company - 11:00 - Noon
• 11Alive News at Noon - Noon - 12:30PM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• The Evening News with Brenda Wood - 7:00 - 7:30PM
• 11Alive News at 11PM - 11:00 - 11:35PM

Saturdays

• 11Alive Saturday Today - 6:00 - 8:00AM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 Weekend - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• 11Alive News Saturday Night - 11:00 - 11:30PM

Sundays

• 11Alive Sunday Today - 7:30 - 9:00AM
• 11Alive News at 6:00 Weekend - 6:00 - 6:30PM
• 11Alive News at 11:00 - 11:00 - 11:35PM

See also

• WQXI (AM)
• WQXI-FM

External links

• 11 Alive Homepage
• Template:TVQ

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