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145-575: WCNC-TV (channel 36) is a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina , United States, affiliated with NBC . The station is owned by Tegna Inc. WCNC-TV's studios are located in the Wood Ridge Center office complex off Billy Graham Parkway ( Route 4 ), just east of the Billy Graham Library in south Charlotte, and its transmitter is located in north-central Gaston County . Channel 36

290-504: A barter in some cases. Color television Color television ( American English ) or colour television ( Commonwealth English ) is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white television technology, which displays the image in shades of gray ( grayscale ). Television broadcasting stations and networks in most parts of

435-483: A 52 share and WSOC a 23 for their 6 p.m. newscasts, WRET could only pull a 5. Bob Wisehart of the Charlotte News described WRET's news operation as "spend[ing] a great deal of effort going no place at all". The same could have been said of the station, which was said to be barely breaking even after the switch. Turner's ambitious and mostly successful ownership of the station would not last much longer after obtaining

580-434: A characteristic profile of excitability by different wavelengths of the spectrum of visible light. This means that the eye has far more resolution in brightness, or " luminance ", than in color . However, post-processing of the optic nerve and other portions of the human visual system combine the information from the rods and cones to re-create what appears to be a high-resolution color image. The eye has limited bandwidth to

725-461: A color television system in 1897, using a selenium photoelectric cell at the transmitter and an electromagnet controlling an oscillating mirror and a moving prism at the receiver. But his system contained no means of analyzing the spectrum of colors at the transmitting end, and could not have worked as he described it. An Armenian inventor, Hovannes Adamian , also experimented with color television as early as 1907. The first color television project

870-503: A colored disk or mirror. In these systems the three colored images were sent one after each other, in either complete frames in the " field-sequential color system ", or for each line in the "line-sequential" system. In both cases a colored filter was rotated in front of the display in sync with the broadcast. Since three separate images were being sent in sequence, if they used existing monochrome radio signaling standards they would have an effective refresh rate of only 20 fields, or 10 frames,

1015-580: A colour television set. Colour television in Canada was launched on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 's (CBC) English language TV service on 1 September 1966. Private television broadcaster CTV also started colour broadcasts in early September 1966. The CBC's French-language service, Radio-Canada , was broadcasting colour programming on its television network for 15 hours a week in 1968. Full-time colour transmissions started in 1974 on

1160-466: A dot-sequential system based on its beam-index tube -based "Apple" tube technology. Of the entrants, the CBS system was by far the best-developed, and won head-to-head testing every time. While the meetings were taking place it was widely known within the industry that RCA was working on a dot-sequential system that was compatible with existing black-and-white broadcasts, but RCA declined to demonstrate it during

1305-684: A film rental contract. That September, a court placed WCTU into receivership, though it continued to broadcast. Stating that "we feel there have been combined forces which hinder our operation", Twisdale foreshadowed a years-long antitrust case against the Jefferson-Pilot Corporation, owner of WBTV, which was not fully dismissed until 1977. Channel 36 found a buyer in February 1970: Atlanta broadcasting mogul Ted Turner , who purchased WCTU through Turner Broadcasting of North Carolina for $ 1.25 million. Turner had scouted out buying equipment from

1450-405: A full-fledged news department. At first, the station scheduled its early-evening newscast for 5:30 p.m., knowing at the time that it could not hope to compete with WBTV and WSOC-TV at 6 p.m. In 1988, WPCQ expanded the 5:30 newscast to one hour and added a 6 p.m. newscast on weekends. After becoming WCNC, the station added a distinct 6 p.m. newscast to the weeknight schedule. Under Belo,

1595-456: A million television sets in the U.S., but by 1951 there were well over 10 million. The idea that the VHF band could be allowed to "die" was no longer practical. During its campaign for FCC approval, CBS gave the first demonstrations of color television to the general public, showing an hour of color programs daily Mondays through Saturdays, beginning 12 January 1950, and running for the remainder of

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1740-415: A much shorter wavelength, and thus requires a shorter antenna, but also higher power. North American stations can go up to 5000 kW ERP for video and 500 kW audio, or 1000 kW digital. Low channels travel further than high ones at the same power, but UHF does not suffer from as much electromagnetic interference and background "noise" as VHF, making it much more desirable for TV. Despite this, in

1885-452: A new Doppler radar and other weather equipment. However, not all of the talent changes made were positively received; the ouster of Beatrice Thompson, who had been Charlotte's first full-time Black anchor at WBTV in the 1980s, led to protests by some viewers who felt she had been forced out because of her race. Boylan retired in December 2000. The station showed momentum in local news ratings in

2030-509: A practical system possible. Monochrome transmission standards were developed prior to World War II , but civilian electronics development was frozen during much of the war. In August 1944, Baird gave the world's first demonstration of a practical fully electronic color television display. In the United States, competing color standards were developed, finally resulting in the NTSC color standard that

2175-538: A rotating colored disk. This device was very "deep", but was later improved with a mirror folding the light path into an entirely practical device resembling a large conventional console. However, Baird was not happy with the design, and as early as 1944 had commented to a British government committee that a fully electronic device would be better. In 1939, Hungarian engineer Peter Carl Goldmark introduced an electro-mechanical system while at CBS , which contained an Iconoscope sensor. The CBS field-sequential color system

2320-409: A second, well into the region where flicker would become visible. In order to avoid this, these systems increased the frame rate considerably, making the signal incompatible with existing monochrome standards. The first practical example of this sort of system was again pioneered by John Logie Baird. In 1940 he publicly demonstrated a color television combining a traditional black-and-white display with

2465-430: A series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into one full-color image. As was the case with black-and-white television, an electronic means of scanning would be superior to the mechanical systems like Baird's. The obvious solution on the broadcast end would be to use three conventional Iconoscopes with colored filters in front of them to produce an RGB signal. Using three separate tubes each looking at

2610-489: A situation artificially created by one company to solve its own perplexing problems" because CBS had been unsuccessful in its color venture. While the FCC was holding its JTAC meetings, development was taking place on a number of systems allowing true simultaneous color broadcasts, "dot-sequential color systems". Unlike the hybrid systems, dot-sequential televisions used a signal very similar to existing black-and-white broadcasts, with

2755-509: A soft reboot of the operation. The revamp brought a string of new faces, notably including weekend sports anchor Hannah Storm . Odyssey also implemented a technical overhaul for WPCQ-TV. In 1987, the station bought land north of Dallas to build a new tower near those owned by WBTV and newly built WJZY and filed to increase power to the maximum 5 million watts. After surviving an attempt by NBC to move its affiliation from channel 36, in which NBC attempted to court both Charlotte VHF stations and

2900-401: A spot to scan across and down the image. A single photodetector behind the disk captured the image brightness at any given spot, which was converted into a radio signal and broadcast. A similar disk was used at the receiver side, with a light source behind the disk instead of a detector. A number of such mechanical television systems were being used experimentally in the 1920s. The best-known

3045-469: A stint in Chicago. The station also got a new $ 200,000 news set as Belo sought to raise the station from its perennial cellar. The next year, Ray Boylan, a longtime meteorologist at WSOC-TV, unretired and did on-air reports on WCNC, while the station also hired Terri Bennett, who had been in the running to replace him on channel 9 but was passed over. Boylan and Bennett were backed up by the station's purchase of

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3190-583: A system in order to present the first electronically scanned color television demonstration on 5 February 1940, privately shown to members of the US Federal Communications Commission at the RCA plant in Camden, New Jersey . This system, however, suffered from the twin problems of costing at least three times as much as a conventional black-and-white set, as well as having very dim pictures, the result of

3335-457: A team of 20 employees from other Group W stations to keep it running. Odyssey Partners, a New York investment partnership headed by Michael Finkelstein, acquired WPCQ-TV in 1984 after four years of Westinghouse ownership. For Westinghouse, the move was about focusing on major markets and shedding a station that was estimated to have lost $ 5 million in four years; Charlie Hanna, writing in Variety

3480-536: A typical UHF independent, airing a lineup of cartoons , sitcoms , older movies, and a heavy slate of sporting events. It was among the early carriers of The 700 Club , produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN); CBN founder Pat Robertson , who like Turner had gone to Brown University , read about the appeal for donations in The Wall Street Journal and placed his programs on

3625-425: A variety of ways to generate revenue from television commercials . They may be an independent station or part of a broadcasting network , or some other structure. They can produce some or all of their programs or buy some broadcast syndication programming for or all of it from other stations or independent production companies. Many stations have some sort of television studio , which on major-network stations

3770-496: Is non-commercial educational (NCE) and considered public broadcasting . To avoid concentration of media ownership of television stations, government regulations in most countries generally limit the ownership of television stations by television networks or other media operators, but these regulations vary considerably. Some countries have set up nationwide television networks, in which individual television stations act as mere repeaters of nationwide programs . In those countries,

3915-470: Is broadcast via terrestrial radio waves. A group of television stations with common ownership or affiliation are known as a TV network and an individual station within the network is referred to as O&O or affiliate , respectively. Because television station signals use the electromagnetic spectrum, which in the past has been a common, scarce resource, governments often claim authority to regulate them. Broadcast television systems standards vary around

4060-599: Is claimed by him, and was patented in Germany on 31 March 1908, patent number 197183, then in Britain , on 1 April 1908, patent number 7219, in France (patent number 390326) and in Russia in 1910 (patent number 17912). Shortly after his practical demonstration of black and white television, on 3 July 1928, Baird demonstrated the world's first color transmission. This used scanning discs at

4205-792: Is often used for newscasts or other local programming . There is usually a news department , where journalists gather information. There is also a section where electronic news-gathering (ENG) operations are based, receiving remote broadcasts via remote pickup unit or satellite TV . Outside broadcasting vans, production trucks , or SUVs with electronic field production (EFP) equipment are sent out with reporters , who may also bring back news stories on video tape rather than sending them back live . To keep pace with technology United States television stations have been replacing operators with broadcast automation systems to increase profits in recent years. Some stations (known as repeaters or translators ) only simulcast another, usually

4350-738: The NBC Nightly News . This prompted NBC officials to shop the Nightly News to Charlotte's other stations, including WBTV. The station continued with its noon newscast, as well as short news capsules throughout the day and occasional news specials. Station officials blamed WPCQ-TV's signal, which—despite the power increase—was not strong enough to reach outer areas of the market that got better signals from WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina , and WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina . John J. Spinola,

4495-477: The 1984 Democratic National Convention , and network sporting events. It also delayed the David Brinkley -hosted NBC Magazine to midnight to air its own Action News Magazine . Even Westinghouse's own productions were not guaranteed an audience on the station; after two years of WPCQ-TV airing Hour Magazine , it moved to WBTV in 1982. Seeing little positive progress with WPCQ-TV, Westinghouse soon chose to use

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4640-553: The Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks . With the decision, WCCB became an independent station. Two months after assuming the NBC affiliation, WRET launched its first newscasts in September, under the banner of "Action News"; Robert D. Raiford was the station's first news anchor. The main news was presented at 7 p.m., but the different time slot failed to attract viewers. Where WBTV had

4785-629: The Cuban Revolution in 1959, and did not return until 1975, using equipment acquired from Japan's NEC Corporation , and SECAM equipment from the Soviet Union, adapted for the American NTSC standard. Guillermo González Camarena independently invented and developed a field-sequential tricolor disk system in Mexico in the late 1930s, for which he requested a patent in Mexico on 19 August 1940, and in

4930-508: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was inundated with requests to set up new television stations. Worrying about congestion of the limited number of channels available, the FCC put a moratorium on all new licenses in 1948 while considering the problem. A solution was immediately forthcoming; rapid development of radio receiver electronics during the war had opened a wide band of higher frequencies to practical use, and

5075-541: The Journal ' s Providence radio stations, the station instead became WCNC-TV (for "Charlotte, North Carolina") on September 3, 1989. That same day, the station split its 5:30 p.m. news hour into two half-hour newscasts, and it also moved to cable channel 6 on most area systems. The station also built new studios, costing $ 6.5 million, on Billy Graham Parkway in the Wood Ridge office complex, where it would be joined by

5220-570: The Live Well Network . WCNC-TV was added to Charlotte's ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) deployment on WAXN-TV on July 7, 2021. As part of the change, WAXN's 64.4 subchannel of Laff was placed on WCNC-TV's multiplex, keeping it available in ATSC 1.0 format. Television station The Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow ( TV Station Paul Nipkow ) in Berlin , Germany , was the first regular television service in

5365-577: The National Production Authority dropped its ban on the manufacture of color television receivers, and the path was open for the NTSC to submit its petition for FCC approval in July 1953, which was granted on 17 December. The first publicly announced network demonstration of a program using the NTSC "compatible color" system was an episode of NBC's Kukla, Fran and Ollie on 30 August 1953, although it

5510-660: The Paul Nipkow TV station in Berlin . In 1936, under the guidance of the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels , direct transmissions from fifteen mobile units at the Olympic Games in Berlin were transmitted to selected small television houses ( Fernsehstuben ) in Berlin and Hamburg. In 1941, the first NTSC meetings produced a single standard for US broadcasts. US television broadcasts began in earnest in

5655-405: The broadcast range , or geographic area, that the station is limited to, allocates the broadcast frequency of the radio spectrum for that station's transmissions, sets limits on what types of television programs can be programmed for broadcast and requires a station to broadcast a minimum amount of certain programs types, such as public affairs messages . Another form of television station

5800-510: The electrical grid , historically tuned its rate in order to avoid interference with the alternating current being supplied – in North America, some Central and South American countries, Taiwan, Korea, part of Japan, the Philippines, and a few other countries, this was 60 video fields per second to match the 60 Hz power, while in most other countries it was 50 fields per second to match

5945-534: The electricity bill and emergency backup generators . In North America , full-power stations on band I (channels 2 to 6) are generally limited to 100 kW analog video ( VSB ) and 10 kW analog audio ( FM ), or 45 kW digital ( 8VSB ) ERP. Stations on band III (channels 7 to 13) can go up by 5 dB to 316 kW video, 31.6 kW audio, or 160 kW digital. Low-VHF stations are often subject to long-distance reception just as with FM. There are no stations on Channel 1 . UHF , by comparison, has

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6090-537: The shadow mask system. In July 1938 the shadow mask color television was patented by Werner Flechsig (1900–1981) in Germany, and was demonstrated at the International radio exhibition Berlin in 1939. Most CRT color televisions used today are based on this technology. His solution to the problem of focusing the electron guns on the tiny colored dots was one of brute-force; a metal sheet with holes punched in it allowed

6235-419: The " Telechrome ". Early Telechrome devices used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor plate. The phosphor was patterned so the electrons from the guns only fell on one side of the patterning or the other. Using cyan and magenta phosphors, a reasonable limited-color image could be obtained. Baird's demonstration on 16 August 1944, was the first example of a practical color television system. Work on

6380-401: The 19th century. It was not until the 20th century that advances in electronics and light detectors made television practical. A key problem was the need to convert a 2D image into a "1D" radio signal; some form of image scanning was needed to make this work. Early systems generally used a device known as a " Nipkow disk ", which was a spinning disk with a series of holes punched in it that caused

6525-458: The 4 p.m. news expanded to an hour and the noon news shrank from an hour to 30 minutes. On May 18, 2009, WCNC began broadcasting its local newscasts in 16:9 widescreen standard definition ; this change came alongside the revamping of the station's on-air news graphics. A conversion to full high definition followed on June 28, 2014. The station's signal is multiplexed : Prior subchannel offerings from WCNC have included NBC Weather Plus and

6670-440: The 50 Hz power. The NTSC color system changed from the black-and-white 60-fields-per-second standard to 59.94 fields per second to make the color circuitry simpler; the 1950s TV sets had matured enough that the power frequency/field rate mismatch was no longer important. Modern TV sets can display multiple field rates (50, 59.94, or 60, in either interlaced or progressive scan) while accepting power at various frequencies (often

6815-563: The CBC, with other private sector broadcasters in the country doing so by the end of the 1970s. The following provinces and areas of Canada introduced colour television by the years as stated Cuba in 1958 became the second country in the world to introduce color television broadcasting, with Havana's Channel 12 using the American NTSC standard and technology patented by RCA. But the color transmissions ended when broadcasting stations were seized in

6960-472: The CBS system as the U.S. color broadcasting standard on 11 October 1950. An unsuccessful lawsuit by RCA delayed the first commercial network broadcast in color until 25 June 1951, when a musical variety special titled simply Premiere was shown over a network of five East Coast CBS affiliates. Viewing was again restricted: the program could not be seen on black-and-white sets, and Variety estimated that only thirty prototype color receivers were available in

7105-584: The Charlotte market beginning July 1, 1978, replacing WCCB-TV. That decision set off a two-station showdown between WCCB and WRET for the NBC affiliation in Charlotte. WCCB was seen as the favorite; unlike WRET, it had a functioning news department. Sources at NBC were said to see channel 36 as their last option behind WCCB, with its stronger signal, and long-dominant WBTV, which the network was trying to woo from CBS to no avail. Turner, however, promised NBC that he would spend $ 2.5 million on station improvements if

7250-461: The FCC Commissioners, R. F. Jones, went so far as to assert that the engineers testifying in favor of a compatible system were "in a conspiracy against the public interest". Unlike the FCC approach where a standard was simply selected from the existing candidates, the NTSC would produce a board that was considerably more pro-active in development. Starting before CBS color even got on the air,

7395-399: The FCC set aside a large section of these new UHF bands for television broadcast. At the time, black-and-white television broadcasting was still in its infancy in the U.S., and the FCC started to look at ways of using this newly available bandwidth for color broadcasts. Since no existing television would be able to tune in these stations, they were free to pick an incompatible system and allow

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7540-573: The Farnsworth-system. With these systems, the BBC began regularly scheduled black-and-white television broadcasts in 1936, but these were shut down again with the start of World War II in 1939. In this time thousands of television sets had been sold. The receivers developed for this program, notably those from Pye Ltd. , played a key role in the development of radar . By 22 March 1935, 180-line black-and-white television programs were being broadcast from

7685-540: The Hickory Grove neighborhood of Charlotte, had very modern equipment for the time and broadcast some shows and movies in color , as well as all of its local programming in color. The station hit hard times financially in 1969. In July, equipment supplier Ampex filed two lawsuits seeking $ 1.3 million from WCTU-TV for failing to pay for products it had purchased from them. Film distributor National Telefilm Associates had also sued channel 36 for $ 80,000 for breaching

7830-457: The NBC affiliation. By 1979, Turner was in the process of starting CNN , and he announced he would sell channel 36 to help raise the capital needed for the new venture. On May 16, 1979, the sale of WRET-TV to Westinghouse Broadcasting (also known as Group W) was announced for $ 20 million, setting a then-record for a single UHF television station. The news of a purchase by Group W, owner of regarded television and radio stations in other cities,

7975-469: The New York area. Regular color broadcasts began that same week with the daytime series The World Is Yours and Modern Homemakers . While the CBS color broadcasting schedule gradually expanded to twelve hours per week (but never into prime time), and the color network expanded to eleven affiliates as far west as Chicago, its commercial success was doomed by the lack of color receivers necessary to watch

8120-461: The Telechrome continued and plans were made to introduce a three-gun version for full color. However, Baird's untimely death in 1946 ended the development of the Telechrome system. Similar concepts were common through the 1940s and 1950s, differing primarily in the way they re-combined the colors generated by the three guns. The Geer tube was similar to Baird's concept, but used small pyramids with

8265-629: The U.S. television industry, represented by the National Television System Committee , worked in 1950–1953 to develop a color system that was compatible with existing black-and-white sets and would pass FCC quality standards, with RCA developing the hardware elements. RCA first made publicly announced field tests of the dot sequential color system over its New York station WNBT in July 1951. When CBS testified before Congress in March 1953 that it had no further plans for its own color system,

8410-496: The U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking another large portion of this band (channels 52 to 69) away, in contrast to the rest of the world, which has been taking VHF instead. This means that some stations left on VHF are harder to receive after the analog shutdown . Since at least 1974, there are no stations on channel 37 in North America for radio astronomy purposes. Most television stations are commercial broadcasting enterprises which are structured in

8555-682: The United States in 1941. González Camarena produced his color television system in his Gon-Cam laboratory for the Mexican market and exported it to the Columbia College of Chicago, which regarded it as the best system in the world. Goldmark had actually applied for a patent for the same field-sequential tricolor system in the US on 7 September 1940, while González Camarena had made his Mexican filing 19 days before, on 19 August. On 31 August 1946, González Camarena sent his first color transmission from his lab in

8700-401: The air on July 9, 1967, as WCTU-TV. Dr. Harold W. Twisdale, a dentist from Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. -based engineer David L. Steel were the leaders of the original ownership group, operating as Charlotte Telecasters Inc. (The station had intended to take the call letters WCTI, but citing potential confusion, local educational station WTVI successfully objected; the U stood for UHF.) WCTU

8845-470: The bankrupt station but decided instead to buy the whole operation. At the time, he owned just one other television property, WJRJ-TV in his hometown Atlanta, as well as three radio stations in other southeastern cities. Turner renamed the station WRET-TV—using the initials of his full name, Robert Edward Turner III—in July and instituted a new and expanded program lineup in August. Just two programs, wrestling and

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8990-425: The beam energy, allowing it to hit the screen only 15% of the time, requiring a massive increase in beam power to produce acceptable image brightness. The first publicly announced network demonstration of a program using a "compatible color" system was an episode of NBC's Kukla, Fran and Ollie on 10 October 1949, viewable in color only at the FCC. It did not receive FCC approval. In spite of these problems in both

9135-399: The beams to reach the screen only when they were properly aligned over the dots. Three separate guns were aimed at the holes from slightly different angles, and when their beams passed through the holes the angles caused them to separate again and hit the individual spots a short distance away on the back of the screen. The downside to this approach was that the mask cut off the vast majority of

9280-449: The broadcast and display systems, RCA pressed ahead with development and was ready for a second assault on the standards by 1950. The possibility of a compatible color broadcast system was so compelling that the NTSC decided to re-form, and held a second series of meetings starting in January 1950. Having only recently selected the CBS system, the FCC heavily opposed the NTSC's efforts. One of

9425-651: The change was that few people actually watched the station over-the-air or on satellite on virtual channel 36. On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company announced that it would acquire Belo for $ 1.5 billion. The sale was finalized on December 23. Investments made by Gannett in WCNC after the Belo purchase included the conversion of newscasts to high definition and a new computer system for the newsroom. On June 29, 2015, Gannett split in two, with one side specializing in print media and

9570-577: The company to do more with the station. We spent a million dollars a year, 80 percent of it on the news, promoting the station since we took it over in 1980. But we never got over a 1 or 2 percent rating. Laurence Freiberg, president of the television station division of Group W, on the 1982 downsizing of WPCQ-TV's local news operation In August 1982, the station made another programming change, this time attracting considerable national attention: it dropped its low-rated early evening newscast. When it axed that program, it also decided to cease carrying

9715-521: The country's fifth-best independent station of 65 nationwide in audience share, per an analysis by Television/Radio Age , and was making a profit. After five years of being independently operated from the rest of his Turner Communications Group, that company absorbed WRET-TV and its parent company later that year. Late that year, Turner was making plans to uplink one of its two stations nationwide for distribution to cable providers. While Turner preferred to uplink his Atlanta flagship, by then renamed, WRET-TV

9860-484: The critical limit, and generally the same as a single black and white image. This would require three times the number of images to be sent in the same time, greatly increasing the amount of radio bandwidth required to send the complete signal and thus similarly increasing the required radio spectrum . Early plans for color television in the United States included a move from very high frequency (VHF) to ultra high frequency (UHF) to open up additional spectrum. One of

10005-415: The early 2000s, particularly in mornings and at 11, and between 2000 and 2002, it produced a 10 p.m. newscast for WB affiliate WFVT-TV . On October 30, 2009, WCNC broke the record for most Halloween costume changes during a local news program, with 11 costumes worn by the station's anchor team (Jeff Campbell, Colleen Odegaard, and Larry Sprinkle, as well as producer Natalie Ridley) were involved in setting

10150-483: The exact year varies by country. While the changeover is complete in many countries, analog television remains in use in some countries. The human eye's detection system in the retina consists primarily of two types of light detectors: rod cells that capture light, dark, and shapes/figures, and the cone cells that detect color. A typical retina contains 120 million rods and 4.5 million to 6 million cones, which are divided into three types, each one with

10295-405: The existing VHF frequencies. The color information was encoded in a separate " chrominance " signal, consisting of two separate signals, the original blue signal minus the luminance (B'–Y'), and red-luma (R'–Y'). These signals could then be broadcast separately on a different frequency; a monochrome set would tune in only the luminance signal on the VHF band, while color televisions would tune in both

10440-401: The extra information in the signal and produce a limited-resolution color display. The higher resolution black-and-white and lower resolution color images combine in the eye to produce a seemingly high-resolution color image. The NTSC standard represented a major technical achievement. Experiments with facsimile image transmission systems that used radio broadcasts to transmit images date to

10585-460: The fairly low illumination given off by tubes of the era. Projection systems of this sort would become common decades later, however, with improvements in technology. Another solution would be to use a single screen, but break it up into a pattern of closely spaced colored phosphors instead of an even coating of white. Three receivers would be used, each sending its output to a separate electron gun, aimed at its colored phosphor. However, this solution

10730-434: The fall of 1982, when it was canceled as well. For the remainder of Group W's ownership, the station's only remaining local news programming consisted of a half-hour newscast at noon, hourly cut-ins, five-minute local inserts during Today , a weekly magazine program, and occasional specials. After Odyssey Partners bought the station, the noon newscast was discontinued in the spring of 1985. In September 1986, WPCQ relaunched

10875-474: The first series of meetings. Just before the JTAC presented its findings, on 25 August 1949, RCA broke its silence and introduced its system as well. The JTAC still recommended the CBS system, and after the resolution of an ensuing RCA lawsuit, color broadcasts using the CBS system started on 25 June 1951. By this point the market had changed dramatically; when color was first being considered in 1948 there were fewer than

11020-621: The funds went to improve the journalism school at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University . Westinghouse changed the station's call letters to WPCQ-TV, representing "People of the Carolinas and Queen City", on September 29; the station rebranded as "Q36" to go with the callsign change. The move came alongside a major programming reshuffle and an increase in effective radiated power from 1.3 to 2.5 million watts. The newscasts were moved from 6 and 11 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., and several new magazine shows were added, as

11165-407: The general manager of the station, admitted that he was "pretty well encircled by NBC affiliates". If this is Westinghouse's idea of how to run a television station, you wish they'd have stayed in the refrigerator business. Mark Wolf, TV/radio columnist, The Charlotte Observer "Q36" became known for frequent preemptions of NBC network fare, including the soap opera Texas , coverage of

11310-673: The great technical challenges of introducing color broadcast television was the desire to conserve bandwidth. In the United States, after considerable research, the National Television Systems Committee approved an all-electronic system developed by RCA that encoded the color information separately from the brightness information and greatly reduced the resolution of the color information in order to conserve bandwidth. The brightness image remained compatible with existing black-and-white television sets at slightly reduced resolution, while color-capable televisions could decode

11455-420: The highest point available in the transmission area, such as on a summit , the top of a high skyscraper , or on a tall radio tower . To get a signal from the master control room to the transmitter, a studio/transmitter link (STL) is used. The link can be either by radio or T1 / E1 . A transmitter/studio link (TSL) may also send telemetry back to the station, but this may be embedded in subcarriers of

11600-546: The immediate post-war era, and by 1950 there were 6 million televisions in the United States. The basic idea of using three monochrome images to produce a color image had been experimented with almost as soon as black-and-white televisions had first been built. Among the earliest published proposals for television was one by Maurice Le Blanc in 1880 for a color system, including the first mentions in television literature of line and frame scanning, although he gave no practical details. Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik patented

11745-422: The intensity of every dot on the screen being sent in succession. In 1938 Georges Valensi demonstrated an encoding scheme that would allow color broadcasts to be encoded so they could be picked up on existing black-and-white sets as well. In his system the output of the three camera tubes were re-combined to produce a single " luminance " value that was very similar to a monochrome signal and could be broadcast on

11890-400: The local television station has no station identification and, from a consumer's point of view, there is no practical distinction between a network and a station, with only small regional changes in programming, such as local television news . To broadcast its programs, a television station requires operators to operate equipment, a transmitter or radio antenna , which is often located at

12035-605: The luminance and chrominance on two different frequencies, and apply the reverse transforms to retrieve the original RGB signal. The downside to this approach is that it required a major boost in bandwidth use, something the FCC was interested in avoiding. RCA used Valensi's concept as the basis of all of its developments, believing it to be the only proper solution to the broadcast problem. However, RCA's early sets using mirrors and other projection systems all suffered from image and color quality problems, and were easily bested by CBS's hybrid system. But solutions to these problems were in

12180-419: The main broadcast. Stations which retransmit or simulcast another may simply pick-up that station over-the-air , or via STL or satellite. The license usually specifies which other station it is allowed to carry. VHF stations often have very tall antennas due to their long wavelength , but require much less effective radiated power (ERP), and therefore use much less transmitter power output , also saving on

12325-410: The market for its award-winning ways. For much of the 2000s, WCNC had waged a spirited battle with WBTV for second place behind WSOC-TV, though it would later return to a distant third place in most timeslots as the performance of the NBC network in the late 2000s and poor daytime syndicated offerings dragged it down. This continued in the February 2016 sweeps, when its evening newscasts drew barely half

12470-450: The marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade ) occurred on 1 January 1954, but over the next dozen years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. In 1956, NBC's The Perry Como Show became the first live network television series to present a majority of episodes in color. The CBS television production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella

12615-475: The month, over WOIC in Washington, D.C., where the programs could be viewed on eight 16-inch color receivers in a public building. Due to high public demand, the broadcasts were resumed 13–21 February, with several evening programs added. CBS initiated a limited schedule of color broadcasts from its New York station WCBS-TV Mondays to Saturdays beginning 14 November 1950, making ten color receivers available for

12760-629: The music video program The Now Explosion , were retained. Turner's new Charlotte station was not an immediate success. Programming costs were high relative to ratings. The station had just one on-air personality: announcer Bob Chesson, who as "Dead Ernest" hosted the station's block of horror films. One Saturday morning in February 1972, Turner appeared on the station to appeal for contributions from viewers, saying that channel 36 had not broken even since he had purchased it. The station drew $ 53,000 in donations, enough to help pay its bills, and also received interest from several new advertisers. WRET-TV became

12905-429: The network moved its programming to WRET. Of that total, $ 1 million would go towards starting a full scale news department within one year; the proposed expansion would employ 22 people, compared to 26 at WSOC and 12 at WCCB. On April 29, news broke that channel 36 had been selected for the NBC affiliation, with the network preferring it over WCCB based on Turner's turnaround record with the station and his ownership of

13050-415: The new WJZY, the new tower and stronger signal were activated in September 1988, giving WPCQ-TV signal parity with other Charlotte stations. The Providence Journal Company (ProJo) purchased WPCQ-TV in 1988 for $ 30 million, marking its fourth television station purchase. ProJo immediately set out to build a new identity for the station. After initially pursuing the call letters WPJB-TV, formerly used by

13195-501: The new headquarters of the NBC News Channel affiliate service, which general manager John Hayes had successfully lured to Charlotte. ProJo also sprung for a new satellite truck, the only one in the market, and overnight ratings for the Charlotte market. The early months of NBC Nightside , an NBC News Channel production, came from the new WCNC set. Despite all the improvements, WCNC's news remained firmly in third. Beginning in 1996,

13340-530: The offices of the Mexican League of Radio Experiments at Lucerna St. No. 1, in Mexico City . The video signal was transmitted at a frequency of 115 MHz and the audio in the 40-metre band. He obtained authorization to make the first publicly announced color broadcast in Mexico, on 8 February 1963, of the program Paraíso Infantil on Mexico City's XHGC-TV , using the NTSC system that had by now been adopted as

13485-562: The older VHF channels to die off over time. The FCC called for technical demonstrations of color systems in 1948, and the Joint Technical Advisory Committee (JTAC) was formed to study them. CBS displayed improved versions of its original design, now using a single 6 MHz channel (like the existing black-and-white signals) at 144 fields per second and 405 lines of resolution. Color Television Inc. (CTI) demonstrated its line-sequential system, while Philco demonstrated

13630-464: The operating range is specified as 48–62 Hz). In its most basic form, a color broadcast can be created by broadcasting three monochrome images, one each in the three colors of red , green, and blue (RGB). When displayed together or in rapid succession, these images will blend together to produce a full-color image as seen by the viewer. To do so without making the images flicker, the refresh time of all three images put together would have to be above

13775-452: The other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WCNC was retained by the latter company, named Tegna . WCNC-TV presently broadcasts 40 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 + 1 ⁄ 2 hours each weekday, and four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station produces the hour-long entertainment and lifestyle program Charlotte Today , which airs weekdays at 11 a.m. and

13920-571: The package; it also aired other network shows that Charlotte's affiliates preempted. It was airing on 148 cable systems in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia. However, WRET-TV remained a laggard in news and public affairs programming. Its 15-minute sign-off newscast—the only such program on the station as an independent—was read by Bill Tush from Turner's headquarters in Atlanta and fed to Charlotte by telephone. In 1977, ABC announced that it had lured longtime NBC affiliate WSOC-TV to be its new outlet in

14065-407: The phosphors deposited on their outside faces, instead of Baird's 3D patterning on a flat surface. The Penetron used three layers of phosphor on top of each other and increased the power of the beam to reach the upper layers when drawing those colors. The Chromatron used a set of focusing wires to select the colored phosphors arranged in vertical stripes on the tube. In the immediate post-war era,

14210-595: The pipeline, and RCA in particular was investing massive sums (later estimated at $ 100 million) to develop a usable dot-sequential tube. RCA was beaten to the punch by the Geer tube , which used three B&W tubes aimed at different faces of colored pyramids to produce a color image. All-electronic systems included the Chromatron , Penetron and beam-index tube that were being developed by various companies. While investigating all of these, RCA's teams quickly started focusing on

14355-473: The program after WCCB announced it would launch its own news department. After WCCB's in-house news operation launched in 2000, WCNC began airing a 10 p.m. newscast on WB affiliate WWWB (channel 55, now WMYT-TV ), which ran until the program was canceled due to low ratings in 2002. The station won a Peabody Award in 2003, the first for a Charlotte television station in 27 years, for an investigation into dental care through Medicaid and attracted notice in

14500-476: The programmes seen on its owner's flagship station, and have no television studio or production facilities of their own. This is common in developing countries . Low-power stations typically also fall into this category worldwide. Most stations which are not simulcast produce their own station identifications . TV stations may also advertise on or provide weather (or news) services to local radio stations , particularly co-owned sister stations . This may be

14645-475: The programs, the refusal of television manufacturers to create adapter mechanisms for their existing black-and-white sets, and the unwillingness of advertisers to sponsor broadcasts seen by almost no one. CBS had bought a television manufacturer in April, and in September 1951, production began on the only CBS-Columbia color television model, with the first color sets reaching retail stores on 28 September. However, it

14790-422: The public at this time, viewing of the color field tests was restricted to RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. The War Production Board halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from 22 April 1942, to 20 August 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color television to the general public. As early as 1940, Baird had started work on a fully electronic system he called

14935-441: The receiver end. If each image was sent at the same time on different frequencies, the images would have to be "stacked" somehow on the display, in real time. The simplest way to do this would be to reverse the system used in the camera: arrange three separate black-and-white displays behind colored filters and then optically combine their images using mirrors or prisms onto a suitable screen, like frosted glass . RCA built just such

15080-409: The record during its weekday morning newscast that day. In 2008, after referring to itself simply with its call letters and using the slogan "Carolinas' News Connection", WCNC changed its branding to "NewsChannel 36", citing its over-the-air channel number and the coming arrival of digital television. In 2012, the station's branding was changed once again to "NBC Charlotte"; this time, the reasoning for

15225-411: The rest of the visual system, estimated at just under 8 Mbit/s. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but the most important in terms of producing moving images is the way that a series of still images displayed in quick succession will appear to be continuous smooth motion. This illusion starts to work at about 16 frame/s , and common motion pictures use 24 frame/s. Television, using power from

15370-522: The sale closed in February 1985, Odyssey immediately announced the restoration of the NBC Nightly News to the station's schedule. Later that year, talk began of the potential return of local newscasts when station general manager Stan Rudick said that channel 36 was conducting market research on the idea. The station had reason to get back in the news game, as Charlotte was being cited as a potential market for NBC to move its affiliation. In February 1986,

15515-413: The sale was secured at the end of April 1980, when Westinghouse agreed to furnish $ 400,000 in grants and affirmative action programs in exchange for the withdrawal of a license renewal challenge by local civil rights groups; the Federal Communications Commission did find in their favor when it said the station did not employ enough minorities, renewing WRET-TV's license for a half-term of 18 months. Some of

15660-428: The same scene would produce slight differences in parallax between the frames, so in practice a single lens was used with a mirror or prism system to separate the colors for the separate tubes. Each tube captured a complete frame and the signal was converted into radio in a fashion essentially identical to the existing black-and-white systems. The problem with this approach was there was no simple way to recombine them on

15805-681: The sending and receiving discs was not easy to ensure, and irregularities could result in major image distortion. Another problem was that the image was scanned within a small, roughly rectangular area of the disk's surface, so that larger, higher-resolution displays required increasingly unwieldy disks and smaller holes that produced increasingly dim images. Rotating drums bearing small mirrors set at progressively greater angles proved more practical than Nipkow discs for high-resolution mechanical scanning, allowing images of 240 lines and more to be produced, but such delicate, high-precision optical components were not commercially practical for home receivers. It

15950-461: The standard for color programming. González Camarena also invented the "simplified Mexican color TV system" as a much simpler and cheaper alternative to the NTSC system. Due to its simplicity, NASA used a modified version of the system in its Voyager mission of 1979, to take pictures and video of Jupiter. Although all-electronic color was introduced in the US in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in

16095-527: The state of WCNC-TV at the time of the Belo purchase In 1996, the Belo Corporation bought the Providence Journal Company. The station suffered from two anchor departures in just over a week in early 1997 as Belo completed the purchase; meanwhile, its newscasts were still in third place. Under new general manager Richard Keilty, WCNC lured Sonja Gantt, formerly of WBTV, back to the market from

16240-531: The station announced it would return to producing evening newscasts. Following a $ 2 million investment, 5:30 and 11 p.m. news programs began airing September 8, 1986, anchored by former Atlanta newsman John McKnight and Karen Adams . Ratings were low but exceeded the levels of Action News in the Group W era. The original "36 News" early evening newscast expanded to an hour and became "News 36" in May 1988 in what amounted to

16385-439: The station expanded further into new timeslots in the late 1990s, including a 5 a.m. morning show, unusual at the time. In 1999, the station's news department was chronicled in the five-part PBS documentary series Local News . That same year, WCNC entered into a news share agreement with then-Fox affiliate WCCB to take over production of that station's 10 p.m. newscast, shortly after WSOC-TV ended its agreement to produce

16530-468: The station struggled with limited resources, frequently preempting NBC fare—including the NBC Nightly News —and was used to develop talent for other stations in the Group W chain. Spun off to local ownership in 1984, WPCQ's status with NBC remained uncertain despite substantial technical upgrades and a reinvestment in local news. Purchased by The Providence Journal Company in 1988, the Belo Corporation in 1996, and Tegna Inc. predecessor Gannett in 2013,

16675-431: The station was branded on-air as "NBC 6", in reference to its cable channel location; it quietly shed that moniker to go by its call letters in 2004, seeking to avoid potential confusion in ratings diaries. Two veteran anchors are gone, news ratings are perennially low and national consultants say the NBC affiliate is among the network's most dubious underachievers. Erik Spanberg, Charlotte Business Journal , on

16820-502: The station was renamed WCNC-TV in 1989 and has generally been Charlotte's third-rated television station since. The first station to operate on UHF channel 36 in Charlotte signed on the air January 5, 1954, as WAYS-TV; that station was sold and changed its call letters to WQMC-TV on January 24, 1955. Charlotte's second television station, WAYS-TV/WQMC-TV did not make any headway against WBTV (channel 3) because television set manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuning capability at

16965-460: The station's low expectations to their advantage elsewhere in the company. Westinghouse had long extensively promoted from within and thus used WPCQ as the equivalent of a " farm team " for its larger stations. Its more promising on-air personalities merely treated WPCQ as a stepping stone towards promotion to Group W's well-regarded heritage radio and television stations outside Charlotte, such as when sports director Lou Tilley moved to Boston to become

17110-483: The station. At one point, the Charlotte area accounted for 15 percent of CBN's pledge contributions. CBN programming was dropped by WRET in 1973 and replaced with programs of the Trinity Broadcasting Network , headed locally by Jim Bakker ; the shows included The PTL Club . Bakker split from TBN in 1974 and moved his staff to Charlotte. By 1975, buoyed by a stronger film library, WRET-TV had emerged as

17255-419: The time, not only because of all the stars featured in the musical and on the hour-long variety extravaganza, but also due to the extremely high-intensity lighting and electronics required for the new RCA TK-41 cameras, which were the first practical color television cameras. It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it

17400-607: The time; this would not change until Congress passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1961. It ceased operations in March 1955. A plan to return it to the air as WUTV under reconstituted ownership in 1957 was unsuccessful, but it aired educational programming from 1961 to 1963. Cy Bahakel bought the station in 1964 and returned it to the air as WCCB , which broadcast on channel 36 before moving to UHF channel 18 in November 1966. The current incarnation of channel 36 signed on

17545-425: The transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color; and three light sources, controlled by the signal, at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination. The demonstration was of a young girl wearing different colored hats. The girl, Noele Gordon , later became a TV actress in the soap opera Crossroads . Baird also made

17690-559: The viewership of WBTV. In late 2005, WCNC debuted the Charlotte market's first 4:30 p.m. newscast, creating a two-hour local news block from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. In 2007, the station phased out its longtime 6News brand and rebranded itself as "WCNC, Carolinas' News Connection". In August 2008, it rebranded once again to NewsChannel 36 , marking the first time in 12 years that WCNC had used its over-the-air channel number in its branding. Beginning in September 2008, WCNC aired news at 4 p.m., with Judge Judy at 4:30; in January 2012,

17835-486: The viewing public. All were broadcast using the single color camera that CBS owned. The New York broadcasts were extended by coaxial cable to Philadelphia's WCAU-TV beginning 13 December, and to Chicago on 10 January, making them the first network color broadcasts. After a series of hearings beginning in September 1949, the FCC found the RCA and CTI systems fraught with technical problems, inaccurate color reproduction, and expensive equipment, and so formally approved

17980-402: The weekend sports anchor at WBZ-TV . Amanda Davis , who had anchored the news three years for WPCQ-TV, became a correspondent for Group W's Satellite News Channel after turning down an offer to report for its Baltimore station, WJZ-TV . When a union strike at the company's New York City all-news station, WINS , left it without announcers, Westinghouse sent WPCQ anchor Raiford there as part of

18125-504: The world upgraded from black-and-white to color transmission between the 1960s and the 1980s. The invention of color television standards was an important part of the history and technology of television . Transmission of color images using mechanical scanners had been conceived as early as the 1880s. A demonstration of mechanically scanned color television was given by John Logie Baird in 1928, but its limitations were apparent even then. Development of electronic scanning and display made

18270-454: The world's first color over-the-air broadcast on 4 February 1938, sending a mechanically scanned 120-line image from Baird's Crystal Palace studios to a projection screen at London's Dominion Theatre . Mechanically scanned color television was also demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 using three complete systems of photoelectric cells , amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with

18415-630: The world. It was on the air from 22 March 1935, until it was shut down in 1944. The station was named after Paul Gottlieb Nipkow , the inventor of the Nipkow disk . Most often the term "television station" refers to a station which broadcasts structured content to an audience or it refers to the organization that operates the station. A terrestrial television transmission can occur via analog television signals or, more recently, via digital television signals. Television stations are differentiated from cable television or other video providers as their content

18560-399: The world. Television stations broadcasting over an analog system were typically limited to one television channel , but digital television enables broadcasting via subchannels as well. Television stations usually require a broadcast license from a government agency which sets the requirements and limitations on the station. In the United States, for example, a television license defines

18705-419: The year before, noted that Westinghouse had seemed to lose its "gung-hoism" for the station. Mark Wolf, television and radio columnist for The Charlotte Observer , would note that elements that Group W had used successfully elsewhere had failed to make a dent against two formidable and entrenched competitors in Charlotte, and that the company seemed to lack other ideas when its typical plans did not work. When

18850-623: Was John Logie Baird 's, which was actually used for regular public broadcasting in Britain for several years. Indeed, Baird's system was demonstrated to members of the Royal Institution in London in 1926 in what is generally recognized as the first demonstration of a true, working television system. In spite of these early successes, all mechanical television systems shared a number of serious problems. Being mechanically driven, perfect synchronization of

18995-564: Was North Carolina's first independent station , beating Hickory -based WHKY-TV (channel 14) to the air by eight months. Twisdale and Steel were the lead investors in other planned UHF stations; though construction permits were never built for stations in Memphis and Richmond and the group lost out on channel 28 in Durham , WCTU-TV and WATU-TV (later WAGT ) in Augusta, Georgia , made it to air. WATU-TV

19140-504: Was a Friday night public service-concept game show called Quibble , which was soon demoted to Saturdays. The early newscast was then moved back to 6 p.m., but WCCB, airing reruns of Good Times , drew 13 percent of the audience in May 1982 compared to the 2 percent that watched the WPCQ-TV newscast; the station was, again, losing money. Westinghouse's inability to make channel 36 more competitive surprised even local rivals, who had expected

19285-680: Was a backup in the event that the Federal Communications Commission did not relax rules that prevented the existence of superstations in top-25 television markets. Channel 36 ended the year by announcing plans to repay the viewers whose contributions had saved it four years prior, doing so in February 1976. Each of the 3,600 contributors, who had sent in from 25 cents to $ 200, received checks returning their money—with interest—from Turner. In 1976 and 1977, channel 36 became an even more aggressive buyer of programming, grabbing local rights to Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman from WSOC-TV and stepping in to run CBS coverage of NBA basketball when WBTV passed on

19430-427: Was a profitable operation; in comparison, debts incurred in starting WCTU-TV would prompt Twisdale to shelve his Memphis and Richmond plans. WCTU was initially a low-budget independent station operating about eight hours a day from 3 to 11 p.m. It ran a lineup of some very old movies , westerns , some comedy shows from the early 1950s, and public affairs shows. The station, which operated from studios on Hood Road in

19575-556: Was announced that over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that autumn. The first all-color prime-time season came just one year later. NBC 's pioneering coast-to-coast color broadcast of the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade was accompanied by public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers by manufacturers RCA , General Electric , Philco , Raytheon , Hallicrafters , Hoffman , Pacific Mercury , and others. Two days earlier, Admiral had demonstrated to its distributors

19720-401: Was broadcast live in color on 31 March 1957. It was their only musical written directly for television, and had the highest one-night number of viewers to date at 107 million. CBS's The Big Record , starring pop vocalist Patti Page , in 1957–1958 became the first television show broadcast in color for an entire season. The production costs for these shows were greater than most movies were at

19865-490: Was clear to a number of developers that a completely electronic scanning system would be superior, and that the scanning could be achieved in a vacuum tube via electrostatic or magnetic means. Converting this concept into a usable system took years of development and several independent advances. The two key advances were Philo Farnsworth 's electronic scanning system, and Vladimir Zworykin 's Iconoscope camera. The Iconoscope, based on Kálmán Tihanyi 's early patents, superseded

20010-583: Was compatible with the prior monochrome system. Although the NTSC color standard was proclaimed in 1953, and limited programming soon became available, it was not until the early 1970s that color television in North America outsold black-and-white units. Color broadcasting in Europe did not standardize on the PAL or SECAM formats until the 1960s. Broadcasters began to upgrade from analog color television technology to higher resolution digital television c.  2006 ;

20155-530: Was established as WCTU-TV, an independent television station, in 1967. After falling into receivership brought on by severe economic hardship, WCTU was purchased by Atlanta broadcast pioneer Ted Turner . Renamed WRET-TV, the station's fortunes turned around and thrived throughout the 1970s. WRET became Charlotte's NBC affiliate in 1978 following WSOC-TV 's switch from NBC to ABC , launching local newscasts. Turner sold WRET to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1979 to raise capital for his new venture CNN ; as WPCQ-TV,

20300-516: Was initially met with glee by the WRET-TV staff. Two station employees who had been looking for new jobs elsewhere decided to stay when the sale was announced. In 1984, Reese Schonfeld , who co-founded CNN with Turner, would note that by providing the collateral against which Turner obtained money for CNN in the WRET-TV purchase, Westinghouse financed the start of CNN and then of its own short-lived Satellite News Channel two years later. Final approval of

20445-416: Was not practical. The electron guns used in monochrome televisions had limited resolution, and if one wanted to retain the resolution of existing monochrome displays, the guns would have to focus on individual dots three times smaller. This was beyond the state of the art of the technology at the time. Instead, a number of hybrid solutions were developed that combined a conventional monochrome display with

20590-771: Was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue, and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set. The system was first demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on 29 August 1940, and shown to the press on 4 September. CBS began experimental color field tests using film as early as 28 August 1940, and live cameras by 12 November. NBC (owned by RCA) made its first field test of color television on 20 February 1941. CBS began daily color field tests on 1 June 1941. These color systems were not compatible with existing black-and-white television sets, and as no color television sets were available to

20735-426: Was started in 2010. After a solid, if low-rated, start under Turner's watch, the news department was severely hamstrung by Group W's bargain-basement approach to running the station. Group W immediately dropped the station's weekend evening newscasts and moved the 11 p.m. newscast to 12:30 a.m. before canceling it altogether in 1981. The early evening newscast was shifted between the 5:30 and 6 p.m. timeslots until

20880-521: Was too little, too late. Only 200 sets had been shipped, and only 100 sold, when CBS discontinued its color television system on 20 October 1951, ostensibly by request of the National Production Authority for the duration of the Korean War , and bought back all the CBS color sets it could to prevent lawsuits by disappointed customers. RCA chairman David Sarnoff later charged that the NPA's order had come "out of

21025-448: Was viewable in color only at the network's headquarters. The first network broadcast to go out over the air in NTSC color was a performance of the opera Carmen on 31 October 1953. Colour broadcasts from the United States were available to Canadian population centres near the border from the mid-1950s. At the time that NTSC colour broadcasting was officially introduced into Canada in 1966, less than one percent of Canadian households had

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