WTBS (TV)

The Television & Movie Wiki: for TV, celebrities, and movies.

WTBS
Atlanta, Georgia
Branding	Peachtree TV
Slogan
Analog channel	17 (UHF)
Digital channel	20 (UHF)
Affiliations	Independent
Owner	Turner Broadcasting System/Time Warner
Founded	1976
Call letters meaning	Turner Broadcasting System
Former callsigns	}}}
Former affiliations	TBS
Effective radiated power	}}}
Website	www.tbs17.com

WTBS is an independent TV station on channel 17 (DTV channel 20) in metro Atlanta. Originally WJRJ in the early 1970s, it was bought by Ted Turner, who began his TBS television empire there. The call letters were changed to WTCG. TBS is mostly a simulcast of flagship WTBS, except for TV commercials, some locally produced public affairs programming on Sunday mornings, and certain special events. The DTV channel 20 is diplexed into a master TV antenna at the tower located at 1800 Briarcliff Road NE.

WTCG, which reportedly stood for "watch this channel grow" (though the "TCG" officially stood for Turner Communications Group, the forerunner to Turner Broadcasting System), was one of the first TV networks to broadcast via satellite as it was re-launched in 1979 as WTBS. The new call letters were purchased by equipment donation from the MIT student radio station, now WMBR.

At 1 PM on December 17, 1976, WTCG Channel 17's signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to its four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama; and Newton, Kansas. All four cable systems started receiving the sleepy 1948 Dana Andrews–Cesar Romero film Deep Waters that was already in progress. The movie had started 30 minutes earlier. WTCG went from being a little television station no one was watching to a major TV network that every one of the 24,000 households outside of the 675,000 in Atlanta was receiving coast-to-coast. WTCG became a so-called Superstation and created a precedent of today's basic cable television.

HBO (which eventually would become co-owned with TBS) had gone to satellite transmissions to distribute its signal nationally in 1975, but that was a service cable subscribers were made to pay extra to receive. Ted Turner's innovation signaled the start of the basic cable revolution.

The channel 17 transmitter is located at 1018 West Peachtree Street NW, with antenna located on a large self-supporting tower. The building at this site was once home to the studios of WAGA and later channel 17 as WJRJ. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the studios were moved to the former Progressive Club site a few blocks west.

Over the years WTCG ran a general entertainment format with lots of classic movies, cartoons, off network sitcoms, dramas, and sports. Once on satellite though they stopped buying newer off network sitcoms and stayed with more classic TV sitcoms. In 1982 they ran sitcoms from the 1950s to the early 1970s. and older cartoons. Later in the 1980s the station added second hand 1970s sitcoms. In the 1990s more 1980s sictoms moved on the lineup.

The station was WTBS since the early 1980s. In September 1998, WTBS stopped running cartoons which all were on Cartoon Network at that point. Recently the drama movies and shows were eliminated and put only on TNT. This is considered to be setting a trend — TBS (comedy), TNT (drama), and Cartoon Network all having their own formats.

Today WTBS runs a Comedy with a storyline format. All their shows are comedy which include 1980s and 1990s sitcoms, and comedy movies from the 1960s to the 1980s. The station does not run any stand up comedy like Comedy Central.