WHBQ-TV

WHBQ-TV

Memphis, Tennessee
Branding	Fox 13 (general) Fox 13 News (newscasts)
Slogan	The Most Powerful Name in Local News
Channels	Digital: 13 (VHF)
Subchannels	13.1 Fox HD 13.2 Movies!
Owner	Fox Television Stations (Fox Television Stations Inc.)
First air date	September 27, 1953
Call letters' meaning	We Have Better Quartets (in reference to religious roots of WHBQ radio) or Harding Brothers C(Q)ommunications (after Harding University, original owner of WHBQ radio)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 13 (VHF, 1953–2009) Digital: 53 (UHF, 1995–2009)
Former affiliations	CBS (1953–1956) ABC (1953–1995; secondary until 1956)
Transmitter power	95 kW
Height	308 m
Facility ID	12521
Transmitter coordinates	35°10′29″N 89°50′43″W
Website	www.myfoxmemphis.com

WHBQ-TV, channel 13, is an Fox owned-and-operated television station located in Memphis, Tennessee. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of News Corporation. WHBQ's studios are located near the intersection of Highland Street and Midland Avenue (near the University of Memphis), and its transmitter is located off of I-40 and Raleigh LaGrange Road in eastern Memphis.

Digital television

Digital channels

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming
13.1	720p	16:9	WHBQ-DT	Main WHBQ-TV programming / Fox
2.2	480i	4:3		Movies!

Analog-to-digital conversion

WHBQ-TV discontinued its analog signal on June 12, 2009, as part of the digital television transition. The station's digital signal moved from its pre-transition UHF channel to its former analog channel assignment of VHF 13.

History

Under RKO General

WHBQ-TV began operations on September 27, 1953. The station was owned by Harding College along with WHBQ radio (560 AM and 105.9 FM, now WGKX). WHBQ-TV was originally a CBS affiliate, sharing ABC programming with WMCT (channel 5, now WMC-TV). Channel 13 lost CBS when WREC-TV (channel 3, now WREG-TV) signed on and took that affiliation due to CBS' long affiliation with WREC radio; WHBQ-TV then took the ABC affiliation full-time. It is the second-oldest television station in Memphis, and the only one that has never changed its call letters or channel allocation.

General Teleradio, the broadcasting arm of the General Tire and Rubber Company, purchased the WHBQ stations in 1954. In 1955, General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures in order to give its television stations a programming source. RKO was merged into General Teleradio, and in 1957 General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed RKO General.

Despite being one of ABC's stronger affiliates in the 1960s and 1970s (and as pointed out in a sales video that was made in 1964, was billed as the third most watched ABC affiliate in the United States), WHBQ-TV was known for not airing some ABC programming in pattern, particularly during the day. Many of these programs were preempted outright or delayed until late-night hours. In some cases, these programming decisions occurred because station management was skeptical of airing subject matter deemed even mildly controversial (presumably to keep from offending viewers in Memphis' more conservative suburbs and the surrounding rural areas). For example, it was one of several ABC affiliates that did not clear Hot l Baltimore, a show which featured one of the first openly homosexual couples featured on American television. In September 1977, WHBQ-TV was one of eight ABC affiliates that refused to carry the controversial situation comedy Soap, opting to run repeats of My Three Sons instead. When Soap proved to be a runaway hit for the network, channel 13 acquiesced and allowed the series to be seen in late-night summer reruns. The following fall, the station carried Soap in its regular pattern.

In many other cases, however, channel 13 opted to pre-empt network shows in favor of local shows in hopes of getting more local advertising dollars. For instance, in 1972, WHBQ-TV (whose AM sister was a Top 40 powerhouse at the time) stunned Mid-South viewers by dropping American Bandstand for 90 minutes of live professional wrestling. The wrestling program was a late Saturday afternoon fixure when it first began airing in 1958, until its move to the Saturday morning 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. slot. WHBQ lost the show to WMC-TV in 1977. But even after losing that program, channel 13 continued to pre-empt Bandstand until 1984, just three years before ABC canceled the long-running show. The pre-emption kept Memphians from seeing homegrown talent perform on the show, such as The Sylvers, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Anita Ward, The Staples Singers and Rick Dees, who was hired by WHBQ radio as its new morning host during his "Disco Duck" days in late 1976. At the time Dees appeared on Bandstand, "Disco Duck" was never played on any of the radio stations in Memphis, including WHBQ-AM, because Dees was still employed at rival WMPS at the time.

Channel 13 made up for the preemption by airing Bandstand's syndicated rival, Soul Train, on Saturday nights until independent station WPTY-TV (channel 24, now WATN-TV) purchased the rights to that program from channel 13 in 1983. It was one of the largest ABC affiliates to pass on Good Morning America when it debuted in 1975, not picking it up until 1977. Other popular shows that WHBQ-TV held out until later (when they became major out-of-the-box hits on ABC) included Dark Shadows (the program featured actor Don Briscoe, who would later reside and died in Memphis), The Bionic Woman and S.W.A.T.. In 1980, the station was criticized for carrying paid religious programming instead of ABC's coverage of the United States' Olympic men's hockey team's gold medal victory over Finland in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Locally, the station had a rivalry with WREC/WREG-TV over bragging rights for the largest movie library in the market. Through its ownership by RKO General, channel 13 had the entire RKO Pictures catalog at its disposal. The station's reliance on classic and public-domain films in the 1960s and 1970s was evidenced in its daily noon to 2 p.m. airing of the "Million Dollar Movie" (and later, the 9 to 11 a.m. airing of Dialing for Dollars), which the station ran instead of popular daytime soap operas All My Children and Ryan's Hope, or in some cases, reruns of ABC prime-time sitcoms that aired in the mornings. In September 1978 channel 13 finally began clearing the full ABC daytime lineup, though its noon newscast forced All My Children into a morning timeslot, where it aired on a one-day delay for many years.

RKO General was under nearly continuous investigation from the 1960s onward due to a long history of lying to advertisers and regulators. For example, it was nearly forced out of broadcasting in 1980 after misleading the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about corporate misconduct at parent General Tire. Under longtime general manager Alex Bonner, however, WHBQ-AM-FM-TV was never accused of any wrongdoing. In 1987, an FCC administrative law judge ruled RKO General unfit to be a broadcast licensee due to a widespread pattern of dishonesty. After the FCC advised RKO that appealing the decision was not worth the effort, RKO began unwinding its broadcast operations. The WHBQ stations were the next-to-last to be sold, shortly after Bonner retired in 1990. The new owner, Adams Communications, sold off WHBQ-AM (105.9 FM had been sold off several years earlier).

Transition to Fox

Adams was in severe financial straits by 1994, and sold the station to Communications Corporation of America, a sale that was finalized on August 17 of that year. Only a short time later, ComCorp announced that it would sell WHBQ-TV to the News Corporation, a sale which closed on July 5, 1995. The company's Fox network had signed a deal with New World Communications the previous year to switch the network affiliations of most of its portfolio of Big Three-affiliated stations to Fox. News Corporation's purchase of the station built on this, and was in part positioning to have a station in a market that was, at the time, in contention for landing an NFL team (Fox had just gained the broadcast rights to National Football Conference). When the station's affiliation agreement with ABC ran out in November 1995, the new owners made channel 13 the third station in Memphis to carry Fox programming: WMKW-TV (channel 30, now WLMT) had been the area's original Fox affiliate from 1986 to 1990; Fox then moved to WPTY-TV until the WHBQ-TV purchase. WPTY took channel 13's former ABC affiliation. Upon the network switch, channel 13 replaced the daytime ABC soap opera lineup with Fox Kids (later 4Kids TV) children's shows, unlike most of the other stations that switched to Fox between 1994 and 1996. WHBQ is the only Memphis television station to have been owned and operated by any major network.

On June 13, 2007, News Corporation put WHBQ-TV and eight other stations up for sale. Local TV, a broadcast holding company controlled by the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, purchased the other eight stations on December 22. WHBQ-TV could not go to Local TV or any other affiliate of Oak Hill Capital Partners because Local TV already owned CBS affiliate WREG-TV. The FCC does not allow duopolies between two of the four largest stations in a single market, as was the case with WHBQ and WREG. On January 16, 2009, Fox Television Stations withdrew WHBQ-TV from the market because the only interested buyers (other than Local TV) that were willing to pay anywhere close to the asking price were Newport Television (then the owner of WPTY and WLMT, which have since been divested to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group) and Raycom Media (the owner of WMC-TV). None of the other bids for the station were deemed high enough for News Corporation to sell it. By then, Fox had dropped cartoons due to Fox's discontinuation of the 4Kids TV block; the infomercial block Weekend Marketplace now airs in place of the block.

On June 6, 2012, WHBQ-TV became the last Fox-owned station outside of its MyNetworkTV sister stations to switch from the EndPlay (spun off from Fox Interactive Media) CMS platform to a new Worldnow-hosted platform now used by all of the other Fox-owned stations.

Local programming

On September 29, 1962, WHBQ-TV premiered Fantastic Features, a collection of classic horror films from the RKO Pictures library. The series was hosted by a Transylvanian-styled vampire named Sivad, played by Watson Davis. The show's opening sequence, which included film footage of Sivad riding through a misty forest in a horse-drawn hearse (filmed at Overton Park), proved so unsettling to some children that the series was moved from its original 6:00 p.m. timeslot on Saturday evenings to the later time of 10:30 p.m. At the height of its popularity, Fantastic Features aired on both Friday and Saturday nights. The program concluded its run on February 5, 1972, after 623 episodes (although the final two years were rerunning older films because the station was getting more raunchier horror films that Davis did not feel comfortable with and wanted the show to be family friendly), though Sivad has remained a well-remembered local personality. There were several attempts to resurrect the character, though a retired Watson Davis refused all offers, the sole exception being promos for the syndicated run of Dark Shadows, acquired by WHBQ in April 1982. Mr. Davis died on May 23, 2005 and is buried in Monroe County, Arkansas.

In the 1960s and 1970s, WHBQ produced several local programs featuring Memphis personalities. Disc jockey George Klein hosted Talent Party, an afternoon rock-and-roll series aimed at Memphis' teenage audience. Talent Party was hugely successful, giving many garage bands their first television appearances, and the ratings were so high that it regularly beat The Edge of Night, a nationally top-rated soap opera on CBS.

Another staple of WHBQ's programming was Happy Hal's Funhouse and Cartoon Time, hosted by Hal Miller. While he hosted both shows twice daily and on Saturday morings, it also provided Miller with the opportunity to sell toy products from his local toy store during his telecasts. Miller continued to host both shows from 1957 to 1974. Another children's program that aired on WHBQ from 1955 to 1957, Mars Patrol, featured a young Wink Martindale as the titular character before he would go to be a game show host.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, news anchor Marge Thrasher also hosted a local talk show titled Straight Talk (a title used on other RKO General stations), aired at 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. WHBQ was also the Memphis station for the local/syndicated program PM Magazine featuring Byron Day and Lynn Sitler.

News operation

WHBQ-TV presently broadcasts 46½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (8½ hours on weekdays, two hours on Saturdays and Sundays), this gives the station the largest local news output of any television station in the Memphis market and the state of Tennessee in general. As is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts, WHBQ's Saturday and Sunday 5 p.m. newscasts are subject to preemption due to network sports coverage. WHBQ is one of four Fox O&Os with a 5 p.m. newscast, but no 6 p.m. newscast – along with Austin's KTBC, Houston's KRIV and Minneapolis's KMSP-TV (the network's Boston O&O WFXT was included in this distinction until September 2009, when the reverse became true after the station "moved" its 5 p.m. newscast to 6 p.m.).

WHBQ's newscasts, for many years, had been called Eyewitness News and stayed true to the Eyewitness News "Happy Talk" format, along with using the "Cool Hand Luke" music package that ABC's owned-and-operated stations used. WHBQ had a number of high-visibility anchors and reporters in the 1970s and 1980s, including Ed Craig, Tom Bearden, Marge Thrasher, Fran Fawcett, Jim Jaggers and Charlie B. Watson. After Fox acquired the station in 1995, expansions to the station's newscasts occurred with an additional two hours of news added on weekday mornings, the removal of the 6 p.m. newscast in favor of expanding the 5 p.m. newscast to one hour and the move of the 10 p.m. newscast to 9 p.m. and its expansion to one hour. The newscasts were also briefly called Fox 13 Eyewitness News, before the branding was changed to Fox 13 News by 1997. But despite this change (and even rivals WATN-TV and WLMT picking up the Eyewitness News title for their newscasts in 2002), WHBQ has remained Memphis' "Happy Talk" station.

On June 23, 2009, WHBQ-TV became the second television station in Memphis (behind WMC-TV) to begIn broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. On September 7, 2009, the station's weekday morning newscast Good Morning Memphis was expanded to five hours, running from 5-10 a.m.; an additional half-hour was added to the program on April 26, 2010, expanding it to 4:30-10 a.m. WHBQ debuted a new 10 p.m. newscast on August 16, 2010, marking the first time since WHBQ became a Fox affiliate on December 1, 1995 that the station has run a late newscast in direct competition with WREG, WMC-TV and WATN-TV.

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• Your Esso Reporter (1953–1956)
• The Mid-South News Report (1956–1962)
• The Big News on 13 (1962–1966)
• Channel 13 Early/Late/Final Report (1966–1970)
• Eyewitness News (1970–1982 and 1989–1995)
• 13 Eyewitness News (1982–1989)
• Fox 13 Eyewitness News (1995–1997)
• Fox 13 News (1997–present)
• Good Morning Memphis (weekday morning newscast; 1997–present)

Station slogans

• "The Best is Seen on Channel 13" (1950s–1960s)
• "The Full Color Station" (1960s)
• "The Spirit of the Mid–South" (1989–2005)
• "Where Local News Comes First" (2005–2007; also formerly used as a slogan for KPRC-TV in Houston)
• "The Most Powerful Name In Local News" (2007–present)

This film, television or video-related list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions.

On-air staff

Current on-air staff

WHBQ-TV's primary anchors are Valerie Calhoun (weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 6-10 a.m.); Trey Paul (weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-6 a.m. and weekdays at 11 a.m.); Greg Coy (weeknights at 5 p.m.); Ernie Freeman (weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 6-10 a.m.); Darrell Greene (weeknights at 9 and 10 p.m.); Brooke Thomas (weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-6 a.m.); Kristin Tallent (weekends at 5 and 9 p.m.); Mearl Purvis (weeknights at 5 and 9 p.m.); and Darcy Thomas (weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 6-10 and weekdays at 11 a.m.).

The Fox 13 Weather team includes chief meteorologist Joey Sulipeck (NWA Seal of Approval; weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-10 a.m.); and meteorologists Brian Basham (AMS Seal of Approval; weeknights at 5, 9 and 10 p.m.), Ed Echols (NWA Seal of Approval; weekday mornings on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-10 a.m. and weekdays at 11 a.m.) and TBD (weekends at 5 and 9 p.m.). The station's sports team includes sports director Matt Stark (weeknights at 5, 9 and 10 p.m.) and sports anchor Marcus Hunter (weekends at 5 and 9 p.m.).

The station's general assignment reporters are Tom Dees (Mississippi reporter); Earle Farrell; Lauren Lee; Les Smith; Bofta Yimam; Sarah Bleau; Matt Gerien; and Scott Madaus (weekday morning reporter on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-10 a.m.) Heather York is the station's traffic reporter (seen on Good Morning Memphis from 4:30-10 a.m. and weekdays at 5 p.m.).

Notable former on-air staff

• David Lee - sports director (2001–2006)

See also

• RKO Pictures

External links

• MyFoxMemphis.com - Official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WHBQ-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WHBQ-TV