WALA-TV

WALA-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Mobile, Alabama, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for southwest Alabama and northwest Florida. Owned by Gray Television, the station maintains studios on Satchel Paige Drive in Mobile, with an additional studio and news bureau on Executive Plaza Drive in Pensacola, Florida; its transmitter is located in Spanish Fort, Alabama. WALA-TV operates a 24-hour local weather channel called "Weather Now" which is available on Cox Communications digital channel 698 in Pensacola; it is not carried on Comcast Xfinity on the Alabama side of the market. History Early history WALA signed on the air for the first time on January 14, 1953; it is Mobile's oldest existing television station (the first, WKAB-TV channel 48, had beaten WALA-TV to air by two weeks but closed on August 2, 1954). It was initially locally owned by W.O. Pape, along with WALA radio (1410 AM, now WNGL). It aired programs from all four major television networks of the time–NBC, ABC, CBS, and DuMont–but was a primary NBC affiliate, as WALA radio had been a longtime affiliate of the network's direct predecessor, the NBC Red Network. WALA lost CBS and ABC programming to WKRG-TV (channel 5) when it signed on, and to WEAR-TV (channel 3) relinquished CBS programming and became a full-time ABC affiliate for the newly enlarged Mobile/Pensacola market in 1955. During the late 1950s, WALA was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. Pape sold WALA in 1964 to the Roywood Corporation. In 1969, Roywood sold WALA to the Universal Communications Corporation, the television arm of the Detroit News.