WCTV

WCTV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Thomasville, Georgia, United States, serving the Tallahassee, Florida market as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Gray Television alongside Live Oak, Florida–licensed MeTV affiliate WFXU (channel 57). Both stations share studios on Halstead Boulevard in Tallahassee (along I-10), while WCTV's transmitter is located in unincorporated Thomas County, Georgia, southeast of Metcalf, along the Florida state line. History WCTV was Tallahassee and southwest Georgia's first television station. On October 13, 1954, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that plans of a new television station and the first television station in the Tallahassee market was introduced to viewers in North Florida and South Georgia. The station held the call letters WCTV beginning on January 25, 1955, the same time WCTV's studios were constructed in Thomasville. On August 29, 1955, the station began airing a test pattern as its test broadcast. The station first signed on the air on September 15, 1955, using channel 6, from studios on North Monroe Street in Tallahassee. WCTV was originally owned by John H. Phipps. Although it has always considered itself a Tallahassee station, it was licensed to Thomasville because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had allocated only one VHF channel to Tallahassee, channel 11. Florida State University had managed to have the FCC reserve channel 11 for noncommercial use so it could put WFSU-TV on the air. UHF was not considered viable at the time. Until the 1964 FCC requirement that all new sets have all-channel capability, UHF stations were un-viewable without a converter, and even with one, the picture quality was marginal at best. Additionally, the FCC had just collapsed a large portion of southwest Georgia into the Tallahassee market, and UHF stations have never carried well across large areas.