WUSA (TV)

WUSA (channel 9) is a television station in Washington, D.C., affiliated with CBS. It is the flagship property of Tegna Inc., which is based in suburban McLean, Virginia. WUSA's studios and transmitter are at Broadcast House on Wisconsin Avenue in northwest Washington's Tenleytown neighborhood. Among CBS affiliates not owned and operated by the network, WUSA is the third-largest by market size (after Gray Television's WANF in Atlanta and Tegna's KHOU in Houston). The station's signal is relayed on a low-power digital translator station, W27EI-D, in Moorefield, West Virginia (which is owned by Valley TV Cooperative). It has a channel-sharing agreement with Silver Spring, Maryland-licensed WJAL (channel 68, owned by Entravision Communications). History Early years (1949–1978) The station first went on the air on January 11, 1949, as WOIC, and began full-time operations on January 16. The fourth-oldest station in the nation's capital, channel 9 was originally owned by the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, a subsidiary of R. H. Macy and Company. Bamberger also owned WOR-AM-FM in New York City, and was working to put WOR-TV (channel 9, now WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey) on the air at the same time. Nine days later, WOIC broadcast the first televised American presidential inaugural address, given by President Harry S. Truman. WOIC picked up the CBS affiliation upon signing on, replacing WMAL-TV (channel 7, now WJLA-TV) as the network's Washington outlet. WOIC/WTOP/WUSA has been a CBS affiliate since its inception, and is currently the network's longest-tenured affiliate. However, WOR was a shareholder in the Mutual Radio Network, which had plans to enter television with WOIC and WOR-TV as the flagship stations of its network; these plans never came to fruition. At the start of 1950, Bamberger Broadcasting changed its name to General Teleradio.