| Anderson/Greenville/ Spartanburg, South Carolina- Asheville, North Carolina |
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|---|---|
| City of license | Anderson |
| Branding | My 40 (general) News 13 |
| Channels | Digital: 14 (UHF) |
| Subchannels | 40.1 MyNetworkTV 40.2 TheCoolTV 40.3 The Country Network |
| Owner | Cunningham Broadcasting (operated through LMA by Sinclair Broadcast Group) (Anderson [WFBC-TV] Licensee, Inc.) |
| First air date | September 5, 1953 |
| Call letters' meaning | MYNetworkTV Anderson |
| Sister station(s) | WLOS, WMYV, WXLV-TV, WLFL, WRDC |
| Former callsigns | WAIM-TV (1953-1983) WAXA (1983-1995) WFBC-TV (1995-1999) WBSC-TV (1999-2006) |
| Former channel number(s) | 40 (UHF analog, 1953-2009) |
| Former affiliations | CBS (primary, 1953-1956; secondary, 1956-1979) ABC (secondary, 1953-1956; primary, 1956-1979; satellite of WLOS, 1991-1995) Fox (1986-1988) Independent (1979-1986, 1988-1989, 1995-1999) The WB (1999-2006) |
| Transmitter power | 1,000 kW |
| Height | 286.6 m |
| Facility ID | 56548 |
| Website | my40.tv |
WMYA-TV is the MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station for Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina licensed to Anderson, South Carolina. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 14 from a transmitter in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. The station can also be seen on Charter channel 5 (in South Carolina) and channel 9 (in North Carolina). There is a high definition feed offered on Charter digital channel 705 (in South Carolina) and digital channel 709 (in North Carolina. Owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, WMYA is operated through a local marketing agreement (LMA) by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
This makes it sister to ABC affiliate WLOS and the two share studios on Technology Drive in Asheville, North Carolina near I-26/US 74. However, WMYA is effectively owned by Sinclair due to Cunningham's financial structure (see below). Syndicated programming on this station includes: Tyler Perry's House of Payne, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Entourage, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is one of three Sinclair duopolies in North Carolina. WMYA only provides a Grade B signal to the North Carolina side of the market. To improve it over-the-air coverage, WLOS offers a standard definition simulcast on its second digital subchannel (VHF channel 13.2) from a transmitter on Mount Pisgah.
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On WMYA-DT2 and Charter digital channel 135 is TheCoolTV. On WMYA-DT3 and Charter digital channel 139 is The Country Network.
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Label | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14.1 | 720p | 16:9 | WMYA-MN | Main WMYA programming / MyNetworkTV |
| 14.2 | 480i | 4:3 | WMYA-CO | TheCoolTV |
| 14.3 | WMYA-TC | The Country Network |
The station signed-on September 5, 1953 as WAIM-TV airing an analog signal on UHF channel 40. It was the fourth television station in South Carolina and the first outside Columbia. WAIM-TV was owned by Wilton E. Hall, publisher of the Anderson Independent and Daily Mail newspapers, along with WAIM-AM 1230 and WCAC-FM 101.1 (now WROQ). The calls stood for Anderson Independent-Mail. It was a CBS station with secondary ABC affiliation.
When WSPA-TV signed-on from Spartanburg in 1956 and took CBS, this channel became a primary ABC affiliate even though WLOS had become the market's ABC affiliate of record two years earlier. Until 1976, WAIM still cleared many CBS programs. It was sold to Harte-Hanks Communications in 1972.
For most of its tenure as a big three affiliate, WAIM was plagued by a weak signal. Its transmitter was built before Greenville, Spartanburg, and Asheville were collapsed into one vast television market. The channel only provided a strong signal to Anderson and Pickens Counties. Nearby Greenville could only receive a fringe signal. As a result, the station never thrived with the revenues from its radio sisters keeping it afloat.
All efforts to boost its signal were defeated due to protests from WLOS which pressured ABC to drop its programming from WAIM from the 1960s onward. During the week for about a year in the mid-1970s, the station would not sign-on until 11 in the morning when ABC's afternoon shows began and would sign-off twelve hours later when the network's prime time ended. The tiny bit of non-network programming during this time was mainly religious shows and travelogues.
The station would eventually resume 7 a.m. sign-on but would sign-off around midnight even in the late-1970s. WLOS finally persuaded ABC to yank its programming from WAIM in 1979. Soon afterward, Harte-Hanks sold the station to Frank Outlaw who changed the station's calls to WAXA and turned it into the first full-time general entertainment Independent in the state. The area already had another Independent station with Greenville's WGGS-TV, but that channel emphasized religious programming. The few entertainment programs it aired were very conservative in nature. Outlaw soon found a transmitter site south of Greenville that was near enough to Anderson to meet Federal Communication Commission (FCC) requirements that a station's transmitter be no further than fifteen miles from its city of license.
In Fall 1979, WAXA added a more powerful transmitter that more than doubled its coverage area. However, the station was still more or less unviewable over-the-air on the North Carolina side of the market. The schedule was filled mostly with cartoons, barter sitcoms, low budget syndicated talk shows, wildlife shows, low budget and public domain movies, as well as other shows the competition passed on that cost no money to air. It also aired programs from NBC and CBS that WYFF and WSPA turned down. One of the NBC programs shown on the station was the game show Super Password which was pre-empted from WYFF for its entire run. As barter cartoons became more available, WAXA aired about three hours of them in mornings and afternoons. The station prospered until WHNS signed-on in 1984 as the first general entertainment station that decently covered the entire market. Although WHNS had a stronger signal and richer ownership (Pappas Telecasting), WAXA beat out WHNS to become the area's charter Fox affiliate at the network's launch on October 9, 1986. As a condition of winning the Fox affiliation, Outlaw promised to boost the station's transmission power to a full five million watts which would have provided decent coverage of the entire market.
The Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville market was not big enough at the time to support what were essentially two Independent stations. Fox would not offer a full week's worth of programming until 1993, so WAXA was still programmed essentially as an independent. Nonetheless, Outlaw had big plans for the station in the late-1980s well beyond boosting its signal strength. However, he died suddenly in 1988. His widow did not have the enthusiasm her husband did for running WAXA. The station quickly suffered financial and management problems. It filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Fall 1988 and lost the Fox affiliation to WHNS.
Even though WAXA's schedule as a Fox affiliate closely resembled its schedule as an Iindependent, it never recovered from the loss of network programming and went dark on August 31, 1989. River City Broadcasting, owner of WLOS, bought the dormant WAXA license and returned the station to the air in 1991 as a full-time simulcast of WLOS. This created a strong combined signal with about 60% overlap. River City merged with the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1995. Shortly afterward, Sinclair sold WAXA to Glencairn, Ltd. a new group headed by former Sinclair executive Edwin Edwards. Glencairn dropped the simulcast with WLOS and changed this channel's calls to WFBC-TV (previously held from 1953 until 1983 by what is now WYFF).
The station reverted to a typical general-entertainment Independent format running cartoons, off network sitcoms, movies, off network dramas, and some first run talk and reality shows. However, Glencairn's stock was almost entirely controlled by the Smith family (founders and owners of Sinclair). In effect, Sinclair owned both stations even though Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules did not permit duopolies at the time. Glencairn and Sinclair further circumvented the rules by moving WFBC's operations to WLOS' facilities in Ashville under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with WLOS as the senior partner. WFBC became a WB affiliate on September 6, 1999 and changed its call letters to WBSC in 2000 to reflect its status as the only full-time WB affiliate serving a South Carolina-based market.
It began broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sometime in 2004 having previously signed-off late Sunday night/early Monday morning. When Sinclair attempted to merge with Glencairn in 2001 after Sinclair was fined $40,000 for illegally controlling Glencairn, the FCC refused to allow Sinclair to buy WBSC and five other Glencairn stations. The FCC had already allowed Media General (owner of WSPA) to buy LMA partner WASV-TV (now WYCW) outright and a Sinclair purchase of WBSC would have left the market with only seven unique station owners. FCC rules require a market to be left with eight unique station owners after a duopoly is formed.
Glencairn changed its name to Cunningham Broadcasting but its stock is still almost entirely owned by the Smith family. As a result, Sinclair still effectively has a duopoly in the market. There is considerable evidence that Cunningham is simply a shell corporation used by Sinclair to evade FCC rules. The WLOS/WBSC arrangement led to the formation of Sinclair Media Watch, an Asheville-based grassroots organization, to file an informal objection to license renewals of WBSC and WLOS in 2004.
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced that the networks would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On February 22, News Corporation announced that it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming Independent. It was also created to compete against The CW.
On March 2, it was announced that WBSC would become the MyNetworkTV affiliate for the market. Nearly four weeks later on March 28, it was confirmed that WASV would join The CW. On June 19, WBSC changed its call letters to WMYA-TV to reflect its upcoming affiliation. Despite the DTV Delay Act national transition extension to June 12, 2009, the station ceased regular analog programming on analog channel 40 at midnight on February 18. For two weeks after that, it broadcast a "nightlight" service in the form of a continuously repeating short program about installing digital television converter boxes, alternating between English and Spanish versions, before finally shutting down its analog signal completely. On January 21, 2010, WMYA went off-the-air due to transmitter issues and was not fixed until January 24.
In South Carolina, WMYA is available on Northland Communications in Saluda, which is part of the Columbia media market. The MyNetworkTV affiliate for that market, WKTC, is not available.
In Georgia, WMYA is available on Northland Communications in Mountain City, which is part of the Atlanta market.
On September 17, 2008, WLOS and WMYA began offering local news in high definition becoming the second pair of stations in the area to upgrade after WSPA and WYCW. WLOS produces three weekday newscasts for WMYA including an hour-long morning show at 9 on weekdays (known as My 40 This Morning) and two half-hour shows weeknights at 6:30 and 10 (known as News 13 on My 40). The earlier program airs against the big three network evening news while the prime time broadcast competes with shows on WYCW and WHNS. In addition to its main studios, WLOS operates news bureaus in Greenville, South Carolina (on Verdae Boulevard) and in Waynesville, North Carolina (on South Main Street/US 23).
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