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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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 WECT and WSFX headquarters in Wilmington, North Carolina | |
| |
| Channels | |
|---|---|
| Branding | WECT; WECT News |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
|
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| WSFX-TV, WTWL-LD | |
| History | |
First air date | April 9, 1954 |
Former call signs | WMFD-TV (1954–1958) |
Former channel numbers |
|
Call sign meaning | We're Eastern Carolina Television |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| 48666 | |
| ERP | 550 kW |
| HAAT | 592.2 m (1,943 ft) |
Transmitter coordinates | 34°7′54″N 78°11′16″W / 34.13167°N 78.18778°W |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WECT (channel 6) is a television station in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Telemundo affiliate WTWL-LD (channel 31) and Fox affiliate WSFX-TV (channel 26). The three stations share studios on Shipyard Boulevard in Wilmington; WECT's transmitter is located near Winnabow, North Carolina.
Channel 6 began broadcasting on April 9, 1954, with the call sign WMFD-TV. It aired an analog signal on VHF channel 6 from a 941-foot (287 m) transmitter near Delco.[2] The station was owned by Atlantic Telecasting Corporation[3] alongside Wilmington's oldest radio station, WMFD. Atlantic Telecasting sold off the radio station in 1958 and changed the television station's calls changed to the current WECT. The callsign WMFD-TV is now used by an independent television station in Mansfield, Ohio.
At its launch, channel 6 was affiliated with all four networks of the day—NBC, CBS, DuMont and ABC. However, it has always been a primary NBC affiliate. It lost DuMont when that network went silent in 1956. The station finally got local competition in 1964 when WWAY signed on. However, WWAY opted to affiliate with the much weaker ABC, forcing WECT to shoehorn NBC and CBS onto its schedule until the 1970s, when cable arrived in the Wilmington market. It primarily carried CBS soap operas and CBS' Sunday afternoon NFL coverage. At one point, this station was carried on cable systems in the Triangle region of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville, and Chapel Hill) for a time when NBC did not have a full-time affiliate in that market. At one time, WECT had a Fayetteville news bureau.[4]
In 1969, WECT moved to a 2,000-foot (610 m) tall tower near White Lake—among the tallest east of the Mississippi. From the 1970s to the 1980s, WECT was picked up by numerous cable systems from Fayetteville eastward. At one point, it was carried on cable as far west as Wadesboro and as far north as Greenville.[5] Due to its longstanding popularity, WECT is still carried on cable systems in the eastern portion of the Triangle market, including Fayetteville and Southern Pines. It is also available on cable in Jacksonville, which is part of the Greenville–Washington–New Bern market.
For its first half-century on the air, the station served as the default NBC affiliate for the northern and eastern portions of the Florence–Myrtle Beach, South Carolina market, including Myrtle Beach itself. That market was one of the last on the East Coast without its own NBC affiliate. It was carried on cable as far south as Georgetown, South Carolina. Well into the 1990s, it identified as "Wilmington–Fayetteville–Myrtle Beach" to acknowledge its viewership in Fayetteville and the Grand Strand. However, WECT's signal was somewhat weak on the North Carolina side of the market, such as Laurinburg.
Atlantic Telecasting sold the station to the News-Press & Gazette Company in 1986. That company then sold its entire station group to the first incarnation of New Vision Television in 1993. New Vision turned around and sold its entire group to Ellis Communications in 1995. Ellis was folded into Raycom Media in 1997. In 2006, Raycom bought out the Liberty Corporation, owner of WWAY. However, FCC duopoly rules forced Raycom to spin off WWAY to Morris Multimedia as a condition of the Raycom–Liberty merger.
On May 8, 2008, the FCC announced that five stations in Wilmington (including WECT) had agreed to voluntarily cease analog broadcasting on September 8[6] five months ahead of the February 17, 2009, tentative date for television stations to complete the analog-to-digital transition.[7][8] The market was used by the FCC as a pre-transition test market.[9] After the digital transition, WGNI radio agreed to air emergency weather information from WECT. Previously, because channel 6 is adjacent to the FM band, its broadcasts could be heard on FM 87.7.[4]
The September 8, 2008, transition,[a] was particularly noteworthy for WECT because the digital transmitter site at Winnabow was more than 35 miles (56 km) from the White Lake tower in Bladen County. This site was closer to Wilmington but put Fayetteville—a city where WECT once maintained a news bureau—outside of the coverage area.[4][13] Another area that lost WECT was Myrtle Beach, where WECT and WIS were supplanted by a new Raycom-owned NBC affiliate, WMBF-TV, which began broadcasting on August 7, 2008.[14][15]
Raycom donated the White Lake tower site and 77 acres (31 ha) of land to the Green Beret Foundation in 2011. On September 20, 2012,[16] the tower was imploded by Controlled Demolition, Inc., which did the work on a pro bono basis. At the time, it was the tallest-ever man-made structure leveled via explosive demolition.[17] Plans called for the scrap metal and land to be sold to benefit the foundation.[16]
On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement to merge with Raycom, with Gray as the surviving company. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom—made WECT a sister station to fellow NBC affiliate WITN-TV in Greenville. WITN-TV and WECT had briefly been sister stations when Raycom was formed in 1997. However, Raycom was forced to sell WITN to Gray in 1997 because WITN's signal has city-grade quality in the northern portion of the Wilmington market. At the time, the FCC normally did not allow one company to own two stations with overlapping signals, and would not even consider a waiver for a city-grade overlap.[18][19][20][21] The sale was approved on December 20 and completed on January 2, 2019.[22][23]
On September 22, 2003, through a news share agreement, WECT began producing a nightly half-hour prime time newscast on WSFX (Fox 26 News at 10, now Fox Wilmington News at 10).[24] By 2006, an hour-long extension of WECT's Carolina in the Morning at 7 a.m. had been added to the news lineup.[25]
On August 31, 2008, WECT became Wilmington's first television outlet to upgrade local news production to high definition level and the broadcasts on WSFX were included in the change. At some point in time, WECT added a third newscast to WSFX, under the title Fox 26 News at 6:30 (later became Fox Wilmington News at 6:30). It only aired on weeknights and attempted to compete against the national evening newscasts seen on the big three networks. It would be canceled by the end of 2013 in preparation to expand the weeknight edition of the 10 p.m. show to an hour (which occurred on January 15, 2014).
After WWAY stopped producing weekend evening newscasts on August 1, 2009, WECT and WSFX became the only outlets in Wilmington to offer evening broadcasts seen seven nights a week. Although WWAY eventually reintroduced a local newscast airing Sunday nights at 11, WECT and WSFX remain the only channels in the market to air newscasts throughout the weekend. All newscasts on WSFX air from WECT's primary set but with modified duratrans indicating the Fox-branded shows.
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Subchannel | Res. | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | 1080i | WECT | NBC |
| 6.2 | 480i | Bounce | Bounce TV |
| 6.3 | 720p | The365 | 365BLK / MyNetworkTV |
| 6.4 | 480i | Laff | Laff |
| 6.5 | Mystery | Ion Mystery | |
| 6.6 | Crime | True Crime Network | |
| 6.7 | Oxygen | Oxygen |
Prior to September 26, 2012, WECT-DT2 aired a 24-hour local weather channel with the branding "WECT Plus". The subchannel also aired repeats of the main channel's weeknight 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts as well as local traffic and travel information. Occasionally, other special programming aired on WECT-DT2. From April 15, 2005, until the end of December 2008, WECT-DT2 carried the defunct NBC Weather Plus. WECT replaced the local weather channel with Bounce TV on August 18, 2014. Escape (now Ion Mystery) was later added to a new subchannel.
Media related to WECT at Wikimedia Commons
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state of North Carolina | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of North Carolina | ||
| ABC | ||
| CBS | ||
| Fox | ||
| NBC | ||
| The CW | ||
| Ion Television | ||
| Independent | ||
| PBS | ||
| Religious | ||
| Spanish | ||
| Other | ||
| ATSC 3.0 | ||
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
WECT (channel 6) is a television station in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Telemundo affiliate WTWL-LD (channel 31) and Fox affiliate WSFX-TV (channel 26). The three stations share studios on Shipyard Boulevard in Wilmington; WECT's transmitter is located near Winnabow, North Carolina.
WECT (channel 18) was a television station in Elmira, New York, United States. Owned by El-Cor Television, Inc., it was Elmira's second station (after WTVE (channel 24)), broadcasting from September 1953 to May 1954, but shut down for financial reasons after seven months of telecasting.
WSFX-TV (channel 26) is a television station in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Gray Media alongside NBC affiliate WECT (channel 6) and Telemundo affiliate WTWL-LD (channel 31). The three stations share studios on Shipyard Boulevard in Wilmington; WSFX-TV's transmitter is located near Winnabow, North Carolina. Channel 26 went on the air September 24, 1984, as WJKA, Wilmington's third commercial TV station. Originally a CBS affiliate owned by the Everett family and other investors and named for its lawyer in Washington, D.C., it struggled amid widespread viewer loyalty to Wilmington's established WWAY and WECT in local programming and competition from as many as three CBS affiliates offered by local cable systems. Various attempts at local news programming, most notably a news department that lasted for nine and a half months in 1990, ended due to low ratings. In 1994, WJKA became WSFX-TV "Superfox", the area's only Fox affiliate, with a service area that at its height included Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The station resumed producing a newscast, this time at 10 p.m. Southeastern Media Holdings acquired WSFX-TV in 2003 and initiated a services agreement with WECT, with that station assuming local newscast production duties and expanding news on channel 26 beyond 10 p.m. to include morning and 7 p.m. newscasts.
Wilmington is a port city in New Hanover County, North Carolina, United States. With a population of 115,451 as of the 2020 census, it is the eighth-most populous city in the state. The county seat of New Hanover County, it is the principal city of the Wilmington metropolitan area, which includes New Hanover, Brunswick, and Pender counties. As of 2023, the region had an estimated population of 467,337. Wilmington's residential area lies between the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean, and the city developed as a commercial port in the colonial era. The city was founded in the 1730s, preceded in its foundation in the area by Brunswick Town and Charles Towne. These two towns were abandoned, leaving Wilmington as the main settlement on the Cape Fear River. After going through a series of different names (New Carthage, New London, Newton), its name became Wilmington. In 1739, Colonel William Bartram, the uncle of the naturalist, introduced a bill to establish Wilmington, named for one of his patrons, Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington. Toward the end of the 19th century, Wilmington was a majority-black, racially integrated, prosperous city – and the most populous in North Carolina. It suffered what became known as the Wilmington massacre in 1898, when white supremacists launched a coup that overthrew the legitimately elected local Fusionist government. It resulted in the expulsion of opposition black and white political leaders from the city, destruction of the property and businesses of black citizens, including the city's only black newspaper, and deaths ranging from an estimated 60 to more than 300 people. By 1910, Charlotte overtook Wilmington as North Carolina's most populous city. Wilmington's downtown includes a 1.75-mile (2.82 km) riverwalk, developed as a tourist attraction in the late 20th century. In 2003, the city was designated by the U.S. Congress as a "Coast Guard City", one of 29 cities that currently bear that designation. It was formerly the home port for the USCGC Diligence, a United States Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter. Wilmington was declared the first World War II Heritage City in the country in 2020. The World War II battleship USS North Carolina, now a war memorial, is moored across from the downtown port area, and is open to the public for tours. Other attractions include the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science and the Children's Museum of Wilmington. The city is home to the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Wilmington is also the home of Cinespace Wilmington, the largest domestic television and movie production facility outside California. Dream Stage 10, the facility's newest sound stage, is the third-largest in the United States. It houses the largest special-effects water tank in North America. After the studio complex's opening in 1984, Wilmington became a major center of American film and television production. Numerous movies and television series—in a range of genres—have been filmed/produced in or near the city. Films include Blue Velvet (1986), Maximum Overdrive (1986), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Super Mario Bros. (1993), The Crow (1994), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), The Conjuring (2013), Iron Man 3 (2013), The Black Phone (2021), Halloween Kills (2021) and Scream (2022), and television series include Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, Eastbound & Down, Outer Banks and The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
