WMCT

No to be confused with the real-life channel 3 in Memphis, which used the WREG-TV callsign.

WMCT
Broadcast area	Memphis, Tennessee
Channels	Digital: 3
Branding	Channel 3 Eyewitness News
Slogan	Coverage You Can COunt On
Programming
Affiliations	3.1 NBC 3.2 Live Well Network 3.3 Cozi TV 3.4 NBC Weather Plus 3.5 GSN
Ownership
Owner	Integrity Communications
Sister stations	WJEI
History
First air date	February 1, 1956
Former callsigns	none
Former affiliations	none

WMCT is an NBC affiliate serving Memphis, TN and the Mid-South. Broadcasting on channel 3, WMCT is owned and operated by Integrity Communications. Launching in 1956, WMCT is the third oldest station in Memphis, behind WJEI and WMEM. In addition to running the NBC schedule, WMCT also carries syndicated programming, including Hot Bench, Jeopardy!, Rachael Ray, and Wheel of Fortune. In addition, WMCT operates two subchannels: 3.2 for Live Well TV and 3.3 for Cozi TV. In 2000, WMCT was bought by Integrity Communications, making WJEI and WMCT sister stations.

History

WMCT was launched on Feb. 1, 1956 by the E.W. Scripps Company, which also owned the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Since at least the 1950s, WMCT's logo has included an illustration of a riverboat, a symbol of the Mississippi River region which the station serves. For many years, the station's sounder included the riverboat's whistle – something which dates to the 1930s on its former AM sister. The whistle is still heard at the opening of WMCT's current newscasts. The station was known as "The Showplace of the South" during the 1960s.

WMCT moved to their current location at 1960 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis in 1959 and celebrated with a broadcast hosted by comedian George Gobel. Some of its most notable broadcasts in 1960 were live remotes of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who both came to Memphis to campaign for the Presidential office. When Dr. Martin Luther King came to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike that set the stage for his assassination in 1968, then-station general manager Mori Greiner established an unprecedented program called "The 40% Speaks," in an effort to promote racial healing in the community. In an odd illustration of how little real integration had occurred in local television, the first host of this program was news anchor Dave Patterson, who himself was Caucasian. When Patterson left WMCT, his replacement was a white professor from Memphis State University.

Like many NBC affiliates from the 1960s through the 1990s, WMCT began pre-empting a handful of NBC programs, mostly a sizeable portion of the network's daytime lineup, in favor of syndicated talk shows, although NBC's daytime reruns of sitcoms would often continue to air in the early morning hours (between 5 and 6 a.m.). In 1979, in an effort to build its viewership for Today, WMCT created a lead-in morning program titled Wake-Up Call. For the first three years, it was hosted by Dick Hawley and Peggy Rolfes. Denise DuBois replaced Rolfes in 1982 and co-hosted for the next ten years. By the mid-1980s, Wake Up Call was the highest-rated talk show on local television in the U.S., with a 52% share of the viewing audience.

After many years of solid management, Scripps sold WMCT to Ellis Communications (owned by Atlanta businessman Bert Ellis) in 1993. Ellis in turn sold the stations to a new broadcasting group formed by Integrity Communications in 2000.

Image Gallery

WMCT Logo (1989-1997)

WMCT Tornado Watch Bug (1991)

WMCT Sunrise Open (1997)

WMCT 6PM Open (1997)

WMCT Logo (2009–Present)

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