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The Atlanta Journal & Constitution reports that Atlanta TV station WTBS is going to give up being a "superstation" and return to its distant roots as a local "independent" station.
WTBS is owned and operated by Turner Broadcasting (which, in turn, is owned and operated by Time-Warner). It was, in fact, Ted Turner's major stepping stone on the way to becoming the media mogul we know and love/hate today. Turner bought the station in 1970, then bought the Atlanta Braves a couple of years later so he could have programming to run on the station. The Braves turned into winners along the way, and Turner's station became a big deal in the local market. With the advent of cable in the 1980s, he parlayed his station into being a cable network and invented the very concept of a "superstation" -- basically a local station with a national audience. Eventually, there would be several other well-known superstations: WGN from Chicago, WSBK here in Boston, and WPIX in New York are the best known, with KTLA (Los Angeles) and KWGN (Denver) filling out the West Coast block.
For some years now, WTBS's over-the-air broadcasts have merely been the TBS cable network programming. As the AJC reports, the station will now return to traditional "independent" over-the-air broadcasting entirely separate from TBS, and the station is even changing call letters to "WPCH", which will be branded locally as "Peachtree TV".
My own personal guess is that this is just all preparatory to Time-Warner selling off the station completely in order to pursue other broadcast opportunities in the Atlanta market.
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