Affiliations ABC | ||
City Oak Hill, West Virginia Branding WOAY Television (general)
NewsWatch (newscasts) Slogan The heart of southern West Virginia. Channels Digital: 50 (UHF)
Virtual: 50 (PSIP) Owner Thomas Broadcasting Company | ||
WOAY-TV is a television station located in Oak Hill, West Virginia, USA. WOAY-TV has been locally-owned by the Thomas family since its inception, and is the ABC affiliate for the Beckley-Bluefield-Oak Hill television market. The station's studio and transmitter are co-located on Legends Highway in Scarbro, West Virginia, just outside Oak Hill's city limits.
History
The first television station in southern West Virginia, WOAY-TV began operations on December 14, 1954 on channel 4. The station was founded by local businessman Robert R. Thomas, Jr., and operated as a sister to WOAY radio (860 AM and 94.1 FM, now WAXS). The station began as a primary ABC affiliate, but in its early years maintained a secondary relationship with the DuMont Television Network, which it lost when DuMont shut down in 1956. In 1959, it switched its primary affiliation to CBS, retaining a secondary affiliation with ABC.
Channel 4 became a full ABC affiliate in February 1967 and dropped most of its remaining CBS programs, though it initially continued to air the CBS Evening News for some time afterwards, mainly because the full CBS affiliate nearest to the area, WCHS-TV (channel 8) in Charleston, did not carry it (WOAY dropped it by 1968 when WCHS began clearing it). Another CBS series, Captain Kangaroo was also retained, presumably until ABC launched AM America (the predecessor of Good Morning America) in 1975.
In previous decades, the station was known throughout the area for a very theatrical professional wrestling show that it produced with local "talent" in an arena adjacent to its studios. However, this ended on September 30, 1977 when WOAY's main studio, control room, offices, and transmitter building burned to the ground. The stations' facilities were relocated and rebuilt in the former wrestling arena, where they remain today.
Three months prior to the fire, in July 1977 station owner and founder Robert R. Thomas Jr. died, and ownership of the WOAY stations was passed onto his wife Helen and their five children. The Thomas family attempted to exit broadcasting in 1990, successfully selling the radio stations but ultimately retained WOAY-TV after a failed sale to Withers Broadcasting Companies, owner of CBS affiliate WDTV in Bridgeport.
WOAY-TV turned off its analog signal at 11:35 p.m. on June 12, 2009 and remained on digital channel 50. On that date, WOAY dropped its longtime on-air moniker of "TV 4". It now verbally identifies as "WOAY Television", although its logo identifies it as "TV 50". Unusually, it did not use PSIP to remap its signal to its former analog channel 4.
In 2009, WOAY-TV revamped its technical infrastructure to become the first high-definition station in West Virginia. The station clears the majority of the ABC programming schedule.