The station first signed on the air on July 15, 1949. When it debuted, WBTV was the 13th television station in the United States and the first in the Carolinas; it is the oldest television station located between Richmond and Atlanta. It was originally owned-and-operated by the Greensboro-based Jefferson Standard Insurance Company, owners of WBT (1110 AM), the city's oldest radio station and the first fully licensed station in the South. At the time, the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company also had a 16.5% interest in the Greensboro News Company, licensee of WFMY-TV, which signed on from Greensboro two months after WBTV. Jefferson Standard had purchased WBT from CBS in 1947. Shortly before the television station went on the air, its call letters were modified from WBT-TV to WBTV. Jefferson Standard merged with Pilot Life in 1968 (although it had owned controlling interest since 1945) and became the Jefferson-Pilot Corporation. In 1970, the media interests were folded into a new subsidiary, Jefferson-Pilot Communications.
1949–1958
1958–1963
1963–1969
BETTER LOGO NEEDED
1969–1970
LOGO MISSING
1970–1978
BETTER LOGO NEEDED
1978–1983
Designer:
Joe Sonderman, Inc.
Typography:
Custom
Launched:
1978
1983–1990
1990–1998
1990–1991
SVG NEEDED
1991–1998
1998–1999
SVG NEEDED
1999–2023
1999–2001
2001–2023
In 2006, Jefferson-Pilot merged with the Philadelphia-based Lincoln National Corporation. Lincoln Financial retained Jefferson-Pilot's broadcasting division, which was renamed Lincoln Financial Media, with WBTV retaining its status as the flagship station. On November 12, 2007, Lincoln Financial announced its intention to sell WBTV, sister stations WWBT in Richmond and WCSC-TV in Charleston, South Carolina and Lincoln Financial Sports, to Raycom Media for $583 million. Raycom was later acquired by Atlanta-based Gray Television on January 2, 2019.
Wikipedia
