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WALB

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WALB is an NBC-affiliated television station for Southwestern Georgia. It is licensed to Albany. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 10 from a transmitter in Doerun along the Colquitt and Worth County line. The station can also be seen on Mediacom channel 3 and in high definition on digital channel 810. Owned by Raycom Media, WALB has studios on Stuart Avenue in Albany. Syndicated programing on the channel includes: Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, Oprah, and The Doctors.

Digital programming

The station offers This TV on a second digital subchannel and Mediacom channel 26.

Digital Channel Programmierung
10.1 main WALB programming/NBC HD
10.2 WALB-DT2 This TV

History

The channel began on April 7, 1954 with the calls WALB-TV as was sister to WALB-AM 1590 and The Albany Herald. When the radio station's studios were built in 1953, Stuart Avenue was a dirt road running through a pecan grove. The radio station was sold in 1960 and became WALG to disambiguate itself from the television station. In 1976, a fire destroyed the main broadcasting facilities but did not damage the offices. Until 1983, WALB was the default NBC affiliate for Tallahassee, Florida. Although WTWC-TV has been Tallahassee's NBC affiliate since then, this channel still provides city-grade coverage to much of the Georgia side of the Tallahassee market and Grade B coverage to the city itself. It dropped the "-TV" suffix in 1993.

During the floods of 1994, WALB stayed on-the-air with non-stop 24-hour coverage to alert citizens and provide a vital link between the public and government agencies. In 1998, the channel was sold by Gray Television to Cosmos Broadcasting which later became Liberty Corporation. Under Gray ownership, this station had been serving as the company's flagship. Although Gray sold WALB, it still has administrative offices in Albany today. Its digital signal on UHF channel 17 signed-on in 2001. In 2006, the station was sold to Raycom Media after that company merged with Liberty.

Towers crash

On June 1, 2006, a CH-47 Chinook military chopper traveling from Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia to Fort Rucker in Alabama for a training mission crashed into a guy wire connected to WFXL's 1,000-foot-tall (300 m) tower. As a result, Raycom acquired auxiliary transmitters and antennas for both WFXL and WALB which were installed at the tower at WALB's studios in Albany until the new tower began broadcasting. This station's tower was destroyed at 6:32 at night on June 7 during an attempted demolition of WFXL's tower. Shown on live television, the demolition for WFXL's unrepairable tower placed WALB's tower in a delicate position. The initial destruction of WFXL's damaged tower went well until the final seconds when overlapping guy wires from the WFXL tower entangled with the guy wires of WALB's tower. In early 2007, construction began on a new 1,000-foot (300 m) tower in Doerun which would hold antennas for the two stations. The construction was finished in July 2007 and WALB began broadcasting from the new mega-tower on July 3, 2007 at 11:35 in the evening.

News operation

In 2004, WALB gave its newscasts a makeover renaming itself from NewsCenter 10 to WALB News 10. It also changed its logo as part of the graphic makeover. However, it kept the "little one, big zero" 10 which has been part of its logo since the late 1970s at the earliest. This is similar to the logo sister station WIS has. The channel also changed its music from a theme composed by Collier Concepts to "The Tower" composed by 615 Music which is used by many other NBC affiliates. WALB built a new set in 2005 which replaced the old one that had been used for at least 12 years. The station launched NBC Weather Plus in 2005 on its second digital subchannel. Known as "WALB 24-7 Weather", the service gave continuous forecasts for up to 30 cities around Southwestern Georgia.

WALB's Today in Georgia was expanded to two hours from 5 until 7 on weekdays beginning September 10, 2007 coinciding with the expansion of Today to four hours."WALB's Most Wanted" segment was launched the same year to showcase some of the area's most wanted fugitives. WALB updated its newsroom again in 2009. In addition to its main facilities, the station operates bureaus in Thomasville (on North Broad Street) and Valdosta (on North Patterson Street). The channel uses two weather radar systems: "Storm Cutter HD Radar Network" and "WALB 24/7 Radar".

Newscast titles

  • NewsCenter 10 (1970s-2003)
  • WALB News 10 (2003-present)

Station slogans

  • "South Georgia's #1 News Source" (1991-2003)
  • "Leading the Way for South Georgia" (2003-2009)
  • "Live, Local, Latebreaking" (2009-present)

Weather branding

  • "Super Doppler 10 Forecast" (1994-2004)
  • "24/7 Weather Forecast" (2004-present)

News team

Anchors

  • Karla Heath-Sands - weekday mornings and Dialogue host
  • Ruthie Garner - weekdays at noon
  • Dawn Hobby - weeknights at 5 and 6
  • Ben Roberts - weeknights at 5, 6, and 11
    • Executive Producer weeknights at 11
  • Jim Wallace - weeknights at 5:30 and reporter
  • Karen Cohilas - weeknights at 5:30 and reporter
  • Cade Fowler - weekends

Meteorologists

  • Yolanda Amadeo (AMS Seal of Approval) - Chief seen weeknights
  • Chris Zelman (AMS Seal of Approval) - weekday mornings and noon
  • Jay Polk (AMS Seal of Approval) - weekends

Sports

  • Robert Hydrick - Director seen weeknights at 6 and 11
  • Shayne Wright - weekends and sports reporter

Reporters

  • Jim Wilcox - Vice President and General Manager
    • "Viewpoint" segment producer
  • Jade Bulecza - Valdosta Bureau Chief
  • Jennifer Emert - fill-in news anchor
  • Cade Fowler
  • Christian Jennings
  • LeiLani Golden - Thomasville Bureau Chief
  • Wainwright Jeffers
  • Ryan Houston
  • Tayleigh Davis
  • Stephanie Springer

Former staff

  • Pam Oliver (now a sideline broadcaster for Fox Sports) (1985-1986)
  • Joe Courson, "10 Country" Reporter
  • Delivrine Registre, reporter (now with WTEV/WAWS, in Jacksonville, Florida)
  • Alicia Eaken, Valdosta bureau reporter (Now with CNN)
  • Sarah Baldwin, Thomasville bureau reporter (now a producer with WGCL-TV, Atlanta)
  • Chris Bavender, weekend anchor (now Communications Director for the Indiana Attorney General, Indianapolis)
  • Mark Williams, anchor, news director, executive producer (now at WNBD AM)
  • Mike Shiers, weekend sports achor/sports reporter (now at WVIR in Charlottesville, VA)
  • Chris Nisinger, weekend meteorologist (1998-2008)(now with WFXL Fox 31)
  • Nikki Gaskins, morning reporter/substitute anchor (now at new NBC station WMBF-TV, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina)
  • Brent Soloman, general assignment reporter/anchor (now at KLRT, Little Rock, Arkansas)
  • Greg Pallone, anchor (now at News 13, Orlando)
  • Mesha Chance, anchor
  • Andrea Ford, meteorologist (now at WJIZ 96.3, Albany)
  • Gil Patrick, chief meteorologist and longtime host of Today in Georgia (deceased)
  • Grady Shadburn, weathercaster/host of WALB's Captain Mercury Show (deceased)
  • Kristina Abernathy, meteorologist (now at The Weather Channel)
  • Tom Paylor, weekend meteorologist and news photographer (1994-1995) (now a commodity trader and meteorologist in Raleigh, North Carolina)
  • Reginald Jones, reporter (now at WTVY-TV)
  • Kent Williams, morning and noon meteorologist
  • Terri Smith, meteorologist (went to The Weather Channel)
  • Alan Sealls, meteorologist (now at WKRG-TV)
  • Patrick Core, meteorologist (now at WDEF-TV)
  • LeAnn Pope, meteorologist
  • Dawson Mathis, anchor
  • Jerry Cannady, government reporter (deceased)
  • Joe Sports, sports director
  • Dave D'Marko, reporter (now at WDTN, Dayton, Ohio)
  • Nicole Johnson, reporter (now at WCSC-TV)
  • Kathryn Murchison, reporter/anchor (now at Albany Technical College)
  • Mathew Palmer, news reporter/photographer (now at Delta Airlines)
  • Ducky Wall, sports anchor
  • Kevin McDermond, weekend sports anchor/reporter (now public relations director for the Senior Bowl)
  • Chris Smith, meteorologist (1996-1997) (now chief meteorologist at WJHG-TV, Panama City, FL and freelance weather talent for CNN)
  • Jeff Crum, chief meteorologist (now at News 14 Carolina)
  • Ashley Harper, Valdosta Bureau reporter
  • Casey Jones, anchor/reporter (now at WJCL-TV)
  • Joe Coffey, anchor
  • Dave Nethers, reporter (now at WJW-TV, Cleveland, Ohio)
  • Greg Majewski, reporter (now at WGCL-TV, Atlanta)
  • Chuck Bell, meteorologist (now at WRC-TV)
  • Nancy Wright, anchor
  • Lisa George, anchor/reporter (now at the Georgia Innocence Project)
  • Yolonda Hawkins, reporter
  • Jennifer Hulsey, reporter
  • Tom Bryant, reporter, weekend and 6 o'clock anchor. Bryant served as the President of the Georgia association of news brodacsters for many years. (deceased)
  • Mercer Merrill, weekend anchor/reporter (now at News 14 Carolina)
  • Jocelyn Maner, reporter (now at WLTX-TV)
  • Scott Hunter, reporter
  • Brannon Stewart, reporter (now at The Birmingham News)
  • Amanda Fitzpatrick, reporter, producer (now at WCSC-TV)
  • Elaine Armstrong, reporter (now Director of Public Relations at Goodwill of North Georgia)
  • Mitch Kimbrell, reporter
  • Steve Summers, reporter
  • Lisa Smith, reporter
  • Melissa Kill, anchor/reporter
  • Nicole Bailey, reporter
  • Kristin Hill, reporter (now freelance talent/producer)
  • Sloane Heffernan, reporter/anchor (now at WRAL-TV)
  • Kathryn Simmons, reporter (now at Bay News 9)
  • Stephen Ryan, Thomasville bureau reporter
  • Michelle Boudin, reporter/anchor (now at WCNC-TV)
  • Yvette Jones, anchor/reporter
  • Joanna Hammer, reporter
  • Angelique Proctor, reporter (now at WAGA)
  • Jan Saunderson, reporter
  • Jackie Ryan, reporter
  • Steve Bell, reporter/anchor (now at University of Georgia)
  • Steve O'Brien, anchor/news director
  • Chris Clark, reporter (retired in 2007 from WTVF, Nashville, Tennessee)
  • Jay Barbree, reporter (now at NBC News)
  • Greg Loyd, Valdosta bureau chief (now a professor at Tallahassee Community College)
  • Amy Allday-Brice, producer/reporter (now mental health/developmental disabilities professional)
  • Robin Jedlicka, Valdosta Bureau reporter
  • Len Kiese, weekend anchor/reporter (now at WTLV/WJXX First Coast News in Jacksonville, FL)
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