Editing WBRC (section)

==Programming==
WBRC currently carries the majority of the Fox network schedule, though it [[broadcast delay|delays]] the network's Saturday late night block (currently a repeat of a prime time reality show) one hour due to the station's 10&nbsp;p.m. newscast and its carriage of the syndicated sports interview program ''[[In Depth with Graham Bensinger]]''; in addition, following the program's move from [[Fox Sports 1]] to Fox in September 2015, WBRC formerly was one of several Fox affiliates that has declined carriage of the Sunday [[pre-game show]] ''[[Fox NFL Kickoff]]'' during the [[NFL]] [[2015 NFL season|regular season]] due to existing programming contracts (unlike in other markets where a Fox station has declined carriage of ''Fox NFL Kickoff'', the program was not broadcast by any other station in the Birmingham–Tuscaloosa–Anniston market). The station began clearing ''Fox NFL Kickoff'' for the [[2016 NFL season|2016 season]]. Channel 6 has only aired Fox's prime time, news and [[Fox Sports (United States)|sports]] programming since it joined the network in September 1996, with the only programs relating to Fox's children's programming blocks for the final twelve years that Fox carried programming aimed at that demographic consisting of fall preview specials and network promotions that aired within the network's prime time lineup.

WBRC became the first television station to broadcast the [[United Cerebral Palsy]] [[Telethon]], an event to raise money for the [[cerebral palsy]] research organization that premiered in 1949; it was from WBRC that the event emerged into national prominence, with national celebrities even making appearances on the telecast. Even in its final years on WBRC, mini-documentaries produced by the station (which were produced by Randy Mize and Tom Stovall) for the local segments aired during the UCP Telethon; WBRC stopped producing and broadcasting the local segments of the telethon soon after it switched to Fox in 1996. WBRC began producing live local programming in 1950 after it converted the building that formerly housed WBRC-FM into a makeshift television studio; the station also acquired additional studio camera equipment, including shows such as ''Coffee Break'', ''Supersonic Sam'' and ''Cowboy Theatre''.

Like many network affiliates, WBRC-TV would preempt ABC programming occasionally or regularly, in some cases. For example, according to local legends, the station initially turned down ''[[Bewitched]]'', not because it was concerned about [[witchcraft]], but because it concerned a mixed marriage (between a witch and a mortal); there were fears that ''Bewitched'' would encourage what some [[segregationists]] referred to as "[[miscegenation|cross-breeding]]"; channel 6 would not clear ''Bewitched'' until 1967 (although, according to the October 15, 1965, issue of ''[[The Birmingham News]]'', ''Bewitched'' was shown airing at its in-pattern time of Thursdays at 8&nbsp;p.m. ([[Central Time Zone|Central]]) on WBRC). Channel 6 continued these practices for most of its years with ABC. It also preempted the ''ABC Evening News'' (the forerunner to ''[[ABC World News Tonight|World News Tonight]]'') from the program's debut in 1968 until August 7, 1972 (when both it and [[WJRT-TV]] in [[Flint, Michigan]], became the last two ABC affiliates to begin airing the network newscast), as well as daytime network programs at aired during the 10&nbsp;a.m. hour. However, ABC largely brushed off the preemption issue, even though it would eventually become the No. 1 network nationwide by the late 1970s, because of WBRC's status as central Alabama's dominant station.

WBRC cemented viewer allegiances by carrying a heavy schedule of local programs during the 1960s and 1970s, most notably two long-running morning shows. The first was ''The Morning Show'', hosted by sports anchor [[Tom York (television personality)|Tom York]]; airing for 32 years from 1957 to 1989, it was a more general-interest interview and features program that was formatted basically a local version of ''[[Today (American TV program)|Today]]''; WBRC anchor Joe Langston (who also hosted the children's programs ''Birthday Party'' and ''Junior Auction'' for the station in the late 1960s) and comedian [[Fannie Flagg]] joined as York's co-hosts in the early 1960s (Flagg would leave for Los Angeles in 1964 to become a writer for ''[[Candid Camera]]''). Fiddler, guitarist and vocalist Eddie Burns was invited to bring his musical group to serve as ''The Morning Show''{{'}}s [[house band]] and act as the program's bandleader; however, within a few months, station management offered Burns his own morning program on channel 6. That series, ''Country Boy Eddie'', which was aimed at rural Alabama viewers, featured local [[country music|country]], [[bluegrass music|bluegrass]] and [[Southern Gospel]] music artists during its 36-year run from 1957 until [[New Year's Eve|December 31]], 1993. Over time, Burns added novelty acts to the show's format and did most of the commercials himself in the studio live.

York's program, meanwhile, was so popular that, when ABC debuted ''[[AM America]]'' in January 1975, WBRC declined to carry it—preferring not to alter, let alone cancel, what had become a local television institution in ''The Morning Show''; this continued after ABC replaced the more news-driven ''AM America'' with ''[[Good Morning America]]'', which maintained a format similar to York's program, in November of that year. WBRC began to clear the first hour of ''GMA'' in the early 1980s, and began airing the two-hour program in its entirety after York retired from the station in 1989. Preemptions and out-of-pattern scheduling of some ABC programs would continue in later years; for example, WBRC aired ''[[All My Children]]'' on a one-day delay from its 1970 debut until it became a Fox station, and preempted the soap opera ''[[Loving (TV series)|Loving]]'' throughout its 1986 to 1994 run.

Channel 6 originally planned to carry the entire Fox programming schedule when it switched to the network, including its children's program block, [[Fox Kids]]; it intended to air the weekday editions of that block from 1 to 4&nbsp;p.m. on Monday through Friday afternoons. However, in what would be the catalyst to a change in the carriage policies for Fox Kids that allowed stations the option of either airing the block or being granted the right to transfer the rights to another station in the market, [[Sinclair Broadcast Group]] approached WBRC about retaining the rights to Fox Kids for WTTO, which became an [[independent station]] on September 1; Fox allowed WTTO to retain the local rights to the block. WBRC also declined to carry ''[[Weekend Marketplace]]'', the [[infomercial]] block that Fox replaced its remaining Saturday morning children's programming block with in January 2009; the rights were instead acquired by WABM. WBRC and WGHP were the only Fox-owned stations that did not air the network's children's program blocks until 2003, when now-former sister stations [[KTTV]] in Los Angeles and [[WFLD]] in Chicago moved the block to their [[UPN]]-affiliated sister stations ([[KCOP-TV]] and [[WPWR-TV]]).

On September 17, 2024, Gray and the [[New Orleans Pelicans]] announced a broader deal to form the Gulf Coast Sports & Entertainment Network, which will broadcast nearly all 2024–25 Pelicans games on Gray's stations in the [[Gulf South]], including WBRC.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Clark |first1=Christian |title=The Pelicans officially have a new TV broadcast home. Here's how you can watch it. |url=https://www.nola.com/sports/pelicans/pelicans-announce-partnership-with-gulf-coast-sports-and-entertainment-network/article_492a62ea-747a-11ef-9d92-5b56342891ee.html |access-date=September 17, 2024 |work=NOLA.com |date=September 17, 2024 |language=en}}</ref>

===News operation===
[[File:Tommy Tuberville at WBRC in 2021 01.jpg|thumb|Senator [[Tommy Tuberville]] being interviewed outside at WBRC in 2021, with the neon "W" in the station's landmark bluff sign seen to the left.]]
WBRC presently broadcasts {{frac|64|1|2}} hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 11 hours each weekday, {{frac|4|1|2}} hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output in the state of Alabama. In addition, the station produces ''Fox 6 Sideline'', a [[high school football]] program that debuted in September 1989 as an ABC affiliate, which airs Friday nights after the 10 p.m. newscasts during the fall. The station has the largest news staff of any television station in Alabama, with around half of its approximately 160 employees employed with the news department in on-air, administrative and production positions.

====News department history====
WBRC has been the ratings leader in the market for most of the last half-century, dating back to its tenure as an ABC affiliate. Its newscasts were also among the highest-rated local news programs in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s; WBRC had won practically every news timeslot for many years, with WAPI-TV/WVTM-TV coming in at a distant second until the mid-2000s; CBS affiliate WBMG/WIAT was not a factor for either station for most of its history (to the point where it did not even air any newscasts at three different periods between the early 1980s and February 1998). As a Fox station, WBRC has continued to maintain higher viewership than the other television news outlets in the market, although it has experienced tighter competition since the early 2000s against WBMA-LD and a resurgent WIAT (both of which currently engage in a spirited competition for second place); WBRC's 9 p.m. newscast has consistently ranked as one of the most-watched prime time newscasts in the U.S. for most of its run since its debut in 1996.

WBRC television's news operations began with the launch of the station in 1949, originally consisting of five-minute-long newscasts at sign-on and sign-off that were originally anchored by operations manager M.D. Smith III, who read [[news agency|wire copies]] of local news headlines over a slide of the station's logo. In September 1950, at which time newscasts were expanded to 15 minutes, anchor segments began to be conducted in-studio after it acquired camera equipment to recorded live programming; [[kinescope]]s of 16-mm film footage shot by a photographer for local stories and still photographs for illustration of national and international stories were used for story content. The station launched a full-scale news department in 1952, when it began operating from the former studios of the original WBRC-FM. Several members of the news department staff in its early years started at WBRC radio including news anchors Harry Mabry and Joe Langston (the latter of whom would also take on a management role as its [[news director|director of news and editorial policy]] in 1969), and sports anchor Tom York. In 1969, former WSGN radio anchor Bill Bolen joined WBRC to replace Harry Mabry as the station's main news anchor; Bolen would remain a fixture at channel 6 (eventually becoming anchor of the station's weekday morning newscast in 1990) for 42 years until his retirement in 2010. In 1978, WBRC became the first television station in the Birmingham market to acquire a [[microwave relay|microwave]] truck for [[electronic news-gathering]] purposes, and became the first to provide live [[breaking news]] coverage on-scene.<ref name="biton6">{{cite web|title=A Bit on 6...|url=http://www.reocities.com/southernmedia1/stationhistories.htm|website=Birmingham TV News|publisher=[[Reocities]]|access-date=May 9, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062225/http://www.reocities.com/southernmedia1/stationhistories.htm|archive-date=March 4, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The station would not begin producing half-hour evening newscasts until 1979, eleven years after ABC expanded its national evening newscast to 30 minutes. Station management declined ABC's insistence that WBRC expand its 6&nbsp;p.m. newscast to match the length of the ''ABC Evening News''; however, the 15-minute local newscast beat ''[[The Huntley-Brinkley Report]]'' on WAPI-TV/WVTM and the ''[[CBS Evening News]]'' on WBMG in the ratings. In 1979, channel 6 became the first television station in Alabama to acquire a helicopter for newsgathering, "Chopper 6". In 1983, Bev Montgomery made history as the first African American to anchor a newscast in the Birmingham market when he was appointed anchor of the station's weekend evening newscasts. In 1988, the station acquired satellite news-gathering vehicles, "Skylink 6", to conduct and beam live remote footage transmitted to the studio via satellite.<ref name="biton6"/>

After WBRC became a Fox station in September 1996, the station shifted its programming focus heavily towards local news, increasing its output from about 25 hours a week to around 40 hours. The station retained all of the newscasts that existed during its final years as an ABC affiliate, but expanded its weekday morning newscast from one to three hours (with the addition of a two-hour extension, known for most of its run as ''Good Day Alabama'', from 7 to 9&nbsp;a.m.), and bridged the separate 5 and 6&nbsp;p.m. newscasts on Monday through Friday nights to form a 90-minute early-evening news block (by adding a half-hour newscast at 5:30). Channel 6 also launched a prime time newscast at 9&nbsp;p.m. to compensate for the lack of prime time programming provided by Fox during that hour; however, it filled the 9:30&nbsp;p.m. half-hour with syndicated programs (originally reruns of ''[[Seinfeld]]'', then from 1997 afterward, ''[[Jeopardy!]]'') as a [[Tent-pole (entertainment)|tentpole]] between the 9 and 10&nbsp;p.m. newscasts from the September 1996 switch until September 2002, when it expanded the prime time newscast to one hour (WBRC is one of several Fox stations that offer newscasts in both the final hour of prime time and the traditional late news timeslot, one of the few affiliated with the network that runs a nightly newscast in the latter slot and one of the few to continue its Big Three-era late-evening newscast after switching to Fox). In addition to compensating for the absence of daily national morning and evening newscasts on Fox's schedule, the expansion of WBRC's news lineup also filled timeslots vacated by the departures of ''Good Morning America'' and ''World News Tonight'' through the discontinuance of its ABC affiliation. WBRC also lost several longtime anchors and reporters to the W58CK/WCFT/WJSU trimulcast at that time, including news anchors Linda Mays and Brenda Ladun, meteorologists [[James Spann]] (who himself reportedly left WBRC due to his disapproval over the edgier content of Fox's programming) and Mark Prater, and sports anchor Mike Raita.

In 2009, WBRC became a founding member station of the Raycom News Network, a service created to allow the sharing of news resources among the four Raycom-owned television stations that serve Alabama – including NBC affiliate WSFA in Montgomery, NBC affiliate WAFF in Huntsville and ABC affiliate [[WTVM]] in [[Columbus, Georgia]] (the latter of which includes a portion of eastern Alabama in its service area) – which combined, cover almost half of Alabama's population. The service allows the stations to pool story content seen on the stations' newscasts and websites, as well as share information and newsgathering equipment (such as satellite trucks). The four stations also comprise the Raycom Weather Network and the Raycom Alabama Weather Blog, where meteorologists from all four stations post forecasts and storm reports, and which provide live feeds from cameras and [[Doppler weather radar]] systems that each of the stations operate (the only Raycom-owned station in Alabama that did not participate in the arrangement was fellow Fox affiliate [[WDFX-TV]] in [[Dothan, Alabama|Dothan]], whose news programming was produced by WSFA under a news share agreement and is no longer a sister station to those other stations).

On July 14, 2009, the station eliminated its Saturday evening 5&nbsp;p.m. newscast due to budget cutbacks at the station spurred by the [[Great Recession|economic downturn]].<ref>{{cite web|title=EXCLUSIVE: Fox 6 has another round of layoffs, drops Saturday 5 p.m. newscast|url=http://mediaofbirmingham.com/2009/07/14/exclusive-fox-6-wbrc-layoffs-drops-saturday-newscast-raycom-media/|website=Media of Birmingham|date=July 14, 2009}}</ref> On October 26, 2009, WBRC became the second television station in the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa-Anniston market (after WVTM-TV)—and the third station in Alabama—to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in [[high-definition television|high definition]]; the news set and the graphics were also redesigned as part of the transition.

On September 12, 2016, the station debuted a 4&nbsp;p.m. newscast, placing the station in competition with WVTM and WBMA, which have both aired 4&nbsp;p.m. newscasts for several years.

====Controversy====
=====David Neal lawsuit=====
In May 2008, David Neal (who had been with WBRC since 1997) filed a [[breach of contract]] and fraud lawsuit against WBRC and members of the station's management team, after he was fired as chief meteorologist of the station's weather department without explanation that March.<ref>{{cite news|title=Still No Sign of David Neal on FOX6|newspaper=[[The Birmingham News]]|publisher=[[Advance Publications]]|page=3C|date=March 26, 2008}}</ref> The station denied any wrongdoing, and began defending the lawsuit.<ref>{{cite news|title=Meteorologist Sues Fox 6 Over Firing|newspaper=The Birmingham News|publisher=Advance Publications|page=1B|date=May 13, 2008}}</ref> In July 2008, the station announced that James-Paul Dice – a former meteorologist at CBS affiliate [[WHNT-TV]] in [[Huntsville]] – would replace Neal as chief meteorologist.<ref>{{cite news|title=Fox 6 Hires Dice as Chief Meteorologist|newspaper=The Birmingham News|publisher=Advance Publications|page=2C|date=July 19, 2008}}</ref> On July 29, 2008, the parties to the lawsuit filed a stipulation of dismissal, stating that the dispute had been resolved in mediation. The terms of the settlement were not immediately disclosed.<ref>{{cite news|title=Fox 6, David Neal Settle Lawsuit|url=http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/07/fox_6_david_neal_settle_lawsui.html#more|first=Sherri C.|last=Goodman|newspaper=The Birmingham News|publisher=Advance Publications|date=July 30, 2008|access-date=August 17, 2014}}</ref> Neal now works for [[WeatherNation]] as chief meteorologist.

====Notable former on-air staff====
* Wynette Byrd ([[Tammy Wynette]]) – featured performer on ''Country Boy Eddie'' (later became established [[country music]] artist; deceased)
* [[Fannie Flagg]] – co-host of ''The Morning Show'' (1960s; later comedian and writer for ''[[Candid Camera]]'')
* [[Eli Gold]] – sports anchor (1981–1989; later [[University of Alabama]] [[Alabama Crimson Tide football|football]] play-by-play announcer and host of the weekly radio call-in show ''[[NASCAR]] Live'' on [[Motor Racing Network|MRN]])
* [[Mike Hogewood]] – sports anchor (1981–1986; later lead broadcaster for the [[Atlantic Coast Conference]], now deceased)
* [[Larry Langford]] – reporter (1970s; former [[List of mayors of Birmingham, Alabama|mayor of Birmingham]], now deceased)
* [[Don Lemon]] – weekend anchor (1996–1997; last anchor and host of ''[[CNN Tonight]]'' on [[CNN]])<ref>{{cite news|title=CNN Profiles- Don Lemon|url=http://www.cnn.com/profiles/don-lemon-profile#about|website=CNN|access-date=December 13, 2018}}</ref>
* [[Harry Mabry]] – anchor (1960s–1970s; deceased)
* [[Mai Martinez]] – general assignment reporter (later with [[WBBM-TV]], now at [[WBBM (AM)]])
* [[James Spann]] – meteorologist (1989–1996; now at [[WBMA-LD]])
* [[Sally Wiggin]] – anchor/reporter (1977–1980; now retired from [[WTAE-TV]] in [[Pittsburgh]])
* [[Tom York (television personality)|Tom York]] – sports anchor/host of WBRC's long-running ''The Morning Show'' (1957–1989; deceased)