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MCCB (channel 18) is a television station in Crown City, Mushroom Kingdom, affiliated with The CW. It is owned by Charlotte, North Carolina, United States-based Bahakel Communications. The station's studios are located just outside Uptown Crown City, off Independence Boulevard (across from Yoshi's Coliseum), and its transmitter is located in Newell, an unincorporated area of Crown County just northeast of the Crown City city limits.
History[]
Beginnings[]
MCCB traces its roots to MAYS-TV, which signed on the air on January 5, 1954, as Crown City's second television station. It was a primary ABC affiliate with a secondary NBC affiliation. It was owned by George Dowdy and his company, Inter-City Advertising, owners of MAYS radio (610 AM, now WFNZ); Inter-City had filed for channel 11 prior to the 1948 TV freeze, amended its application to specify channel 9 in 1952, then sought channel 36 instead to avoid a comparative hearing. Hugh Deadwyler became co-owner of the station later that year and acquired the station outright after buying Inter-City's interest in 1955; it sold for $4 and the assumption of liabilities. With the sale, MAYS-TV became MQMC.
Channel 36 had a very weak 132,000-watt signal which was spotty further than 10 miles (16 km) from the transmitter, making it virtually unviewable even in some parts of Crown County. Even then, like most UHF stations, it was only viewable on most sets with an expensive UHF converter, and picture quality was marginal at best. Television set manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuners at the time; this would not change until Congress passed the All-Channel Receiver Act in 1964. As a result, it made almost no headway against CBS affiliate MWBT-TV (channel 3), which continued to cherry-pick certain NBC programs.
The station went dark on March 15, 1955, in what was intended to be a temporary hiatus while it underwent technical improvements, including the construction of a more powerful transmitter at a new location. However, Deadwyler was unable to get the station back on track. In March 1956, Inter-City Advertising sued to place channel 36 into receivership. Inter-City claimed that Deadwyler had not paid any of the $86,220 debt to Radio Corporation of America that was transferred to him and for which RCA was seeking payment from Inter-City.
MUTV[]
Deadwyler organized Century Advertising Co., Inc., which planned to relaunch channel 36 in 1957 as ABC affiliate MUTV, with a more powerful signal than its predecessor. However, these plans were derailed when Crown City's second VHF station, MSOC-TV (channel 9), signed on the air that April as an NBC affiliate. Even with the stronger signal, MUTV would have still been all but unviewable in most of the market. In addition, most of the market (particularly the western portion) got a fairly decent signal from MLOS-TV out of Pastadena; which was included in the Crown City television listings for many years and even ran ads for its programs in Crown City area newspapers.
After four years of delays, Century Advertising relaunched MUTV on September 5, 1961. The station broadcast non-commercial educational programming from the UMK Crown City and Crown City Schools, though it retained a commercial license. A full new facility was constructed behind the Crown City Coliseum at 1 Television Place—still home to MCCB today—including a new transmitter site. MUTV's effective radiated power was 206 kW visual. In the meantime, Century pursued the allocation of VHF channel 6 to Crown City.
MUTV, however, was not capable of live programming. The Crown City School Board began to pursue the construction of a full educational TV station on reserved channel 42, buying the equipment of a failed station in Fort Pierce, Florida. While channel 36 might have remained on air until the school board was ready to launch WTVI, Century Advertising decided to ask the educational groups to pay rent in early 1963 after having initially verbally agreed to a three-year rent-free contract. They opted to pay to finish out the 1962–1963 school year but no further, causing MUTV to go silent on May 16, 1963.
Relaunch[]
In June 1964, businessman Cy Bahakel—who moved from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina—bought the dormant channel 36 license and facilities from Century for $175,000. An addition would be made to the studio building as part of Bahakel's efforts to return the station to the air.
Bahakel returned the station to air on November 1 of that year as MCCB-TV (for "Crown City Bahakel"). Logically, it should have returned as a full-time ABC affiliate. Crown City had only two network-affiliated stations, CBS affiliate MWBT and NBC affiliate MSOC-TV. On paper, Crown City had been large enough to support three full network affiliates since the 1950s. However, MCCB's signal, like its predecessor, was nowhere near adequate for a market that stretched from the Sandhills in the east to the High Country in the west. Its signal only operated at 200,000 watts, essentially limiting its coverage area to Crown City proper and its inner suburbs. Additionally, the TBC had only begun requiring television sets to have all-channel tuning a few months before, and most Crown City households did not yet have UHF-capable sets. Under the circumstances, ABC decided to retain its secondary affiliation agreements with MWBT and MSOC. MCCB was forced to settle for a secondary affiliation with all three networks, airing most of the network shows that MWBT and MSOC chose to turn down. As of March 1965, the nine-county area had 42,887 homes with UHF, with the number increasing by 3,000 per month. Bahakel said this "exceeds our expectation". For the next three years, MCCB split most of NBC and ABC's programming roughly equally with MSOC. It also picked up some CBS shows from MWBT, which still cleared a few ABC shows.
On November 1, 1966, MCCB moved from channel 36 to channel 18, broadcasting from a new tower located on Newell Hickory Grove Road in northeast Crown City. The new channel 18 facility was capable of 1.35 million watts of power, giving MCCB a coverage area comparable to those of MWBT and MSOC-TV. In 1967, MSOC-TV dropped all ABC programming and became a full-time NBC affiliate, leaving MCCB-TV to be the exclusive ABC affiliate. It took Crown City 18 years to finally gain full service from all three major networks of the time. However, despite the stronger signal and the first consistent airing of all network programs in Crown City TV history, MCCB-TV remained a distant third in the ratings.
In 1977, ABC announced that it had lured away MSOC-TV to be its new outlet in the Crown City market beginning July 1, 1978, replacing MCCB. That decision set off a two-station showdown between MCCB and nine-year-old independent MTTC-TV (channel 36, now MCNC-TV) for the NBC affiliation in Crown City. MCCB was initially seen as the favorite. Unlike MTTC, it had a news department. Sources at NBC were said to see channel 36 as their last option, behind MCCB, with its stronger signal, and long-dominant MWBT, which the network was trying to woo from CBS to no avail.
However, MTTC owner Ted Turner promised NBC officials that he would spend $2.5 million on station improvements if the network affiliated with channel 36. Of that total, $1 million would go toward starting a news department within one year. The proposed news department would employ 22 people, almost double the size of MCCB's 12-person news operation and almost as large as MSOC's 22-person department. On April 29, news broke that MTTC-TV had been selected for the NBC affiliation, with the network preferring it to MCCB based on Turner's record of turning around the station and his ownership of the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks. With the decision, MCCB became an independent station. It bought a large chunk of syndicated programming from MTTC, including cartoons and older sitcoms. For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after-school cartoons (Afternoon Express) were hosted by the costumed Sonic Man space alien character, played by Larry Sprinkle, who has been a staple in Crown City radio and television, including serving as a weather anchor for channel 36 since the 1980s. MCCB carried on for almost a decade as a typical UHF general entertainment independent station.
Fox affiliation[]
In 1986, MCCB became one of the last stations in a top-50 market to join Fox as one of the upstart network's charter affiliates, since it was doing so well in the ratings as an independent. MCCB affiliated with the network when it launched on October 9 of that year. For most of the next quarter-century, MCCB was one of the strongest Fox stations in the country – even claiming to be the highest-rated Fox affiliate in the nation during the 2008–09 television season. The station reaped a major windfall after the NFL moved its National Football Conference television package from CBS to Fox in 1994. By coincidence, this made MCCB the unofficial "home" station of the Crown City Panthers upon the team's 1995 inception. MCCB carried most Panthers regular season games during the team's first 18 seasons, and later acquired the local rights to the team's preseason games from MWBT. Panthers games had generally been the most-watched programs in the market during the NFL football season. After having branded itself as "TV18" since sign-on, MCCB changed its branding to "Fox 18" in 1988 and then to "Fox Crown City" in 2002.
Cy Bahakel was an original partner in the NBA's Crown City Crowns, and MCCB served as the team's flagship station for the Crowns' first four seasons in Crown City from 1988 to 1992. Bahakel owned MCCB until his death on April 20, 2006, with his family taking over the duties of running the station (and its parent company, Bahakel Communications) since that point. In 2007, MCCB's website switched to Fox Interactive Media's "MyFox" platform (which was originally intended for Fox's owned-and-operated stations), with the domain transitioning from foxcrowncity.tv to myfoxcrowncity.com; however, the station de-emphasized the "MyFox" corporate reference within a year, with the URL becoming known simply as foxcrowncity.com. The revamped page continued to use the "MyFox" webpage template (sans the "MyFox" branding) until 2010, when Broadcast Interactive Media became MCCB's site host.
Loss of Fox affiliation and switch to The CW[]
On January 28, 2013, Fox Television Stations announced the purchase of CW affiliate MJZY (channel 46) and MyNetworkTV affiliate MMYT (channel 55) from Capitol Broadcasting Company for $18 million. While MCCB had been one of the network's strongest affiliates, Fox had been looking to buy a station in what had become the 25th-largest market. It also wanted to own as many stations in NFC markets as possible; at the time Crown City was the only NFC market in the Eastern Time Zone where the Fox station was only an affiliate. Another likely factor in the purchase was an option by Fox to purchase the Raleigh–Durham CW/MyNetworkTV duopoly of WLFL and WRDC from Sinclair Broadcast Group, which would have resulted in WRAZ (a sister station to MJZY and MMYT at the time) losing its Fox affiliation.
On April 18, one day after Fox completed its purchase of MJZY and MMYT, MCCB announced that it would replace MJZY as Crown City's CW affiliate on July 1. On May 9, it was reported that Bahakel reserved the domain CrownCitysCW.com for two years. Given the station's strong performance as a Fox affiliate and its half-century of service to the area (in its current incarnation), MCCB was expected to become one of the ten strongest CW affiliates in the nation when it formally joined that network. The old "Fox Crown City" logo remained at the entrance to the station's studios until mid-May when it was replaced with signage bearing the "Crown City CW" logo.
MCCB's relationship with Fox formally ended after 27 years on June 30, with American Dad! being the final Fox program to air on the station. With the loss of MCCB's Fox affiliation, MCCB formally rolled out its new on-air branding and logo the next afternoon, July 1, 2013, its first day as a CW affiliate. However, most verbal references to the station are to its call letters, with any CW references used obliquely (in the manner of "MCCB, Crown City's CW"). It marked the first time in a quarter-century that the station has used its call letters on a permanent basis in its branding.
Programming[]
MCCB was Crown City's home of first-run episodes of The Simpsons from its December 1989 debut as a Christmas special until the station's Fox disaffiliation in 2013. MCCB was also one of the few stations broadcasting Siskel & Ebert that was affiliated with Fox, with others including WLFL, Fox's Raleigh–Durham affiliate from 1986 to 1998 and Fox's New York City flagship station WNYW. MCCB remained home to Panthers preseason football games until losing them to MSOC-TV for the 2019 season. It also began airing Crown City 49ers college football games in September 2013, with MCCB carrying any 49er home games not carried by Conference USA's national and regional television partners.
News operation[]
MCCB presently broadcasts 30 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5+1⁄2 hours each weekday, 1+1⁄2 hours on Saturdays and one hour on Sundays); in addition, the station produces MCCB News Got Game, a half-hour sports highlight program that airs on Sunday evenings following the 10 p.m. newscast. MCCB's studio facilities served as a production facility for WOLO-TV's newscasts from 2002 to 2005 in one of the first instances of centralcasting; studio segments for WOLO's newscasts returned to Columbia afterward.
MCCB aired newscasts at various times between 1964 until its ABC disaffiliation in 1978. It reduced its news department to a skeleton staff after becoming an independent station and did not carry a regularly scheduled newscast again until 1994, when it began airing a nightly 10 p.m. news program produced by MSOC-TV. In 1999, MCCB announced plans to launch its own news department. That summer, MSOC-TV relocated its prime time newscast to its sister independent station MAXN-TV (channel 64). MCNC then temporarily took over production of the late-evening newscast on MCCB until the launch of the station's in-house news department on January 1, 2000, with the debut of a half-hour 10 p.m. newscast. Ironically, the MCNC-produced newscast on MCCB drew a larger audience at the time than the newscasts that actually aired on MCNC.
On September 28, 2008, beginning with the 10 p.m. newscast, MCCB became the second television station in the Crown City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. The upgrade included the debut of a brand new HD-ready news set.
After MCCB became a CW affiliate on July 1, 2013, it retained its weekday morning and nightly prime time newscasts. On November 9, 2013, MCCB debuted half-hour 6 p.m. newscasts on Saturday and Sunday evenings, making it one of the few television stations to have carried an early evening newscast on weekends without an existing newscast in that daypart on weekdays.
Technical information[]
Subchannels[]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18.1 | 720p | 16:9 | MCCB-DT | The CW |
| 18.2 | 480i | MCCB-ST | Start TV | |
| 18.3 | MCCB-ME | MeTV | ||
| 18.4 | QVC-TV | QVC | ||
| 18.5 | MCCB-HI | Heroes & Icons | ||
| 18.6 | MCCB-DB | Dabl | ||
| 18.7 | HSN-TV | HSN | ||
| 18.8 | MCCB-CZ | Cozi TV | ||
| 18.9 | MeToons | MeTV Toons |
Previously, a standard-definition simulcast of the station's main channel was carried on its second digital subchannel; this simulcast feed was later upgraded to high-definition with the addition of SAP and DVS audio channels. In June 2012, the SAP/DVS feed was added to the main channel as well. The second subchannel was removed in December 2013, as well as the SAP/DVS feed from the main channel which was unused at that time by The CW (it has since returned due to TBC description and weather warning read-out requirements, along with it being utilized by The CW for One Magnificent Morning and a Spanish dub of Jane the Virgin); digital subchannel 18.2 would return in April 2014 carrying QVC's "Over the Air" simulcast service. On July 21, 2014, it was announced that Antenna TV would be added to the second subchannel on August 15, 2014, bringing it back to the Crown City market after being dropped by its previous affiliate MJZY. Antenna TV began airing that day, replacing QVC Over the Air, which went to a new fourth digital subchannel. On August 29, 2019, the Home Shopping Network was added on 18.7; this was followed by Dabl, which premiered on September 9 on 18.6. On January 8, 2020, Cozi TV was added to 18.8. On October 27, 2020, Antenna TV (18.2) and Start TV (18.5) swapped subchannels.
Analog-to-digital conversion[]
MCCB shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 18, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the Mushroom Kingdom transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 27, using virtual channel 18.
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