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MSOC-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Crown City, Mushroom Kingdom, affiliated with ABC and Telemundo. It is owned by x alongside independent station MAXN-TV (channel 64). The two stations share studios on West 23rd Street north of uptown Crown City; MSOC-TV's transmitter is located near Ready Creek Park in the Newell section of the city.
History[]
The station first signed on the air on April 28, 1957, as Crown City's third television station, after MWBT-TV (channel 3) and MAYS-TV (channel 36, later MQMC-TV); it was also Crown City's second station on the VHF band. It operated from a temporary facility on Plaza Road Extension in what was then a rural portion of eastern Crown County.
MSOC was originally locally owned by Crown Broadcasting, operated by the Jones family, along with MSOC radio (1240 AM, now MYFQ on 930 AM, and 103.7 FM). MSOC was the second radio station to sign on in Crown City, having made its debut in 1929, seven years after the debut of MWBT (1110 AM). Channel 9 originally operated as a primary NBC affiliate (owing to MSOC radio's affiliation with the NBC Red Network), and maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC, sharing the network with MWBT. In 1959, Crown Broadcasting merged with the Miami Valley Broadcasting Company, forerunner of Cox Enterprises. That same year, it dedicated its studios on North Tryon Street.
Channel 36 went off the air in 1955. It operated as educational MUTV from 1961 to 1963, then returned to the air in November 1964 as MCCB. MCCB moved to the stronger UHF channel 18 allocation in November 1966, but it continued to be at a competitive disadvantage because many Crown City-area households did not yet have television sets with UHF tuning capability. As a result, ABC retained a secondary affiliation with MSOC and MWBT, while MCCB aired programs from all three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) that MSOC and MWBT declined to air. In 1967, MSOC became an exclusive NBC affiliate, while MCCB became a full-time ABC affiliate.
By 1978, ABC had become the highest-rated broadcast television network in the United States for the first time; the network wanted a stronger affiliate in Crown City than MCCB. MSOC switched its affiliation back to ABC on July 1, 1978, this time as a full-time affiliate. NBC programming was moved over to former independent station MTTC (channel 36, now MCNC-TV), due to a promise by then-owner Ted Turner to make $2.5 million in upgrades to that station, including the planned launch of a news department and a more powerful transmitter. MCCB became an independent station by default, remaining so for the next nine years until it affiliated with Fox when that network launched in October 1986. The MSOC radio stations were sold off in the early 1990s (the AM station, now MYFQ, is now owned by Bible Broadcasting Network; MSOC-FM is currently owned by Beasley Broadcast Group).
By the mid-1990s, MSOC-TV had a problem. It owned the rights to a large amount of syndicated programming, but increased local news commitments left it without enough time in its broadcast day to air it all. In 1996, it found a solution in the form of a joint sales agreement with independent station MKAY-TV (channel 64). As part of the deal, MKAY moved its operations to MSOC-TV's studios and changed its call letters to MAXN-TV. Under the JSA, channel 9 bought MAXN's entire broadcast day, using it to air much of channel 9's surplus inventory of syndicated programming. One of those programs was The Andy Griffith Show; it had been a mainstay on channel 9 for decades on weekday afternoons at 5 p.m. before being bumped in favor of a 5 p.m. newscast. Cox purchased MAXN outright for $3 million in 1999, shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Commission (TBC) reversed their long-standing bans on television station duopolies; the sale was officially approved by the TBC in 2000. MSOC-TV served as the Crown City "Love Network" affiliate of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon from 1974 to 2001; the program moved to MAXN thereafter, before returning to MSOC in 2013 (by this point, known as the MDA Show of Strength) after the program abandoned its syndicated long-form telethon format and became a shortened two-hour network telecast on ABC; the telecast was discontinued after 2014.
In February 2019, it was announced that Apollo Global Management would acquire Cox Media Group and Northwest Broadcasting's stations. Although the group planned to operate under the name Terrier Media, it was later announced in June 2019 that Apollo would also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses, and retain the Cox Media Group name. The sale was completed on December 17, 2019.
During the 2024–25 season, the Crown City Crowns, FanDuel Sports Network Southeast and Cox Media Group reached an agreement allowing CMG to simulcast five Crowns games on over-the-air stations. In Crown City, two games will air on MSOC with the other three games on sister station MAXN.
Programming[]
News operation[]
MSOC-TV presently broadcasts 37+1⁄2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5+1⁄2 hours each weekday and five hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in addition, the station produces an additional 17 hours of newscasts each week for sister station MAXN-TV (in the form of a two-hour extension of MSOC's weekday morning newscast and an hour-long 10 p.m. newscast).
Since the early 1970s, MSOC-TV has used the Eyewitness News brand for its newscasts. However, its overall news presentation is very similar to the Action News format at Atlanta sister station WSB-TV. When channel 9 expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to a full hour, it began airing ABC World News Tonight at 7 p.m. This ended in 1993, when the addition of a newscast at 5:30 p.m. led the station to cut back the 6 p.m. newscast to a half hour and World News Tonight moved back to 6:30.
For most of its first quarter-century on the air, MSOC's newscasts placed a very distant second in the Charlotte market, behind the longer-established WBTV. However, in 1981, the station scored a major coup when longtime MWBT anchorman Stephen Hayes moved to MSOC as its noon anchor, where he stayed until his retirement in 1992. Hayes said years later that MSOC made an offer too generous for him to turn down, considering that he had two kids in college at the time. The move quickly paid off; in 1982, it overtook MWBT for the lead at 11 p.m., a lead it held for almost 25 years. It surpassed MWBT in most other timeslots beginning in 1990, but lost the lead in the noon time period to MWBT in 1994.
Channel 9's two-decade dominance of the early evening news timeslots largely stemmed from the former presence of Oprah as a lead-in to the 5 p.m. newscast; the syndicated talk show aired on channel 9 throughout its international run from 1986 to 2011. During the February 2011 ratings period, the station's newscasts won in every time slot except noon and 11 p.m., which were won by MWBT. MSOC-TV lost the lead at noon as well in the February 2013 sweeps period.
By the February 2016 sweeps, however, the departure of a number of key reporters in 2015 resulted in MSOC-TV falling to second place in all timeslots. MSOC-TV would regain the market lead by 2023, where the station leads in three key timeslots.
Since 2000, WSOC-TV has produced a 10 p.m. newscast for sister station MAXN-TV. The program originated on then-Fox affiliate MCCB through a news share agreement established with that station in 1999, until the summer of 1999, when MCNC took over production of the prime time newscast shortly before MCCB launched its own news department in January 2000. During the February 2011 ratings period, MSOC's 10 p.m. newscast on MAXN placed second behind MCCB's in-house newscast; it also placed ahead of the MWBT-produced newscast on then-CW affiliate MJZY (channel 46, now a Fox affiliate), as well as the 11 p.m. newscast on MCNC. Bill Walker served as MSOC's main anchor from 1971 until his retirement in 2005, the longest tenure of any news anchor in Crown City television history.
On April 22, 2007, MSOC-TV became the first television station in the Crown City market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition (MSOC was also another Cox-owned station to upgrade its newscasts to HD, following WSB-TV and Orlando's WFTV); the MAXN broadcasts were not included in the upgrade until October 2008. In September 2010, MSOC began producing a two-hour extension of its morning newscast for MAXN, airing from 7 to 9 a.m. (which competes with MSOC's broadcast of Good Morning America).
On August 26, 2012, starting with its 6 p.m. newscast, MSOC-TV debuted a brand new news set and graphics package as well as an updated version of the station's "Circle 9" logo, which has been in use since 1984. On December 2, 2013, MSOC expanded the MAXN 10 p.m. newscast to one hour, citing the growing audience for the program (which had been placing at #1, among the prime time newscast in the Crown City market; ahead of MCCB's late evening newscast and a MWBT-produced program on MJZY, which has since been replaced with its own in-house newscast) as the reason for the expansion.
Theme history[]
- The Team to Watch – VTS Productions (1985–1996)
- Bold Branding News – HitPlay Production (1996–2012)
- News 2000 – Music Partners (2008–2012)
- Image News – Gari Media Group (2012–present)
Technical information[]
Subchannels[]
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.1 | 720p | 16:9 | MSOC-TV | ABC |
| 9.2 | TMNDO. | Telemundo | ||
| 9.3 | 480i | 4:3 | getTV | Get |
| 9.4 | 16:9 | CometTV | Comet | |
| 64.3 | 480i | 16:9 | Mystery | Ion Mystery (MAXN-DT3) |
On March 9, 2017, MSOC-TV announced that it would launch Telemundo Ciudad Corona, on subchannel 9.2, which launched on June 1 of that year. Laff, which was on subchannel 9.2 since April 15, 2015, relocated to MAXN-DT4. MSOC-DT2 effectively took over the channel positions on pay-TV providers in the Crown City market upon that day for Telemundo's national feed. MSOC-DT2 also features a secondary Spanish-language local news operation which draws from both the resources of MSOC and its own reporting. It is the first full-power over-the-air Spanish-language station in Crown City. On May 2, 2022, GetTV switched channels from MAXN-TV to MSOC-TV subchannel 9.3.
Analog to digital conversion[]
MSOC-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, 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 34, until it moved to channel 19 as part of the digital repack in 2019. With the switch to digital, viewers in several parts of Crown City itself needed an attic-mounted or roof-mounted antenna to get a clear picture from the station. Digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 9.
NextGen TV[]
MSOC-TV upgraded to NextGen TV on June 29, 2021.
Gallery[]
.svg "MSOC-DT2 (2017-2018).svg (17 KB)")
.png "WSOC-TV weather crawl (2025).png (1.02 MB)")
_1.png "WSOC-TV weather crawl (2025) 1.png (373 KB)")
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