WWAY: Wilmington's ABC Channel 3, Now Home to Three Networks

WWAY is a television station licensed to Wilmington, North Carolina, broadcasting on virtual channel 3. It is the market's ABC affiliate and, unusually for a single station, also carries CBS on its second subchannel and The CW on its third, making channel 3 the over-the-air home of three national networks in the Cape Fear region. The station is owned by Morris Multimedia through WWAY-TV, LLC. Its studios are on Magnolia Village Way in Leland, North Carolina, and its transmitter stands west of Winnabow in Town Creek Township, Brunswick County. Its website is wwaytv3.com, and its newscasts are branded WWAY News.

WWAY signed on in the autumn of 1964 as Wilmington's second television station and has been affiliated with ABC for its entire life — a notable distinction, because at the time a small two-station market like Wilmington would normally have relegated the then-weak ABC network to secondary status. Six decades later, the station has grown into something its founders could scarcely have imagined: a triple-network outlet producing simulcast newscasts for ABC and CBS viewers and a separate prime-time newscast for its CW subchannel.

Overview

WWAY's main channel, 3.1, carries the full ABC schedule of news, entertainment and sports, along with the station's local WWAY News programmes, including the morning show Good Morning Carolina and evening and late-night editions. Since January 1, 2017, subchannel 3.2 has carried CBS as WWAY CBS, bringing the network to a full-power local signal for the first time in the market's history, while 3.3 carries The CW under the Cape Fear CW brand, with additional subchannels offering services such as Ion Plus and Start TV. Morning and evening WWAY newscasts are simulcast across the ABC and CBS channels, with additional midday and early-evening editions produced for the CBS service and a 10 p.m. newscast on the CW channel. Few stations in markets of Wilmington's size carry so much network programming under one roof.

History

WWAY signed on the air on October 30, 1964, as the second television station in Wilmington, arriving ten and a half years after pioneer station WECT, channel 6. It was owned by Cape Fear Telecasting, a company controlled by local Wilmington interests, and its first studios occupied the tenth floor of the Murchison Building in downtown Wilmington. Before WWAY, WECT had been shoehorning all three major networks onto its single schedule as the city's only station. Logic suggested the newcomer would become the CBS affiliate; instead, WWAY signed on with ABC and has never wavered.

The choice was unconventional but reasoned. In 1964 ABC was the smallest and weakest of the three networks, and in most two-station markets it was squeezed into secondary clearances on existing stations rather than anchoring a new one. Wilmington, however, received no ABC signal at all, not even a fringe-grade picture, while Florence, South Carolina's WBTW delivered a fairly strong CBS signal into the area and remained CBS's affiliate of record for southeastern North Carolina for years afterward. Cape Fear Telecasting calculated that signing with ABC would give it a network identity with little direct local competition, and that bet has defined the station ever since. In 1969 the station moved into studios at 615 North Front Street in downtown Wilmington, the home it would occupy for nearly half a century.

Ownership

From its local founding ownership, WWAY passed through the hands of a succession of national and regional groups. By the mid-1980s it was owned by Clay Communications; in 1987 Clay sold its broadcasting interests, including WWAY, to Price Communications, which in turn sold the station to Adams Television in 1988. After a period under Hillside Broadcasting, the station was acquired in 1999 by Cosmos Broadcasting, the television arm of the Liberty Corporation.

The Liberty connection set up WWAY's modern ownership. In 2005–2006, Liberty merged its broadcasting interests with Raycom Media — which already owned WECT, Wilmington's top-rated station. Federal duopoly rules prohibit common ownership of two of the four largest stations in a single market, so Raycom could not keep both; it retained WECT and spun off WWAY to Morris Multimedia in 2006, in a transaction reported at $18.5 million. Morris, the Savannah-based, family-controlled company founded on newspapers and led by the Morris family, has owned WWAY ever since, operating it alongside stations in Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and other markets. It is a return, in spirit, to the station's beginnings: a regional, family-run owner rather than a distant conglomerate, and Morris has kept the Liberty-era visual identity elements the station adopted in 2003 through much of its tenure.

Affiliation and Programming

ABC on the main channel is only the first layer of WWAY's network story. The station's subchannel strategy began in June 2009, when its second digital channel, previously a round-the-clock local weather service, took on the Retro Television Network. In September 2013 WWAY announced it would add The CW; the Cape Fear CW launched on September 30, 2013, initially on 3.2. Then, on March 30, 2016, CBS announced that its Wilmington affiliation would move from low-power station WILM-LD to WWAY's second subchannel. On January 1, 2017, WWAY CBS debuted on 3.2 at full power, the CW shifted to 3.3, and WWAY became a dual ABC–CBS affiliate with a CW service besides.

The CBS move mattered practically: WILM's low-power signal had left many households unable to receive CBS over the air at all, a point station management emphasised in announcing that CBS programming would now reach the whole market free, at full power. Alongside the networks, WWAY's schedule includes syndicated programming, with titles such as Entertainment Tonight, Judge Judy and Dr. Oz among those carried over the years, and the station clears the ABC network schedule on its primary channel.

News Operation

WWAY News is produced from the Leland studios for all three of the station's network services. The weekday lineup on the ABC channel runs from Good Morning Carolina in the early morning through evening editions and the late news, and since 2017 most of those programmes have been simulcast on WWAY CBS, which adds its own midday newscast and an hour of early-evening news at 7 p.m. The Cape Fear CW carries a 10 p.m. newscast produced by the same team, giving the single newsroom a presence in every key local news time period in the market.

The news operation has weathered the industry's economic cycles. Citing the weak economy, WWAY discontinued its weekend newscasts on August 1, 2009, a retrenchment the local Star-News reported the station hoped to reverse when conditions recovered. The 2017 addition of CBS, and the simulcast model that came with it, instead expanded the newsroom's output substantially, effectively doubling the audience for its morning and evening programmes and adding the CBS-only midday and 7 p.m. hours. Wilmington's status as a hurricane-exposed coastal city gives the newsroom's weather coverage particular weight; tropical storms and hurricanes regularly make landfall along the Cape Fear coast, and channel 3's storm reporting is a core public service for its tri-county audience.

Market and Audience

Wilmington's television market covers the Cape Fear region of southeastern North Carolina — principally New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties — a coastal area transformed in recent decades by beach tourism, port activity, film production and rapid residential growth spilling into Brunswick County, now among the fastest-growing counties in the state. WWAY's 2018 studio move to Leland placed the station physically inside that growth corridor, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington. Its triple-network structure gives it a unique market position: where competitors WECT (NBC) and WSFX (Fox) each carry one major network, WWAY aggregates ABC, CBS and CW viewers, and its simulcast newscasts make its news product visible to three network audiences at once.

Technical Details

WWAY broadcasts digitally on UHF and displays as virtual channel 3, its heritage VHF position, from a transmitter west of Winnabow in Town Creek Township. FCC records list facility ID 12033 and an authorised effective radiated power of 1,000 kilowatts from an antenna about 590 metres above average terrain, giving channel 3 one of the strongest signals on the North Carolina coast. The station broadcast in analogue on channel 3 from 1964 until September 8, 2008, when Wilmington served as the FCC's test market for the national digital transition and WWAY voluntarily ended analogue broadcasting at noon that day, months ahead of the rest of the country. Its present subchannel array — ABC on 3.1, CBS on 3.2, CW+ on 3.3, with Ion Plus and Start TV on further subchannels — is delivered from the same multiplex.

Studio Moves and Facilities

WWAY's physical history tracks Wilmington's growth. From the tenth floor of the Murchison Building at sign-on, it moved in 1969 to 615 North Front Street, next to Cape Fear Community College, and stayed for forty-nine years. In March 2017, Morris Multimedia announced it had purchased the former Thunder Alley bowling center in Leland and would convert it into a modern broadcast facility. On April 29, 2018, WWAY began broadcasting from the new studios at 1224 Magnolia Village Way in Leland, completing its move across the river into Brunswick County — a conversion of a bowling alley into a television plant that ranks among the more inventive facility projects in small-market American broadcasting.

Notable People

WWAY's defining figures are collective: the local investors of Cape Fear Telecasting who made the counterintuitive 1964 decision to build the station around ABC, and the Morris family of Savannah, whose Morris Multimedia has owned the station since 2006 and funded its Leland studio conversion and its expansion into a triple-network operation. Within the market, general manager Andy Combs was the station's public voice during the pivotal 2016–2017 CBS transition, articulating the case that full-power CBS service would finally make the network available to every household in the Cape Fear region.

Recent Developments

WWAY's modern era has been one of expansion rather than retrenchment. The 2017 CBS acquisition made it one of the relatively few American stations carrying two Big Four networks as primary services, the 2018 Leland move gave it a purpose-built modern plant, and its subchannel lineup has continued to grow with services such as Ion Plus and Start TV joining ABC, CBS and The CW. Morris Multimedia has added complementary assets in the market as well, including low-power WWAY-LD, acquired in 2022. Six decades after Cape Fear Telecasting bet on the weakest network in America, WWAY stands as Wilmington's most network-rich station: ABC's home since 1964, CBS's full-power home since 2017, and the Cape Fear CW besides — a consolidation of services that would have been unimaginable in the two-station market into which channel 3 was born.