WATE-TV

WATE-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for East Tennessee licensed to Knoxville. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 26 (or virtual channel 6.1 via PSIP) from a transmitter on Sharp's Ridge in North Knoxville. The station can also be seen on Charter channel 13 in SD, 713 in HD as well as Comcast channel 13 in SD, 1006 in HD, Knology channel 901, and AT&T U-Verse Channel 6. Owned by Media General, WATE has studios in the Greystone mansion on North Broadway/SR 33/SR 71/US 441.

History

Channel 6 was East Tennessee's first television station, signing on the air at 8 PM on October 1, 1953 as WROL-TV. The race to be the first television station in the eastern part of the state was won by WROL-TV when the 300-foot (91 m) tower of WJHL-TV in Johnson City (ironically, now a sister station to channel 6) collapsed a few months earlier. That station would have been first to sign-on, but WROL claimed the title by only 25 days. Its first studios were underneath the 800-foot (240 m) self-supporting tower on Sharp's Ridge which was one of the tallest man-made structures in Tennessee at the time. It was owned by local insurance executive Paul Mountcastle and a small group of investors along with WROL-AM 950. At the time, Mountcastle was chairman of the board of the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee of Nashville, who signed on WLAC-TV (now WTVF) in that city in 1954.