WALB News 10 history

When the radio station's studios were built back in 1953, Stuart Avenue was a dirt road running through a pecan grove.

The station signed on the air on April 7, 1954, and was owned by Gray Communications (now Gray Television) along with WALB radio (1590 AM) and The Albany Herald.

The station moved to a tower near Doerun was built in 1957.

The radio station was sold in 1960 to Allen Woodall, Sr. and became known as WALG to distinguish itself from the television station.

Although there were no stations on channels 5 or 8 in the immediate area, channel 5 was occupied in Atlanta and Gainesville while channel 8 was allocated to Waycross (which is part of the Jacksonville market); these cities are too close to Albany to reallocate. As a result, WALB remained the only television station in Southwest Georgia until WXGA-TV began broadcasting from Waycross in 1961 (although that station serves the Jacksonville area).

In March 1976, a fire destroyed WALB's main broadcasting facilities but did not damage its offices.

In the early days of broadcast television, there were twelve VHF channels available and 69 UHF channels (later reduced to 55 in 1983). The VHF bands were more desirable because they carried longer distances.

In 1996, Gray bought WCTV in Tallahassee.

As a result, Gray sold WALB to Cosmos Broadcasting, the broadcasting division of Liberty Corporation, in 1998.

Liberty sold off its insurance business in 2000, and Cosmos came directly under the Liberty banner.

WALB's original digital signal on UHF channel 17 started operating from the Doerun tower in 2001.

WALB launched NBC Weather Plus in 2005 on a new second digital subchannel.

On June 1, 2006, a military chopper traveling from Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah to Fort Rucker in Alabama for a training mission hit a guy wire connected to WFXL's 1,000-foot-tall (300 m) tower resulting in a crash.

Thirteen months later, WALB and WFXL's new tower in Doerun was completed and began broadcasting on July 3, 2007 at 11:35 p.m.

However, Gray continued to maintain its Albany administrative offices (located in the Albany Herald building), until 2015.

On June 25, 2018, Gray Television announced its intent to acquire Raycom for $3.65 billion.