Image # 1: June 10th 1966 News Clipping
In June of 1966 the TV signal transmitter site for WSFA channel-12 in Montgomery Alabama was an 823-foot tall
tower near Camden AL, southwest of Montgomery. Image # 2 (below this one) shows the approximate location.
This newspaper article describes the desire of WSFA to construct a taller and more powerful TV transmitter
tower in Bullock County AL, near to Union Springs, AL, as illustrated in Image # 3 further below.
Image # 2: Original Location of WSFA TV-12's Transmitter Tower
The map illustrates the maximum Grade-A (primary) and Grade-B (secondary) ranges of WSFA's TV signal as it
was being sent out by the 823 foot tall tower in Camden, Alabama. The Grade-A range includes all or part of every
county directly adjacent to Montgomery County. The Grade-B range extends a little further out, reaching Auburn
in Lee County; a portion of Russell County (Crawford, Ladonia) west of Phenix City; much of Barbour County west
and south of Eufaula; the cities of Andalusia, Opp and Ozark in South Alabama; and tiny upper corners of Geneva
and Henry Counties, also in South Alabama.
Image # 3: Proposed Re-Location Site of WSFA TV-12's Transmitter Tower
The proposed new transmitter tower location - near to Union Springs in Bullock County - as well as the new
tower's higher height of 1,948 feet, would have extended WSFA TV-12's Grade-A (primary) signal reach mainly
eastward, extending into areas of middle West and Southwest Georgia. In the case of Columbus in Muscogee
County Georgia, the Grade-A signal would have made it just about to the Cataula and Midland areas at the
eastern tip of Columbus. Some of the Alabama cities that would have been within the Grade-A range are as
follows -- Opelika, Auburn, Greenville, Ozark, Enterprise, Abbeville, Headland and Eufaula. The Grade-A
signal would have also "touched slightly" the Alabama towns of Dothan, Lanett and Alexander City.
All or part of Western Georgia counties besides Muscogee which would have fallen within the Grade-A signal
reach include Harris, Chattahoochee (seat is in Cusseta, where the WRBL-WTVM tower is located), Stewart,
Quitman, Clay and Early.
The Grade-B (secondary) signal range of the proposed Bullock County transmitter site would have extended to
the following areas -- Alabama: cities of Dothan, Andalusia, Opp, Selma, Sylacauga and Roanoke; Georgia: the
city of LaGrange, as well as parts of Troup, Harris, Talbot, Marion, Webster, Terrell, Calhoun and Early
Counties; Florida: northernmost parts of Walton, Holmes and Jackson Counties.
Image # 4: Final Re-Location Site of WSFA TV-12's Transmitter Tower
Trememdous legal opposition to WSFA's proposed transmitter tower re-location plans was lodged by
the owners of Columbus Georgia's WYEA TV-38 (callsign since changed to WLTZ), which became the
prime NBC network affiliate for the Columbus area in October of 1970. It is quite possible that both WRBL
TV-3 and WTVM Ch-9, Columbus' prime CBS and ABC affiliates, may have backed WYEA's legal protest.
WSFA eventually bowed to the legal protests and would choose to place the new tower Grady, Alabama,
a location in Pike County lying south and west of the previously planned Bullock County site. The new
1,933-plus foot high tower was completed in 1977.
Image # 5: September 1977 TV Guide AD -- WSFA TV-12's New Transmitter Tower
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