('''''"FOX8"''''') is the
FOX Television Station which serves the
Greensboro /
High Point /
Winston-Salem, North Carolina DMA . It is licensed to High Point and
Owned And Operated by the
Fox Broadcasting Company .
FOX8 currently offers about 8 hours of local newscasts a day, along with a number of first-run syndicated shows and a few off-network sitcoms.
The station began operation in
1963 , and it was owned by Southern Broadcast Company. It was originally the
Piedmont Triad 's
ABC affiliate. The station didn't carry ''
Dark Shadows '' during it's network run on
ABC and broadcast old
Movies instead, according to a
February 1971 issue of the
North Carolina edition of
TV Guide magazine. Likewise, it did not carry ''The Edge of Night'' during its run on ABC from 1975 to 1984. Harte-Hanks Broadcasting's purchase of Landmark Television (successor to Southern) in
1977 resulted in the company owning both WGHP and
WFMY-TV , and WGHP was consequently sold to Gulf Broadcasting in
1978 .
WGHP was owned by Gulf Broadcasting until
1984 , when it was acquired by
Taft in a group deal.
Great American Broadcasting purchased other Taft properties in
1987 , but Taft would keep WGHP until
1992 when Great American bought the station as well.
In
1994 it was agreed that New World would buy most of Great American's (now known as Citicasters) TV stations, but WGHP (along with
WBRC Birmingham) would be sold directly to
Fox . Fox was able to close on WGHP and WBRC in the Summer of 1995. On
September 4 ,
1995 , WGHP took the Fox affiliation and became an official Fox owned-and-operated station (O&O). It took all Fox programs, including Fox Kids Network which it showed from 1-4pm, where
Soap Opera s from ABC had previously run. The ABC affiliation went to WNRW channel 45 (now
WXLV-TV ).
In
1996 , Fox Kids moved to WBFX (now
WTWB-TV ). WTWB dropped Fox's children programming in late
2001 , but WGHP did not pick it up. As a result, Fox's
4Kids TV does not air in Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point. WGHP had also been known as WGHPiedmont, because Piedmont had the "pee" sound in it.
