('''''"FOX8"''''') is the
FOX Television Station which serves the
Greensboro /
High Point /
Winston-Salem, North Carolina (
Piedmont Triad ) market area. It is licensed to High Point and
Owned And Operated by the
Fox Broadcasting Company . The station is the only one in the Piedmont area market to be owned and operated by any major network. Its transmitter is located in
Sophia, North Carolina .
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.
On
June 13 ,
2007 , Fox's parent company,
News Corporation announced its intent to sell the station, along with eight other owned and operated stations.
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The station began operation on October 14, 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 its 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. 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 1993 Great American Broadcasting filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That year they restructured and became known as Citicasters. They then put their stations up for sale.
In the winter of 1993-1994 it was agreed that New World (which acquired the SCI stations in a similar type of bankruptcy Citicasters had come out of) would buy Citicasters'
WDAF-TV channel 4 in
Kansas City , which was an
NBC affiliate, and
KSAZ-TV (formerly KTSP) channel 10 in
Phoenix , which was a
CBS affiliate. Citicasters would keep
WTSP channel 10 in
Tampa Bay and
WKRC-TV channel 12 in
Cincinnati -- which were both ABC affiliates at the time. Both of those stations would later switch to CBS when
Scripps-Howard contracted with ABC to air on Tampa Bay's
WFTS and Cincinnati's
WCPO .
Shortly after
Fox agreed to affiliate with all the New World stations except for NBC affiliates
KNSD channel 39 in
San Diego and
WVTM-TV channel 13 in
Birmingham , as well as independent
WSBK-TV channel 38 in
Boston , which would be sold to Paramount/Viacom and become a
UPN station.
But WGHP (along with
WBRC ) would be sold directly to
Fox , who took over the operation of WGHP and WBRC through
Local Marketing Agreement s in the summer of 1995. On
September 4 ,
1995 , WGHP took the Fox affiliation. It took all Fox programs, including Fox Kids which it showed from 1-4pm, where
Soap Opera s from ABC had previously run as well as Saturday mornings where a local newscast previously ran. The ABC affiliation went to former Fox affiliate WNRW channel 45 (now
WXLV-TV ). WGHP added a few more talk/reality shows as well as some off network sitcoms such as
I Love Lucy ,
Seinfeld ,
Beverly Hillbillies , and others. The weekday newscasts expanded to occupy the
Good Morning America timeslot. The evening newscasts remained in place. the 11 p.m. newscast was moved to 10 p.m. and expanded to an hour. In mid-January
1996 , Fox closed on both WGHP and WBRC, with WGHP becoming an official Fox owned-and-operated station (O&O); WBRC had to wait another seven and one-half months, until September
1996 , to switch from ABC to Fox.
In 1996, Pappas approached WGHP about picking up
Fox Kids and moving it to their newly acquired WBFX channel 20 (then a WB affiliate, later WTWB-TV and now
CW affiliate
WCWG ). In between that time Fox executives, upon picking up new affiliates through New World, decided to redo the on-air coverage policy of airing Fox Kids; the station can choose to keep airing it or be granted the right to pre-empt it and pass it down to another local counterpart. WGHP decided to let the station have the programming. This would be the first Fox owned and operated station to not run the kids block, and only one of 2 (with WBRC) until New World merged with Fox in 1997. WGHP added more talk and court shows in the afternoon. But they still have no Saturday morning newscast. WTWB dropped Fox's children programming in late 2001 when Fox canceled the weekday block nationwide. In 2002, Fox began a Saturday morning block of cartoons to replace Fox Kids known as Fox Box (now
4Kids TV ), but WGHP did not pick that up. As a result, Fox's
4Kids TV does not air in Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point.
- Weekday Evening Anchor
- Weekday Evening Anchor
- Weekday Morning Anchor
- Weekday Morning Anchor
- Weekend Anchor
- General Assignment Reporter
- Traffic Reporter/Fill-in Meteorologist
- General Assignment Reporter
- Winston-Salem Bureau Chief
- General Assignment Reporter
- FOX News Washington, D.C. Correspondent
- General Assignment Reporter
- Consumer Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter, seen weekday mornings
- General Assignment Reporter
- General Assignment Reporter
- "Roy's Folks" Feature Reporter
- Chief Meteorologist
- Weekday Morning Meteorologist
- Weekend Meteorologist
- Sports Director/Anchor
- Sports Anchor
- Sports Anchor
- WGHP had first been known as "Channel ei8ht" from 1963 until 1970. The name "ei8ht" has also been used by KOMU , WJW , KAIT , and a few others.
- Next, WGHP had been known as "WGHPiedmont" between 1987 and the early 1990s, with a triangle 8 logo also used by KSBW .
- In 1990, "WGHPiedmont" had changed to "The Piedmont Newschannel". That name would be kept until the sale to Fox in 1995, when it became FOX 8. However, FOX 8 continued to use the slogan "The Piedmont Newschannel" until October 2005, when it adopted the new slogan "The News Leader."
