WANF

WANF (channel 46), branded as Atlanta News First, is an independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is the flagship property of locally based Gray Media and is co-owned with CW affiliate WPCH-TV (channel 17) and low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD (channel 47). WANF and WPCH-TV share studios on 14th Street Northwest in Atlanta's Home Park neighborhood, while WANF's transmitter is located in the city's Woodland Hills section. The station was built in 1971 as WHAE-TV (later WANX-TV), owned by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Originally a nonprofit operation airing religious programs, the station gradually became a more commercially oriented independent station and broadened its programming to include older movies and family-friendly classic TV shows. CBN sold the station to Tribune Broadcasting in 1983, and the call sign was changed to WGNX in 1984. Tribune substantially built up the station, upgrading programming and turning it into Atlanta's top-rated local independent station; it also started a local newscast for the station in January 1989. After a major switch of television affiliations in Atlanta in 1994, WGNX became Atlanta's new CBS affiliate and the only such station owned by Tribune. However, news was not seriously expanded until after Meredith Corporation acquired the station in 1999 as part of a purchase-and-trade with Tribune. The WGCL-TV call sign was adopted in 2000 as part of a major, but short-lived, rebrand of the station to "Clear TV" and its newscasts to Clear News. Meredith also assumed operating control of WPCH-TV in 2011, purchasing the station outright in 2017. Over the course of its tenure with CBS, the station was generally a revolving door of management and presenting talent with little ratings success, frequently drawing the lowest ratings of Atlanta's news-producing stations. The acquisition of the Meredith Local Media division by Gray Media...