WGWG, virtual channel 4, is a Heroes & Icons-affiliated television stationlicensed to Charleston, South Carolina, United States and serving the Lowcountry area. The station is owned by Howard Stirk Holdings. WGWG's transmitter is located near Awendaw, South Carolina. From 1962 through 2014, what is now WGWG was the original home of WCIV, and had been Charleston's ABC affiliate since 1996; however, in August 2014, WCIV owner Allbritton Communications was acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of MyNetworkTV affiliate WMMP and operator of Fox affiliate WTAT-TV. Due to ownership conflicts with WMMP and WTAT, and a recent crackdown on joint sales agreements by the FCC, Sinclair elected to sell the WCIV channel 4 license to Howard Stirk Holdings, and moved WCIV's ABC programming and news operation to a subchannel of WMMP's channel 36 signal. At the same time, the two stations also switched call signs, with WCIV moving to channel 36 and channel 4 becoming the new WMMP, though the MyNetworkTV affiliation remains on channel 36.1 and did not move to channel 4. The FCC approved HSH Charleston's purchase of channel 4 on December 4, 2014; the call letters became WGWG on March 11, 2015. Howard Stirk Holdings operates WGWG independently of WCIV and WTAT, and has not entered into a local marketing agreement with Sinclair.
History
WGWG began operations on October 23, 1962 as WCIV, the third commercial outlet in Charleston. The original license was granted to WTMA-TV but the call letters were later changed to WCIV before it signed on. It took the NBC affiliation from WCBD-TV, leaving that station to become a full-time ABC affiliate. The station was originally owned by the Washington Star Company. In 1976, businessman Joe Allbritton bought the Star and sold off the non-television assets in 1978 to form Allbritton Communications. In May 1994, Birmingham ABC affiliate WBRC was sold to New World Communications, which signed an affiliation agreement with eleven other stations which would become Fox affiliates. WBRC, along with Piedmont Triad ABC affiliate WGHP, were placed in a blind trust in the fall of 1994, as the FCC prohibited a company from owning more than twelve television stations at the time. Both stations were sold to Fox directly in July 1995, but Fox was forced to run WBRC as an ABC affiliate for over a year after the sale, as WBRC's affiliation contract with ABC did not expire until August 1996. Before WBRC became a Fox owned-and-operated station, Allbritton purchased WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV, and made them full power satellites of WBMA-LP; this prompted Allbritton to sign a groupwide affiliation deal with ABC. WCIV became an ABC affiliate on August 19, 1996; the NBC affiliation subsequently returned to WCBD on that day.
Sale to Howard Stirk Holdings; ABC and MeTV move to channel 36
On July 29, 2013, Allbritton Communications announced that it would sell its entire television group, including WCIV, to Sinclair. As part of the deal, Sinclair was planning to sell the license assets of WMMP to Howard Stirk Holdings, but would still operate the station through shared services and joint sales agreements. However, in December 2013, FCC Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman ruled that "the proposed transactions would result in the elimination of the grandfathered status of certain local marketing agreements and thus cause the transactions to violate our local TV ownership rules." While Sinclair attempted to sell WMMP and planned to terminate an SSA with the Cunningham-owned Fox affiliate WTAT, as well as foregoing any operational or financial agreements with the buyers of the stations being sold to other parties, on May 29, 2014, Sinclair informed the FCC that it had not found a buyer for WMMP and proposed surrendering the WCIV broadcast license; through the use of multicasting, WMMP would both carry its existing programming and inherit WCIV's ABC affiliation, syndicated programming, and news operation. Sinclair opted to retain WMMP because its facilities are superior to those of WCIV. However, following the closure of the Allbritton deal, Sinclair reached a deal to sell WCIV's license to Howard Stirk Holdings, and offer it studio space at WMMP's existing facilities. The transition process began on September 25, 2014, as a simulcast of WCIV was added to WMMP's second subchannel, along with MeTV on 36.3, and MyTV Charleston remaining on 36.1. The two stations then swapped licenses; WCIV's call sign was moved to the WMMP license and virtual channel 36, while WMMP's call sign was moved to the WCIV license which will be sold to Howard Stirk Holdings. The original WCIV signal went silent on September 30, 2014, making ABC exclusive to WCIV-DT2. Channel 4 subsequently returned to the air with programming from the ZUUS Country network, which had displaced on 36.3 by WCIV's former DT2 affiliation, MeTV. On March 11, 2015, WMMP changed its call letters to WGWG. On August 1, 2015, the station switched its primary affiliation to Heroes & Icons. On August 2, 2016, the station launched its 4.2 subchannel, affiliated with Decades.
On October 1, 2011, WCIV added MeTV on digital subchannel 4.2, replacing The Local AccuWeather Channel. With the transition to WMMP, 4.2's signal moved to 36.3.
