WVTM-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with NBC and CBS. Owned by Hearst Television, the station maintains studios and transmitter facilities atop Red Mountain, between Vulcan Trail and Valley View Drive in southeastern Birmingham, adjacent to the Vulcan statue and next to the studios of Fox affiliate WBRC (channel 6).
WVTM-TV was the first television station to broadcast in Alabama. It began airing test programming in June 1949 as WAFM-TV and initiated regular service on July 1, the same day as WBRC. It was co-owned with WAPI and WAFM radio and changed call signs to WABT in 1953, after being acquired by The Birmingham News, and WAPI-TV in 1958. For its first 21 years on air, the station held two network affiliations: CBS and ABC (1949–1954), NBC and ABC (1954–1961), and NBC and CBS (1961–1970). Though Birmingham gained a third station in 1965, WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT) initially relied on network programs that channel 13 chose not to air before WAPI-TV opted to become a sole NBC affiliate beginning in May 1970.
The Times Mirror Company acquired the station in March 1980 and, as it had separated from WAPI radio, changed its call sign to WVTM-TV (Vulcan–Times Mirror). Under Times Mirror, WVTM became competitive in news with WBRC for the first time following the 1981 hiring of former WBRC anchors Joe Langston and Herb Winches. Though they left after less than two years, WVTM remained neck-and-neck with WBRC until 1989, when that station began to widen the news ratings gap. In 1993, Times Mirror sold its last stations, WVTM among them, to Argyle Television Holdings. Argyle was bought by New World Communications, which was simultaneously involved in switching other stations including WBRC to Fox. However, a 10-year affiliation deal with NBC protected WVTM from changing affiliations. In 1996, NBC acquired WVTM, making it an owned-and-operated station. Under NBC, news ratings sank in the five years following Birmingham's affiliation switch as ABC 33/40 became a major competitor in the market.
NBC spun off WVTM and three other stations in mid-sized markets to Media General in 2006. When Media General merged with LIN Media in 2014, it elected to retain that company's WIAT and divested WVTM to Hearst. Since the transaction, WVTM has improved its ratings standing back to second place. On August 1, 2026, WVTM's fourth subchannel became the market's CBS affiliate, replacing WIAT.
History WAFM-TV: Construction and early years On February 10, 1948, Voice of Alabama, Inc.—the owner of Birmingham radio stations WAPI (1070 AM) and WAFM—applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to build a television station on channel 13 in the city, which was granted on April 29 of that year. Voice of Alabama had first envisioned a television station for Birmingham at the end of the 1930s and began negotiating with the CBS network by 1944.
By June 1, 1949, WAFM-TV was on the air with test patterns. This made it the first station to send a signal in Alabama, beating Birmingham's other TV station, WBRC-TV (channel 6). A test schedule with programming aired on June 12; regular programming followed on July 1. The station had affiliations with CBS and ABC, while WBRC-TV presented NBC programs. In its first night of regular programs, WAFM-TV carried Starlight Opera, an outdoor concert presentation. The station also offered Birmingham Black Barons baseball telecasts, live football and basketball, and special event broadcasts.
Live network television arrived in Birmingham in September 1950, when coaxial cable reached the city. Previously, all network programs in Birmingham had been seen via lower-quality kinescopes—filmed recordings of a television monitor. WBRC-TV and WAFM-TV shared a cable until 1951, when the addition of a second cable allowed more network programs to be telecast live. Voice of Alabama, Inc., became The Television Corporation in November 1952; by the next month, WAFM-TV was also airing programming from the DuMont Television Network.
Birmingham would only have two television stations for more than 15 years. A third station, planned by WSGN, had been filed for and was pending when the FCC in 1948 froze all television station grants. WAFM and WSGN shared a tower for FM and TV telecasting, and it was planned for a future WSGN-TV to use the same antenna as WAFM-TV. WSGN-TV was planned to telecast on channel 9 and hoped to get channel 10, which was allocated to Birmingham. But when the freeze ended, channel 10 was reserved non-commercial educational, leaving only channels in the new ultra high frequency (UHF) band. WSGN-TV was approved for channel 42 in December 1952. It would have affiliated with ABC, given WSGN radio's association with the network. WSGN and its FM counterpart, WSGN-FM, were owned by The Birmingham News newspaper.
Purchase by The Birmingham News On April 8, 1953, the Birmingham News Co. announced its purchase of The Television Corporation and the WAPI–WAFM stations from Thad Holt and Edward L. Norton, thereby abandoning its UHF station plans for WSGN as well as WSGN radio itself. At the time, Norton was exiting broadcasting, having sold his other stations—WMBR-AM-FM-TV in Jacksonville, Florida—to The Washington Post. The gross sale price, including property and land, was greater than $2.4 million. The FCC approved the transaction in June 1953, after arrangements were made to sell the WSGN stations.
Under Norton and Holt, WAFM-TV was approved to increase its effective radiated power to 316,000 watts. On September 29, 1953, channel 13 began broadcasting with the new power level. The call sign was changed at that time to WABT ("Alabama's Best Television"), which was believed to be similar and more in line with WAPI and WAFM. On July 4, 1954, WABT traded primary network affiliations with WBRC-TV and joined NBC; however it retained a secondary affiliation with ABC as did WBRC-TV, which took over the CBS affiliation as its then-new owners, Storer Broadcasting, had a strong relationship with the network. The first network color program broadcast in Birmingham was aired less than two weeks later. Later in 1954, ground was broken on an expansion to the Red Mountain facility to include a second studio with a revolving stage for the display of large products such as cars. DuMont ceased its existence as a network in 1955.
In its early years, channel 13 aired a variety of local programs. Benny Carle hosted Western Theater, which was among the most popular TV shows in Birmingham until WBRC-TV hired him away in 1954. Magician Cliff Holman hosted a children's program on the station for 15 years from 1954 until 1969, when he departed to help set up WHMA-TV in Anniston. Other programs produced by the station included the women's interest magazine Carousel; Red Mountain Wranglers; Breakfast in Birmingham; and Model Kitchen.
WAPI-TV: Newhouse ownership In December 1955, Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. acquired The Birmingham News, its Birmingham broadcast stations, The Huntsville Times, and its associated broadcast stations in Huntsville, Alabama, for $18.7 million, the largest transaction in newspaper history to that point. The transaction received FCC approval in January 1956. On September 28, 1958, WAFM became WAPI-FM and WABT became WAPI-TV, uniting the co-owned stations under one base call sign.
WBRC-TV owner Taft Broadcasting signed a group affiliation agreement with ABC in March 1961, with all of them leaving CBS. Beginning September 2, WAPI-TV became a secondary CBS affiliate, and the network's top programs moved to channel 13. The station aired both networks' evening newscasts—Douglas Edwards with the News and the Huntley–Brinkley Report. Only in October 1965 did the full schedules of CBS and NBC begin to air in central Alabama. This was due to the advent of a new UHF station, WBMG (channel 42). WBMG had no primary network affiliation and instead depended on the programs WAPI-TV did not select from NBC and CBS. Under this arrangement, because WAPI-TV had first-call rights to both networks, series moved between the stations, sometimes in the middle of the television season. WAPI-TV did not air the two nights a week of movies from each of NBC and CBS, giving WBMG four nights a week of films. In 1967, WAPI-TV began producing local programs in color, including its local newscasts and Romper Room.
The dual-affiliation arrangement ended on May 31, 1970, when WAPI-TV became the sole NBC affiliate under a new agreement with NBC and WBMG the sole CBS affiliate. WAPI-TV general manager Donald D. Wear felt that focusing on a single network and complementing it with local programming would better serve the market.
In 1973, the Magic City Communications Coalition, a group of Black interests, challenged the renewal of WAPI-TV's broadcast license. It charged that the Newhouse ownership of the WAPI broadcast stations and The News was anticompetitive and accused the station of underemploying Black people in its operations and of racial discrimination. The commission dismissed the petition and granted the renewal in 1976.
WVTM-TV: Times-Mirror ownership and the Argyle–New World carousel
Citing pressure to divest itself of cross-ownership combinations of newspapers and television stations, Newhouse announced in December 1978 that it would sell all five of its TV stations to the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles for $82.38 million. Four of the five markets in which Newhouse sold stations, including Birmingham, were cities where the company owned newspapers. The FCC approved the transaction in March 1980, and new call signs followed for most of the stations. WAPI-TV became WVTM-TV, for Vulcan and Times Mirror.
In March 1993, Times Mirror sold its four TV stations to Argyle Television Holdings in a two-part deal. WVTM and KTVI in St. Louis were the first two stations to be sold, with WVTM going for $45 million. Argyle closed on the other two stations—KDFW in Dallas and KTBC in Austin, Texas—at the start of 1994. Twelve WVTM employees lost their jobs in a reorganization spurred by Argyle in February 1994. Among them was Rosemary Lucas, a weather presenter and talk show host who had been with channel 13 for 32 years and took an early retirement.
New World Communications agreed in May 1994 to buy Argyle for $717 million. The deal's announcement coincided with the company signing a multi-market affiliation deal with Fox and came in the same month that the company had agreed to buy four other stations, including WBRC, from Great American Communications Corporation. WBRC was the station earmarked to change to Fox. So that New World could exercise its option to buy Argyle without creating a then-impermissible duopoly, WBRC was placed into a blind trust.
As an NBC owned-and-operated station