WIAT (channel 42) is a television station in Birmingham, Alabama, United States, affiliated with CBS and owned by Nexstar Media Group.

It was hemmed in by its weaker signal, the existence of CBS affiliates in Tuscaloosa and Anniston, and the dominance of the VHF stations in the ratings.

For a month, channel 42 aired a countdown clock at 5 and 10 p.m. while the news department was rebuilt from scratch, a tactic that attracted national attention.

After ratings plateaued in the early 2000s, the station moved to a more conventional format and brought in veteran Birmingham news personalities, which made channel 42 more competitive in the market.

In 1960, the FCC sent letters to the permittees of 54 unused or unbuilt UHF stations, including WBMG, ordering them to resume or lose the permit.

[19] The quarters it occupied on Red Mountain had belonged to radio station WJLD and were designed to accommodate a television operation.

Likewise, WBMG aired the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on weeknights.

[31][32] Park continued to make capital investments in channel 42 in spite of its reduced coverage area, including new video tape equipment, electronic news gathering, and a new antenna.

[33] The station produced a number of local programs; these included a public affairs series (Spectrum), live studio wrestling,[34] a weekly church service, and annual coverage of Birmingham's Veterans Day parade.

One of its first employees was Bill Bolen, who had worked at WSGN radio and later left to spend 41 years at WBRC; he recalled channel 42 as "primitive".

[40] The station did not air local newscasts for the next several years;[41] Park instead invested in a new, taller tower and higher-power transmitter facility for WBMG, which were activated in 1983 and 1984, respectively.

[44] News director Frank Morock believed the expanding focuses of the other stations left Birmingham and its environs relatively underserved.

"[52] In 1994, Park Communications[a] sold itself to Donald R. Tomlin and Gary B. Knapp in a deal backed by the Retirement Systems of Alabama pension fund.

At the same time, New World agreed to buy Argyle Television, owner of NBC affiliate WVTM-TV; to resolve the conflict, WBRC-TV was sold directly to the Fox network.

[57] Instead, Park Communications signed a long-term renewal with CBS, owing to its upcoming deal to carry Southeastern Conference college sports and the company's lengthy relationship with the network.

The new station, which debuted in September 1996 under the moniker "ABC 33/40", featured veteran Alabama news personalities including WBRC's James Spann and Brenda Ladun,[59][60] later poaching anchor Pam Huff from WVTM.

[65] Among Land's first moves was simulcasting WBMG's newscasts on WNAL in Gadsden, which had replaced WJSU as the CBS affiliate in the eastern portion of the state.

[66] The station also ended its longtime relationship with UAB athletics; Broome, a noted booster, was known for preempting CBS prime time programming for sports.

[67] Land's priority was to fix the news department; he had previously overseen major overhauls at WGRZ and at WEYI-TV in Saginaw, Michigan.

The station's newscasts had sunk below The Andy Griffith Show on WTTO and Sanford and Son on WABM in the ratings,[68][61] and they were so poor that not even the anchors' parents watched, Land later recalled.

On that date, at 5 p.m., viewers saw Land push a plunger to blow up the WBMG logo before an audience of Birmingham community leaders.

The format earned comparisons to CNN Headline News from Keith Cate, who came from WMAR-TV in Baltimore to serve as lead co-anchor, and an article in the Birmingham Post-Herald.

[80] The other weeknight news presenters, like Cate, came from out of the market: Sherri Jackson was hired from WSAZ-TV in Huntington, West Virginia,[81] while Declan Cannon had worked at The Weather Channel.

[92] Land departed in 2001 when Media General tapped him to run WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida, the company's flagship television property; he reunited with Cate, who had joined the WFLA news staff the year before.

Media General opted to keep WVTM because its signal reached more households;[98] it also was third in the market in revenue compared to WIAT in fourth.

[99] The company put four of its stations up for the sale, including WIAT, to finance the purchase and meet ownership limits in the Birmingham market.

[100][101] WIAT and KIMT in Mason City, Iowa, were sold to Atlanta-based New Vision Television in a deal announced in August and completed in October 2006.

[99] It debuted a full-fledged morning newscast in September 2007,[103] and it began attracting noted news personalities under general manager Bill Ballard, who ran the station from 2003 to 2013.

[106] The station also hired other longtime news presenters in Birmingham, including Ken Lass, Mark Prater, and David Neal.

[109] LIN was acquired two years later by Media General, which opted to keep WIAT and divest WVTM, along with WJCL in Savannah, Georgia, to Hearst Television.