WIS (channel 10) is a television station in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW.

The two stations share studios on Bull and Gervais Streets (US 1/US 378) in downtown Columbia and a transmitter on Rush Road (southeast of I-20) in rural southwestern Kershaw County, outside Lugoff.

Seven of WMSC's stockholders sold their shares in Maresco and joined the board of the television station, which was initially operated separately from WIS radio.

[5][6] However, the station was based alongside WIS radio at a new facility on Bull Street, where channel 10 is still headquartered today.

However, until 1961, when a new channel 25 signed on as WCCA-TV (now WOLO-TV), it maintained a secondary affiliation with ABC, airing its programming outside of NBC network timeslots.

WIS-TV was a major beneficiary of an exception to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s "2+1⁄2 + 1" plan for allocating VHF television bandwidth.

With the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order in 1952, the Commission outlined a new allocation table for VHF licenses and opened up the UHF band.

WIS-TV was fortunate to gain that license, providing many people in that part of South Carolina with their first clear reception of a television signal.

In 1959, WIS-TV activated its current transmitter tower in Lugoff; the tallest structure located east of the Mississippi River at the time, it more than doubled the station's coverage area and provided at least secondary coverage as far north as Charlotte, as far south as Augusta, as far west as Greenwood and as far east as Florence.

This included all but five of the state's 46 counties; in fact, until the arrival of cable television in the market in the late 1970s, channel 10 was one of only two stations that brought a clear signal to much of the outlying portions of the market—the other being WRLK-TV (channel 35), one of the two South Carolina Educational Television stations that serve the area.

The station's original tower is still used as a backup; it is a longtime fixture of Columbia's skyline and is turned into a "Christmas tree of lights" during the holiday season.

WIS had modest viewership on the South Carolina side of the Charlotte market for several years, especially after that city's NBC affiliation moved to WRET (channel 36, later WPCQ-TV and now WCNC-TV) in 1978.

Additionally, Columbia has only eight full-power stations, one fewer than what ownership rules allow to legally permit a duopoly in any case.

[8] For a week after the transition, some viewers lost access to NBC programming because WIS used its backup transmitter, which was not operating at full power.

The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion – in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom – resulted in WIS gaining new sister stations in nearby markets, including CBS affiliate WRDW-TV and NBC affiliate WAGT-CD in Augusta (while separating it from WFXG) in addition to its current Raycom sister stations.

In 1963, the station debuted a long-running children's program Mr. Knozit, which was hosted by weather anchor Joe Pinner, who had been hired by WIS-TV a few months before.

Pinner, known in his later years as "Papa Joe", went into semi-retirement in 2000, but continued to provide weather reports and feature segments on the Friday edition of its noon newscast.

Jim Gandy, the station's chief meteorologist from 1984 to 1999, was known as "South Carolina's Weatherman"; he was the only area forecaster to predict Hurricane Hugo would make landfall in Charleston.

Some other members of the team who have had long tenures included Jack Kuenzie, Dawndy Mercer Plank, and Ben Tanner.

Current anchors who have been at the station for more than a decade include Judi Gatson, Von Gaskin, and Rick Henry.

In 1997, for instance, Hank Price of Northwestern University's Media Management Center recalled that whenever South Carolina was mentioned in television circles, "WIS' name will quickly come up" because it was seen as "a model for success."

In 1970, WIS-TV premiered Awareness, a weekly public affairs program focusing on social and political issues concerning the minority population of the Midlands.

In 1996, WIS entered into a news share agreement with Fox affiliate WACH to produce a 10 p.m. newscast for that station, which—buoyed by WIS's ratings dominance—became one of the highest-rated prime time newscasts in the United States; the agreement ended in March 2007, when WACH launched its own news department.

On November 4, 2010, WIS became the second television station in the Columbia market (after WOLO) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

On June 16, 2013, WIS expanded its news programming on weekend mornings with the debut of the market's first Sunday morning newscast, airing at 10 a.m.[21] The station's signal is multiplexed: WIS is carried on cable systems as far southwest as Aiken and as far northeast as Wadesboro, North Carolina.

DirecTV customers in Scotland and Robeson Counties in North Carolina received WIS as the default NBC station instead of WECT in nearby Wilmington.

Just outside that market, WIS remains on cable providers in many areas around South Carolina such as Georgetown and Williamsburg counties.