Founded as WAIM-TV in 1953, the station primarily broadcast local network programming to the Anderson area, serving as an affiliate of ABC and CBS after 1956.
However, it lost ABC affiliation at the start of 1979 and failed as an independent station after six months, leading to more than five years of silence.
However, after the death of its owner in 1987 and more than a year off the air, the station was sold to WLOS for use as a rebroadcaster to reach areas of the Upstate that its Asheville-centric signal could not.
Spartanburg radio station WORD held a construction permit for very high frequency (VHF) channel 7 and sought to use it on an interim basis from Paris Mountain, 27 miles (43 km) west of Spartanburg and closer to Anderson than the originally proposed site of Hogback Mountain.
In February 1954, Hall petitioned the FCC to set aside its earlier grant of temporary authority for WORD-TV, later changed to WSPA-TV, to broadcast from Paris Mountain, having already lost nearly $60,000 in canceled advertising contracts and lost CBS revenue; he feared losing his CBS affiliation altogether.
[6] On January 31, 1955, the appeals court heard arguments by WGVL and WAIM against the WSPA-TV authorization on Paris Mountain, having obtained six months prior a restraining order preventing Spartan from building its transmitter facility until the case was heard (though the studios were near completion and initial preparations had been made on Paris Mountain).
[8] WGVL and WAIM-TV counsel asked for oral argument on the decision, warning that it would be "aggravating the forces now making for unequal competition in the television field and hastening the trend towards complete obliteration of UHF".
[11] On Sunday, April 29, 1956, WSPA-TV signed on;[12] channel 23 left the air that day,[13] Concurrently, the station also unsuccessfully sought relief in the form of moving channel 7 out of the Upstate and to Knoxville, Tennessee,[14] while Hall engaged with equipment manufacturer Federal Telecommunications Laboratories in a legal dispute; he stopped paying what he owed on a transmitter he claimed was defective, "worthless and useless"[15] because it could not broadcast network color programming in color.
[19] In addition to a secondary affiliation with CBS, the station also broadcast South Carolina Educational Television daytime programs for schools for a time in the 1960s.
[22] In 1977, Hall announced the sale of his broadcasting properties to Frank L. Outlaw II of Greenville;[23] the $850,000 transaction marked his retirement.
[25] The sale was approved by the FCC the next year[2]—with Outlaw selling a half-stake to Bob Nations and doing business under the name "The ONE Corporation" (Outlaw-Nations Entertainment)[26]—but it also started the clock ticking on the need to reinvent channel 40.
While some systems added WAIM-TV, cable penetration was too low in those days to meaningfully increase the station's potential audience.
[31] New South Television sold WAIM-TV in 1983 to Mark III Broadcasting of South Carolina, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Agronomics, Inc.[32] Agronomics changed the call letters to WAXA, obtained approval for a new tower site for the station, and broke ground in November 1983 on studios on the U.S. 29 bypass.
[34] After five and a half years, channel 40 returned to South Carolina screens on October 1, 1984, with a lineup mostly consisting of movies and syndicated reruns.
[38] Stereo sound broadcasting began in March, making WAXA the first station in South Carolina to provide it.
[39] WAXA was the area's first Fox affiliate when the network started on October 9, 1986; it also debuted on Asheville cable the next month, a major development for a station that had long struggled to reach viewers in western North Carolina.
[44] No contract was ever finalized with Jones, and while WAXA claimed that getting out of its Fox affiliation was reducing programming costs, it did lay off some staff in late 1988 for what it termed "budgetary reasons".
AnchorMedia and Mary Kupris appealed the FCC's denial of the outright sale of the station and won a victory at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ordered the FCC to reconsider its denial; one concurring statement by Laurence Silberman noted that the court even considered ordering the transfer granted and expressed the opinion that "there is no alternative use for the frequency".
[51] In 1992, WLOS reached a deal with the Independent-Mail to share news material and announced it would start producing a South Carolina newscast at 6 p.m. for air on channel 40.
[60] Glencairn subsequently changed its name to Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation, but its stock is still almost entirely owned by the Smith family, and the companies continued to be closely related.