[8][9] WJRJ was launched on a shoestring budget, with an afternoon and evening schedule—running from 4 to 11 p.m.—filled with older movies and a few off-network reruns (such as Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and The Rifleman), as well as a 15-minute-long news program.

[11][12] In July 1969, Rice Broadcasting announced an agreement to merge with the Turner Communications Corporation—an Atlanta-based group owned by entrepreneur Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who ran the billboard advertising business founded by his deceased father and had also owned radio stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (WGOW); Charleston, South Carolina (WTMA-AM-FM, the FM station is now WSSX-FM); and Jacksonville, Florida (WMBR, now WQOP)—in an all-stock transaction.

First, when Turner bought the station, it was the only one in the Atlanta market that was still broadcasting exclusively in black-and-white because the previous owners had not made the necessary technical upgrades to allow the transmission of color programming.

As a last resort (after unsuccessfully attempting to secure further financing), Turner held an on-air telethon—much in the manner of the pledge drives seen on public television—to raise the money needed to pay the station's bills.

[23] Beginning in the early 1970s, many cable systems in middle and southern Georgia and surrounding states—namely Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina—began receiving the WTCG signal via microwave relay, enabling the station to reach far beyond the Atlanta television market.

[28] All four cable systems started receiving Deep Waters, a 1948 drama film starring Dana Andrews and Cesar Romero, which was already airing in progress for 30 minutes on channel 17 in Atlanta.

That number would grow in the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the Southern United States (where WTCG's telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball and professional wrestling were highly popular), with its cable coverage eventually encompassing the nation.

Channel 17 changed its call letters to WTBS—for the Turner Broadcasting System, which its parent company had been renamed in accordance with the callsign change—on August 27, 1979; the station concurrently began branding as "SuperStation WTBS" on a limited basis.

As a result, local commercials airing on channel 17 in Atlanta were substituted with separate national advertising, direct response ads or public service announcements over the satellite feed.

[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] The merger received regulatory approval on September 12, 1996; the Turner–Time Warner deal was finalized one month later on October 10, forming what at the time was the largest media company in the world.

The national cable channel would be known as TBS, while the Atlanta broadcast station would retain a commercial independent format that also focused on sitcoms, as well as other movies and local interest programs.

Channel 17 subsequently migrated its operations from the Techwood Drive facility into WGCL's studio building on 14th Street Northwest in Atlanta's Atlantic Station district.

[63] Media analysts suggested that WPCH was likely to be spun off or sold to a third party to potentially avoid an FCC review entirely, in an effort to expedite the AT&T–Time Warner merger.

The TBS cable channel would remain part of Time Warner, which was renamed WarnerMedia upon the merger's June 14, 2018, consummation, following a 11⁄2-year-long antitrust battle with the United States Department of Justice that ended with the deal being affirmed by court judgement.

[77] On August 30, 2023, Gray Television and Nexstar Media Group announced that WPCH would become the new Atlanta affiliate of The CW on September 1, ending its independent status after 56 years.

The acquisition of the Braves television rights reversed the standard of MLB franchises designating originating stations, arranging their own regional carrier networks and handling advertising sales for their game telecasts.

Although Mid-South quickly became the highest-rated program on WTBS, Watts lost out on acquiring the two-hour-long Saturday timeslot occupied by the WWF, when Barnett helped broker a deal that allowed Crockett to buy the slot from McMahon and become the superstation's exclusive wrestling promotion.

[citation needed] In its early years under Turner Broadcasting ownership, along with sports and its superstation status, WTCG also made its name by producing humorous, satirical newscasts.

One such program was 17 Update Early in the Morning, which featured the usually straight-faced Bill Tush and Tina Seldin reporting the news in a mostly deadpan fashion, occasionally interacting with the studio crew, and with comedic sideline gags at times by another co-anchor (known as "The Unknown Newsman") wearing a brown paper grocery bag over his head.

On July 20, 1980, CNN began producing an hour-long weeknight news program for WTBS; the TBS Evening News—which was originally anchored by David Jensen (who previously served as a host for BBC Radio 1), Kevin Christopher and meteorologist Dallas Raines—usually ran at 10 p.m. local time (the airtime sometimes varied depending on the movie or sports presentation that preceded it).

Thereafter, initially to encourage viewers to ask for the network full-time, the station also ran a half-hour simulcast of CNN2/Headline News each morning at 6 a.m. in the Atlanta market and at 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time in the rest of the country.

The Headline News simulcasts as well as the TBS NewsWatch segments were eventually phased out locally and nationally in 1996 following the relaxation of the FCC's public affairs programming requirements.

One notable situation occurred on the December 5, 2017, edition of the newscast, in which Reed—who is African American—made an unannounced on-air address about an email sent by a female viewer, who accused Reed—whom the sender referred to as a "niger", spelling the racial slur without a second "g"—of making a racial double standard with regards to a discussion in an earlier newscast about issues of race in the mayoral election between Atlanta city councilwomen Mary Norwood (who is white) and Keisha Lance Bottoms (who is Black, and who was elected mayor with 50.4% of the vote).

Its digital signal is diplexed with Univision owned-and-operated station WUVG (channel 34) into a master broadcast antenna at a separate tower, located at 1800 Briarcliff Road Northeast, in Atlanta's Morningside neighborhood.

The station had also applied for an analog backup facility at this location, with a corresponding construction permit dating from its original application in 2003 to transmit from the WATL digital antenna on the same tower.

The station first became authorized for distribution in Canada in April 1985, when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved WTBS and fellow American superstations WGN-TV, WOR-TV and WPIX for carriage by domestic multichannel television providers.

Under CRTC linkage rules first implemented in 1983 that include requirements for providers to offer U.S.-based program services in discretionary tiers tied to Canadian services, TBS and other authorized U.S. superstations typically have been received mainly through a subscription to a domestic premium service—such as First Choice (later The Movie Network and now Crave), Moviepix (later The Movie Network Encore and now Starz), Super Channel, Super Écran, Movie Central (the original user of the Superchannel name, now defunct) and Encore Avenue (also now defunct)—although, beginning in late 1997, many cable and satellite providers moved TBS to new tertiary specialty channel tier under a related rule that allows for one superstation of the provider's choice to be carried on a non-premium tier.

[117][118][119] Because the CRTC had only approved the Atlanta station's broadcast signal for distribution to cable, satellite and other domestic subscription television providers, following the separation of TBS and WTBS/WPCH in October 2007, Canadian subscribers continued to receive the re-called WPCH-TV rather than its former national feed.

Indeed, in its notification of WTBS's change of callsign and branding to the CRTC, Turner Broadcasting apparently did not make any request to have the TBS cable channel approved in its place.

In a deviation from other American superstations available within the country, the Canadian feed of WPCH does not retransmit CW network programming or the station's WANF-produced newscasts, offering alternate content in its place.