WLBT 10PM Newscast, May 21, 1984 · 9:24pm Nov 12th, 2016
TV-3, the NBC network affiliate for the capital city of Mississippi, spends the proceeding 30 minutes awaiting the nightly arrival of Johnny Carson with a newscast anchored by Bert Case and Maggie Wade, sports reporter Michael Rubenstein and weatherman Steve Raleigh. The embedded video featured a comment from yours truly assisting in the uploader's research of the clip by pointing to a part stating that President Ronald Reagan had just signed the Child Protection Act, a point I made in part because of the title of that video.
WLBT was one of two TV stations in U.S. broadcasting history to have its license revoked by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). During the 1950s and 1960s, WLBT's original owners were staunch supporters of continued racial segregation in Mississippi, a position that was shown prominently through news coverage, on-air editorials and even some programming decisions (ex.: In 1955, when civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall - later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court - appeared on the "Today" show, WLBT interrupted the interview, putting up a sign that said, "Sorry, Cable Trouble."). Numerous petitions by various civil rights groups and warnings from the FCC concerning violation of the Fairness Doctrine were ignored by the station. The whole issue went to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which ordered the FCC to strip WLBT of its license in 1969. The station appealed, but to no avail. In June 1971, WLBT was re-licensed to a bi-racial, non-profit organization called Communications Improvement, Inc., who ran Channel 3 until 1980, when it was sold to TV-3, Inc., the licensee at the time this newscast was recorded (WLBT is currently owned by Raycom Media).
