…on East Boulevard is the CBS affiliate for South Central Alabama, with remote studios in Selma, Troy and Greenville. The station was started in 1960 as an ABC outlet in Selma by my one-time neighbors, the Brennan Brothers of Big-BAM fame. But after two decades of repeated sale of its license and numerous legal battles, the entity was moved to Montgomery where it covered both Selma and the Capital City. There it set out to take on the long dominant WSFA-TV and changed its call letters to WAKA (said to stand for We Are Kicking Ass). In 1985 it built the depicted studio, upped its power, and extended its reach into Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Dothan and the Florida Panhandle. A year later, CBS dropped tiny WCOV-TV as its local carrier (COV became FOX), and WAKA became the CBS affiliate. Now we all watch as the station announced plans to purchase stations WNCF (ABC) and WBMM (CW), and operate all three outlets from a new super-facility on the Harrison Road site of WNCF.

-Charles Humphries