TBS (U.S. TV channel)

TBS (originally an abbreviation for Turner Broadcasting System) is an American pay television channel that is owned by AT&T Networks. It carries a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy, along with some sports events, including Major League Baseball and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. , TBS was received by approximately 90.391 million households that subscribe to a pay television service throughout the United States.

TBS was originally established on December 17, 1976 as the national feed of Turner's Atlanta, Georgia, independent television station, WTCG. The decision to begin offering WTCG via satellite transmission to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States expanded the small station into the first nationally distributed "superstation". With the assignment of WTBS as the broadcast station's call letters in 1979, the national feed became known as SuperStation WTBS, and later SuperStation TBS, TBS Superstation, or simply TBS. The channel broadcast a variety of programming during this era, including films, syndicated series, and sports (including Atlanta Braves baseball, basketball games involving the Atlanta Hawks and other NBA teams, and professional wrestling including Georgia Championship Wrestling, and later World Championship Wrestling).

WTBS maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the national feed, aside from FCC-mandated public affairs and educational programming that only aired on the local signal. By the early 2000s, TBS had begun to focus more intensively on comedic programming, including sitcoms and other series. On October 1, 2007, TBS was converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network, at which time it began to be carried within the Atlanta market on area cable providers alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. The former parent station in Atlanta was concurrently relaunched as WPCH (branded as "Peachtree TV", which Turner sold to the Meredith Corporation in 2017) and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule exclusively catering to the Atlanta market.

Early years
TBS originated as a terrestrial television station in Atlanta, Georgia that began operating on UHF channel 17 on September 1, 1967, under the WJRJ-TV call letters. That station – which its original parent originally filed to transmit UHF channel 46, before modifying it to assign channel 17 as its frequency in February 1966 – was founded by Rice Broadcasting Inc. (owned by Atlanta entrepreneur Jack M. Rice, Jr., owner of locally based pay television firms Atlanta Telemeter Inc. and Home Theaters of Georgia Inc.). Under Rice, WJRJ – the first independent station to begin operation in the Atlanta market since WQXI-TV (channel 36, allocation now occupied by MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL) ceased operations on May 31, 1955 – operated on a shoestring budget, general entertainment format with a schedule consisting of a few off-network reruns (such as Father Knows Best, The Danny Thomas Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and The Rifleman) and older feature films as well as a 15-minute news program.

In July 1969, Rice Broadcasting reached an agreement to merge with the Turner Communications Corporation – an Atlanta-based group owned by entrepreneur Robert E. "Ted" Turner III, who ran his late father's billboard advertising business and had also expanded his interests to include radio stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (WGOW); Charleston, South Carolina (WTMA-AM-FM, the FM station is now WSSX-FM); and Jacksonville, Florida (WMBR, now WBOB) – in an all-stock transaction. Under the sale terms, Rice would acquire Turner in an exchange of stock and adopt the Turner Communications name; however, Turner would acquire about 75% of the merged company and own 48.2% of its stock, receiving 1.2 million shares of Rice stock worth an estimated $3 million. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted approval of the acquisition on December 10, 1969, giving Turner its first television property. Soon after Turner received approval of its purchase of WJRJ-TV in January 1970, Turner changed the station's call letters to WTCG (which officially stood for W e're T urner C ommunications G roup, although the station used " W atch T his C hannel G row" as a promotional slogan). The sale was formally completed four months later on April 6, at which time Turner was assigned as licensee of WJRJ-TV.

The channel 17 transmitter was originally located at 1018 West Peachtree Street Northwest (it has since been relocated to the Atlanta suburb of North Druid Hills, Georgia), with the antenna located on a large self-supporting tower. The building at this site was once home to the studios of CBS affiliate WAGA-TV (channel 5; now a Fox owned-and-operated station) and, later, channel 17, during its first three years as WJRJ-TV. Soon after being purchased by Turner, the station moved to new studio facilities a few blocks west at the former site of the Progressive Club, after briefly having had offices on Williams Street, across Interstate 75/85; these facilities now house Adult Swim and Williams Street Productions. (It shared the ex-Progressive Club studios with CNN and Headline News until the latter two moved their operations into the CNN Center downtown in 1987.) Early programming included movies from the 1930s and 1940s, sitcoms (such as Father Knows Best, Green Acres, Hazel, I Love Lucy, and The Lucy Show), and Japanese animated series (such as Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Marine Boy, The Space Giants, Speed Racer, and Ultraman). The station also carried sports, such as Atlanta Braves baseball, Atlanta Hawks basketball, Atlanta Flames hockey, and Georgia Championship Wrestling.

WTCG also made very low bids to acquire the rights to syndicated programming and film packages, leaving the network-affiliated stations in the market – WAGA-TV, NBC affiliate WSB-TV (channel 2, now an ABC affiliate) and ABC affiliate WXIA-TV (channel 11, now an NBC affiliate) – to acquire the stronger shows. But, because of programming commitments that the affiliates had to their networks, those stations only kept the shows for a few years at a time and rarely renewed their contractual rights to continue airing them, after which WTCG bought the syndicated programs second-hand at much lower rates. By the mid-1970s, The Andy Griffith Show, The Flintstones, Leave It to Beaver, The Little Rascals, My Three Sons, Star Trek, The Three Stooges, and many others were added to the station's schedule.

High-definition feed
A high definition feed of TBS, which broadcasts in 1080i, launched on September 1, 2007; an HD sub-feed of its Pacific Time Zone feed would be launched on June 18, 2010. Much like sister channels TNT and Cartoon Network, TBS airs a moderate amount of program content broadcast in 4:3 standard definition stretched to the 16:9 widescreen format through a non-linear process similar to the "panorama" setting on many HDTVs that some viewers have nicknamed Stretch-o-Vision after it was first used by TNT; though other HD simulcast feeds operated by pay channels have also adopted this practice. The non-linear stretching process leaves objects in the center of the screen with approximately their original aspect ratio; objects at the left and right edges are distorted (horizontal panning makes the distortion especially apparent).

Programming
TBS currently airs a mix of original sitcoms and reruns of sitcoms that were originally broadcast on the major broadcast networks. Original programs currently seen on TBS are American Dad! (which moved to TBS in 2014, after being cancelled by Fox), Conan, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Search Party, The Guest Book, Drop the Mic, Snoop Dogg Presents The Joker's Wild, Final Space, The Last O.G., and Miracle Workers, which is a miniseries. An upcoming show includes Close Enough.

The channel's daytime schedule is heavily dominated by reruns of current and former network comedies, with these shows also airing in the evening and sporadically during the overnight hours. , these programs consist of Family Guy, Friends, Seinfeld, The King of Queens, The Big Bang Theory, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Most reruns shown on TBS are broadcast in a compressed format, with content sped up to accommodate additional time slots for advertising sales.

Availability
TBS is available on multichannel television providers (including cable, satellite and select over-the-top providers) throughout the entire United States. Until October 1, 2007, the national TBS feed could not be viewed within its home market in the Atlanta metropolitan area, due to the over-the-air presence of WTBS (channel 17), which carried a nearly identical schedule, with the only differing programming being children's programs that meet the FCC's educational programming guidelines and public affairs programming. The operations of WTBS and TBS Superstation were separated in October 2007, with the free-to-air Atlanta station becoming WPCH-TV, a general entertainment independent station focused solely on the Atlanta area. The national TBS feed became available to pay-television subscribers within channel 17's viewing area as a result.

In April 1985, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) granted authorization for the WTBS Atlanta feed and three other American superstations (WGN-TV, WOR-TV and WPIX in New York City) to be distributed to multichannel television providers within Canada. 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 1997, many cable and satellite providers moved TBS to a basic specialty tier under a related rule that allows for one superstation of the provider's choice to be carried on a non-premium tier. 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, instead of the national TBS channel. As they are not shown on WPCH, most of TBS's flagship programs – such as Major League Baseball (both regular season and postseason games) and original series (such as Conan) – are carried on other Canadian specialty channels.