History of WAKA Action 8
St. Patrick’s Day is special to us at Action 8. This year, we are celebrating our 65th anniversary!
It was March 17, 1960, that we signed on for the first time. Our history is unique among America’s television stations. While we have always broadcast on Channel 8, we haven’t always been WAKA or even a CBS affiliate. In fact, our offices weren’t always in Montgomery!
Our history was filled with struggles early on, but much recent success thanks to you, our viewers.
The Early Years
Channel 8 first hit the airwaves as Selma TV station WSLA. In the beginning, it was an independent station, but soon became an ABC affiliate, located in a home on Landline Road on the west side of the city, with a small tower and a signal that didn’t reach very far past the Selma city limits.
The original home of WSLA Channel 8 on Landline Road in Selma – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
WSLA original logo – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Back then, ABC programs were picked up from Birmingham’s then-ABC station WBRC by antenna and then rebroadcast to our part of the state. It was a makeshift way to receive and transmit network programming — primitive even by the standards of the day, which was to get network programs by using telephone lines. It would be decades before satellites became the standard way stations received outside programming.
In those days, Selma was a separate TV market from Montgomery. Because Montgomery didn’t have an ABC station of its own, WSLA was the only way to receive network programming for the entire area. The problem was that Channel 8’s signal from its 360-foot tower in Selma could barely reach Montgomery. It would be several years before Montgomery got its own ABC station. At that time, ABC itself was a fledgling network with few hit shows.
Well-known local broadcaster John Rogers delivering the news in the 1960s from the studio, which was actually the garage of our first building on Landline Road in Selma – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Much of the broadcast day was filled with locally-produced programs that aired from WSLA’s studio in Selma. That studio was in the home’s one-car garage!
Some of the crew of WSLA in Selma – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Bitter Battles
WSLA’s owners were members of the Brennan family, whose company, Deep South Broadcasting, also owned WBAM AM 740, a powerhouse Montgomery radio station. When they received the FCC license for Channel 8 in 1954, weeks before Montgomery’s WSFA Channel 12, they immediately planned to move the station’s tower closer to Montgomery and increase the station’s transmitting power.
Those moves required government approval. Standing in WSLA’s way was Montgomery’s then-CBS affiliate, WCOV Channel 20. Starting in 1954 and lasting 30 years, WCOV fought every attempt WSLA’s owners made to improve Channel 8’s signal.
WCOV’s fear was that it would lose its CBS affiliation to WSLA if Channel 8 was allowed to move its transmitter closer to Montgomery or to boost power. In the days before cable TV, TV stations on the VHF band (Channels 2-13) were much easier to receive on home antennas than UHF stations (Channels 14-83). Some people’s TV sets couldn’t receive UHF channels at all. WCOV saw that tiny WSLA would be a big threat.
News set of WSLA in Selma in the 1960s – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
So Channel 8 made due with only 3,000 watts of visual power. All the while, the owners believed it wouldn’t be long before the FCC would allow them to make much-needed technical improvements.
Dark Days
The dreams of the owners and workers at WSLA went up in flames on August 1, 1968. The entire station burned to the ground in a fire.
This was all that was left of Channel 8 after a fire destroyed the building on August 1, 1968 – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Workers outside WSLA in Selma, which burned to the ground in 1968 – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
The station went dark and would stay that way for years. Maybe because of the legal fight with WCOV, the potential of Channel 8 didn’t seem to be clear to anyone.
WCOV actually investigated buying WSLA, lowering its power, so that legally it could simulcast WCOV’s programming to West Alabama. This time, WCOV was dealt a defeat when the FCC said no.
No one knows why WCOV’s owners didn’t simply buy WSLA and operate it as a full-power station — taking the action they feared others would.
A New Beginning
Better times finally arrived in 1972. Charles Grisham, the owner of the highly-successful CBS affiliate WHNT in Huntsville, bought the station.
WSLA was rebuilt in Selma and returned to the air in 1973, broadcasting in color. This time, WSLA was a CBS affiliate — a direct challenge to WCOV’s CBS affiliation 50 miles away.
This building was our home starting in 1973. It was in the same location on Landline Road in Selma. It was no longer a home, but a specially-constructed facility designed for television. It underwent a major expansion in the 1980s. – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Bill Minor and Geri Ellzey were part of the WSLA news team in 1974 – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
This was the Action 8 News team in 1979 from our studios in Selma – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Grisham picked up the same fight to boost the station’s power. One idea was to move the tower from Selma to a location that would give the station coverage into Birmingham and Tuscaloosa while keeping the signal as strong as possible in Selma and into Montgomery. UHF stations in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa that were also CBS affiliates opposed that idea.
During this time, WSLA’s facilities were dramatically improved with new equipment and a growing commitment to covering the news, with the launch of the “Action 8 News” brand in 1979. But without a stronger signal, the station’s ability to reach all viewers still couldn’t be realized.
Victory at Last
By the 1980s, the FCC was beginning to loosen its heavy regulations on local TV stations. At the same time, WCOV was running out of arguments to prevent WSLA from reaching more Alabama families. After 30 years of fighting, legal success had arrived.
The control room of the new WAKA in Selma in 1984. This equipment was state-of-the-art at that time, but is woefully obsolete today. – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
In 1984, Grisham was finally allowed to boost the transmitter’s power and build a new, taller tower in Lowndes County, which is between Selma and Montgomery. Hundreds of thousands of people would now be able to watch Channel 8 for the first time in places like Montgomery, Alexander City, Troy and Andalusia. What had been the Selma TV market would be absorbed into the Montgomery market.
That was just the first of many major changes at the station. The call letters were changed from WSLA to WAKA on October 28, 1984, so that viewers wouldn’t confuse our station with Montgomery’s NBC affiliate, WSFA.
Bahakel Communications, LTD., of Charlotte, North Carolina, bought the new WAKA in 1985, the same year that Channel 8 started broadcasting from its new 1,757-foot tower with a full 316,000 watts. Bahakel was the owner of Montgomery’s ABC station, WKAB Channel 32, but sold that station to buy the more powerful Channel 8. The FCC wouldn’t let the company own both stations.
Logo of WAKA after the station moved to Montgomery – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Now, Channel 8 could be seen from the suburbs of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa to the Florida panhandle, and from near the Mississippi state line to East Alabama. It is the largest coverage area in the state of Alabama.
Those weren’t the only changes. Soon, portions of Action 8 News would be broadcast, not from the main studios in Selma, but from the station’s new building on Eastern Boulevard in Montgomery. For a while, some station functions remained in Selma, but eventually, the entire operation moved to the Capital City.
Even then, we have never forgotten our roots in Selma. We have always kept an office there with a news reporter, studio and TV transmission capabilities.
Meanwhile, WCOV’s fears were realized when CBS dropped the station as an affiliate on January 1, 1986. That station came under new ownership and joined the upstart Fox network. After that happened, WAKA provided 9PM newscasts to WCOV for many years, because it disbanded its own news department.
Legendary broadcaster Kim Wanous (right) from the original news set after Action 8 moved to Eastern Boulevard in Montgomery in 1986 – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Action 8 News had a new, custom-designed news set that debuted in 1997 – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Today’s Action 8
In 2011, Action 8 came together with WNCF ABC 32 and WBMM CW Montgomery. Two years later, we were all under one roof on Harrison Road, in a state-of-the-art facility with three studios, featuring all-new equipment — from remote-controlled studio cameras to HD field equipment and multiple control rooms featuring cutting-edge automation backed by the talents of our engineering and production departments.
The Action 8 newsroom after our move to Harrison Road in 2013. From here, we produce news for WAKA, WNCF and WBMM in our state-of-the-art facility – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Since then, we have made a major commitment to severe weather coverage to keep our viewers safe.
We added Thunder Truck, our live weather studio on wheels, that has become a familiar sight on TV during severe weather coverage and makes many trips each year to schools, parades and other community events when the weather is nice.
The Action 8 News Thunder Truck is a familiar sight – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
We have also added “Code Red” weather alerts during times of potentially dangerous weather. When you see Code Red on your TV screen, on the web and social media, you know to make plans to seek shelter. These alerts aren’t issued every time the weather may be bad, but only in times when loss of life is a real possibility.
The Code Red weather alerts tell you when to make preparations for life-threatening weather conditions – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
Our latest advancement is Lifesaver Radar. We have added specially-designed X-band radar units near the Alabama-Mississippi state line and in the town of Pine Hill, in Wilcox County, to track severe storms, including tornadoes. That part of the state has not had adequate radar coverage because government radars are too far away.
People talked about the problem for years. Action 8 News decided we would be the ones to do something about it, with our parent company Bahakel Communications, LTD., and the Johnny Adams Law Firm coming together to make the investment to bring these two radar systems to our area. The radars scan the low levels of the atmosphere where tornadoes form. They can only be seen on Action 8.
Action 8 News recently added two Lifesaver Radar systems to give thousands of people in West Alabama severe weather coverage they had lacked for generations – Photo from WAKA Action 8 News
A lot has happened at Action 8 over the years. As we celebrate our 65th anniversary in 2025, we want to thank all of you who have watched us, supported us and chosen us as your favorite station. We’ve been with you through good times and bad.
We will be here for you in the years ahead. Thank you from all of us at WAKA, Action 8!
Watch the video above to see more photos from our history and be sure to check out our photo gallery at the top of the page!
