WECT

WECT (channel 6) is a television station in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Gray Television, which provides certain services to Fox affiliate WSFX-TV (channel 26) under a shared services agreement (SSA) with American Spirit Media. Both stations share studios on Shipyard Boulevard in Wilmington, while WECT's transmitter is located near Winnabow, North Carolina. History Channel 6 began broadcasting on April 9, 1954, with the call sign WMFD-TV. It aired an analog signal on VHF channel 6 from a 941-foot transmitter near Delco. The station was owned by Atlantic Telecasting Corporation alongside Wilmington's oldest radio station, WMFD. Atlantic Telecasting sold off the radio station in 1958 and changed the television station's calls changed to the current WECT. The WMFD-TV call letters are now used by an independent television station in Mansfield, Ohio. At its launch, channel 6 was affiliated with all four networks of the day—NBC, CBS, DuMont and ABC. However, it has always been a primary NBC affiliate. It lost DuMont when that network went silent in 1956. The station finally got local competition in 1964 when WWAY signed on. However, WWAY opted to affiliate with the much weaker ABC, forcing WECT to shoehorn NBC and CBS onto its schedule until the 1970s, when cable arrived in the Wilmington market. It primarily carried CBS soap operas and CBS' Sunday afternoon NFL coverage. At one point, this station was carried on cable systems in the Triangle region of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville, and Chapel Hill) for a time when NBC did not have a full-time affiliate in that market. At one time, WECT had a Fayetteville news bureau.