channels to what would become the Birmingham market. However, two of them, channels 7 and 10 were acquired by Alabama Educational Television (now Alabama Public Television) for its two original charter stations, WBIQ in Birmingham and WCIQ in Mount Cheaha. Both had signed on in 1955 and were donated to the Alabama Educational Television Commission by Storer Broadcasting – which owned WBRC from 1953 to 1957 – both due to the company's support of educational broadcasting and as an attempt to stave off additional commercial competition. At the time, most UHF signals did not travel nearly as far as their VHF counterparts, resulting in inadequate coverage, especially in rugged terrain. As a result, channel 42's coverage area was effectively limited to Birmingham itself and some inner-ring suburbs over Red Mountain. The station originally broadcast for four hours each evening, carrying a mix of prime time programming from both CBS and NBC, before expanding its broadcast day from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. two weeks later on November 1, 1965. On paper, WBMG took the CBS affiliation from WAPI-TV. However, CBS continued to allow channel 13 to air some of its more popular programs, in part due to the aforementioned signal shortfalls with channel 42. WBMG was thus left with CBS' news programming and numerous lower-rated CBS shows. To help fill out its schedule, it also aired some NBC programs that WAPI-TV didn't carry. Among these programs was, strangely given its popularity elsewhere in the country, The Tonight Show, which WAPI would not clear until 1969 (albeit on a one-hour tape delay); as well as the infamous Heidi Game event between the American Football League's Oakland Raiders and New York Jets in November 1968. One benefit, though, was that WBMG cleared the CBS Evening News, which began airing in Birmingham for the first time in over two years. After CBS and NBC expanded their evening news programs to 30 minutes in 1963, NBC's The Huntley-Brinkley Report, which was carried by WAPI-TV, was the only national network newscast seen in Birmingham until channel 42 signed on (WBRC did not carry ABC's national newscast, John Daly and the News and its successors until September 1963). WBMG also carried certain locally produced and syndicated programs that aired on channel 13 (such as the University of Alabama football coaches' program, The Bear Bryant Show), which were rebroadcast on channel 42 in different time slots. Both