large segment of WBRC's audience. An urban legend regarding the ABC affiliation agreement suggested that the switch was partly motivated by CBS' plans to air Who Speaks For Birmingham?, a controversial CBS Reports documentary focusing on desegregation at Birmingham City Schools that later led to journalist Howard K. Smith's resignation from CBS News after he quoted an anti-desegregation statement by political scientist Edmund Burke in the closing narration, viewed by network president Bill Paley as editorializing his views in support of school integration; however, the special aired on May 18 of that year, two months after the ABC agreement was signed. ABC had very few full-time affiliates south of Washington, D.C. at the time, but now it had the full benefit of one of the South's strongest signals, best antenna locations and largest coverage areas. WBRC-TV's signal provided at least secondary coverage as far north as Decatur and extending south to near Montgomery, and from the Mississippi border in the west to the Georgia border in the east. The station became exclusively affiliated with ABC on September 7, 1961; on that date, channel 13 (by then known as WAPI-TV) assumed rights to CBS and NBC programming, although WBRC continued to occasionally carry certain CBS shows that WAPI chose not to carry through 1965. In 1972, Taft sold the WBRC radio stations, which changed their call letters to WERC-AM and FM. In 1966, WBRC-TV began broadcasting local programming in color, after the station purchased two color cameras; among the first local programs to be produced in color was the Alabama Crimson Tide football coaches' program, The Bear Bryant Show (originated from CBS affiliate WCOV-TV (now also a Fox affiliate) in Montgomery, the first television station in the state to begin color broadcasts), which aired on WBRC until 1970, when it moved to WAPI-TV. Meanwhile, WBRC-TV had become one of ABC's strongest affiliates, a position it retained for the next quarter-century. For a time, it incorporated the ABC circle logo inside its own "6" logo (just as it had done with the CBS eye in the 1950s). Channel 6 could make a plausible claim to be not only the most-watched station in the Birmingham market but in the entire state of Alabama, thanks in part to unusually weak competition. CBS affiliate WBMG (channel 42, now WIAT), which signed on in October 1965 as the market's third commercial television station, was not a