WSAZ-TV (channel 3) is a television station licensed to Huntington, West Virginia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It serves the Charleston–Huntington market, the second-largest television market (in terms of geographical area) east of the Mississippi River; the station's coverage area includes 61 counties in central West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southeastern Ohio. WSAZ-TV is owned by Gray Television alongside Portsmouth, Ohio-licensed CW affiliate WQCW (channel 30). Both stations share studios on 5th Avenue in Huntington, with an additional studio and newsroom on Columbia Avenue in Charleston. WSAZ-TV's transmitter is located on Barker Ridge near Milton, West Virginia. History Early years The oldest television station in West Virginia, WSAZ-TV began broadcasting November 15, 1949, on VHF channel 5. The station was originally owned by the Huntington Publishing Company along with the Huntington Herald-Dispatch and WSAZ radio (930 AM, now WRVC), and carried programming from all four networks at the time (NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont). However, it was a primary NBC affiliate due to WSAZ radio's long affiliation with NBC Radio. When WCHS-TV (channel 8) signed on from Charleston in 1954, it took over the CBS affiliation and the two television stations shared ABC programming until WHTN-TV (channel 13, now WOWK-TV) signed on from Huntington a year later. In 1955, WSAZ-TV dropped DuMont after the network shut down. It is the only commercial station in the market that has never changed its primary affiliation. One story of how the station's call letters originated dates from WSAZ radio's origins in 1923, when radio engineer Glenn Chase began airing semi-regular broadcasts from Pomeroy, Ohio. It moved across and down the Ohio River to Huntington in 1926, in part because Chase had his hands full keeping the station going. Chase later claimed that the station proved such a headache to him that he asked for the call letters WSAZ to signify that it was the "Worst Station from A to Z." A more likely explanation is that the call letters were sequentially assigned by the United States Department of Commerce after WSAX in Chicago (now defunct) and WSAY in Port Chester, New York. However, the myth persists that the calls stand for "Worst Station from A to Z," which WSAZ radio itself helped spread by using it as a slogan for many years. In 1950, WSAZ-TV received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) permission to build a private microwave link to Cincinnati allowing viewers to get