WSLS-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, United States, serving the Roanoke–Lynchburg market as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by Graham Media Group, the station maintains studios on Fifth Street in Roanoke, and its transmitter is located on Poor Mountain in Roanoke County. It is the third-oldest continuously operating station in Virginia, behind Richmond's WTVR-TV and Norfolk's WTKR, as well as the state's oldest station west of Richmond. History WSLS-TV first signed on the air on December 11, 1952, by the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company, after which the station was named ("Shenandoah Life Stations"). WSLS-TV was co-owned with two of Roanoke's first radio stations, WSLS (610 AM) and WSLS-FM (99.1). Rights to channel 10 were granted to Shenandoah Life after a competitive battle was fought between Shenandoah Life, WROV (now WGMN), and WDBJ (now WFIR). Originally set to fully launch on December 10, 1952, WSLS-TV was taken off the air an hour into a test pattern on the evening of the 10th, when a storm shattered a window in the studio and blew a control panel's fuse, while a lightning bolt also struck near the station's transmitter. The station successfully launched a day later. The inaugural anchor team was composed of Tom Wright, Joe Moffatt, and Ed Thomas, with Moffatt becoming the state's first television editorialist when he began his daily editorials in 1961. In 1955, WSLS-TV moved from the Shenandoah Building on First Street to a new studio on Third Street. The television station has always been a primary NBC affiliate, but in its first two years spent around one-quarter of its broadcast day carrying programs from CBS; Lynchburg's WLVA-TV (channel 13) was the nearest primary CBS affiliate, but its transmitter location at the time did not cover Roanoke at all. All CBS programming was dropped when WDBJ-TV signed on in 1955 as Roanoke's primary affiliate. In the late-1950s and the 1960s, WSLS-TV also aired locally produced programming, including Echo, Klub Kwiz (a competitor to WDBJ's Klassroom Kwiz), Ebb and Andy, Spectrum, Glen Howell, Cactus Joe, and Profile. The station was first to broadcast in "full living color," telecast from a remote location, use video tape and electronic news gathering equipment, broadcast network programming in stereo, and broadcast live local news in HD in the Roanoke/Lynchburg market. In 1969, WSLS-TV was purchased from Shenandoah Life Insurance Company by Roy H. Park for $7.5 million. This