During its ownership under the Turner Broadcasting System which owned the station from April until February , WPCH-TVโthen using the WTCG call letters โpioneered the distribution of broadcast television stations retransmitted by communications satellite to cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States, expanding the small independent station into the first national " superstation " on December 17, The station eventually became among the first four American superstations to begin being distributed to television providers in Canada in The former superstation feedโwhich eventually became known as simply TBS , and had maintained a nearly identical program schedule as the local Atlanta feedโwas converted by Turner into a conventional basic cable network on October 1, , at which time it was concurrently added to cable providers within the Atlanta market including Comcast and Charter alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network.
Channel 17โwhich had used the WTBS callsign since โwas concurrently relaunched as WPCH and reformatted as a traditional independent station with a separate schedule exclusively catering to the Atlanta market.
Although the Atlanta station is no longer carried on American multichannel television providers outside of its home market, WPCH-TV continues to be available as a de facto superstation on most Canadian cable and satellite providers. On October 20, , Rice Broadcasting Inc. Rice, Jr. Channel 17 first signed on the air on September 1, WJRJ-TV was the first commercial television station to sign on in the Atlanta market since the short-lived WQXI-TV channel 36, allocation now occupied by MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL signed on 13 years earlier on December 18, ; it was also the second independent station to begin operation in the marketโthe first since WQXI-TV ceased operations on May 31, โeven though, on paper, had a large enough population to provide suitable viewership for an independent station since the mids, as well as one of the first independents to sign on in the Southeastern United States.
At 1, feet m , the tower near the Peachtree Street studio building became the third-tallest free-standing broadcast transmission tower in the United States at that time.
WJRJ was launched on a shoestring budget, with an afternoon and evening scheduleโrunning from 4 to 11 p. On June 5, , Rice requested to transfer majority control of the station reducing his interest from The FCC granted approval of the acquisition on December 10, , giving Turner its first television property.
