Look Back ... to FCC permission for state's first TV station, 1948
Feb. 5—Feb. 5, 1948, in The Star: In Birmingham, the president and general manager of radio station WBRC said today the FCC has granted permission for construction of the first television broadcasting station in Alabama. The station executive, Eloise Smith Hanna, said that the television transmitter has been purchased and will be housed in the same building with the station's FM facilities, which are now under construction on Red Mountain. No date was given for when television broadcasting might begin in the Magic City. Also this date: Being sold at Fort McClellan is scrap lumber piled up in the Post Engineer Wood Yard and also from fallen towers in the prisoner of war camp. Each load may not consist of more than the capacity of one 2-1/2 ton truck, and no one can buy more than 300 loads. [The article doesn't list the price per load.]
Feb. 5, 1998, in The Star: Anniston was smacked early yesterday morning by a surprise snow of several inches. "Nobody knew it was going to snow until 1 or 2 a.m. If they knew yesterday, we would have been bombarded [with customers] then," said Tony Bolton, co-manager at Gregerson's supermarket in Anniston. Reported snowfall around the Anniston area ranged from a couple of inches at lower elevations to a good nine inches on hilltops. It was the wet, heavy kind of snow, so strained and broken branches translated into power outages all over Calhoun and Cleburne counties; by 10 a.m. around 13,000 people in north Anniston and downtown and into Golden Springs had no electricity. Fortunately, because the air at ground level was above freezing, roadway travel wasn't affected all that much, although out of caution some schools called off classes for the day.
