WOAI-TV
NBC television affiliate in San Antonio
WOAI-TV (channel 4) is a television station in San Antonio, Texas, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Fox affiliate KABB (channel 29) and co-managed with Kerrville-licensed KMYS (channel 35). The three stations share studios between Babcock Road and Sovereign Drive (off Loop 410) in northwest San Antonio, with administrative offices in an adjacent building west across its parking lot; WOAI-TV's transmitter is located in northwest Wilson County (near Elmendorf).
History
The station first signed on the air on December 11, 1949, as WOAI-TV. It was the first television station in the San Antonio market, owned by Southland Industries along with WOAI (1200 AM). WOAI-TV and WOAI radio are among the few broadcast stations located west of the Mississippi River that have a call sign beginning with "W". In the early days of broadcasting, most Central Time Zone states were in the "W" territory. In 1923, the dividing line was changed to the Mississippi River. Since WOAI radio was already on the air, it kept its W call letters and when it put a TV station on the air, it shared that call sign.
WOAI-TV has been an NBC affiliate since its inception, owing to WOAI (AM)'s longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network. In its early years of operation, it also carried programming from the three other major networks of the time: CBS, ABC and DuMont. WOAI lost the CBS and DuMont affiliations to KEYL (channel 5, now KENS) when that station signed on in February 1950.
“WOAI-TV” enters the record as nBC television affiliate in San Antonio. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what WOAI-TV, television and affiliate can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“WOAI-TV” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, WOAI-TV, television and affiliate provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7953728. Authority coordinates are 29.270, -98.265. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1200, 1923 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “WOAI-TV” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.