Celebrating 70 years of WCBD
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) – Channel 2 signed on the air September 25, 1954, under the call letters WUSN. Those letters represented the U.S. Navy, which called upon Charleston’s bustling Navy yard personnel to be viewers of the area’s second television station.
Strom Thurmond was one of our first guest speakers, and for years an elephant lived in front of our building on Coleman Boulevard. Her name was Suzie Q, the station’s mascot.
WUSN was an NBC affiliate, and back then, TV 2 had one hour of news, some network programming, and local and children’s programming like “Lucky 2 Ranch,” “Time for Teens,” “Afloat & Afield,” and was later joined by Rainey Evans, better known as “Happy Raine,” who brought “Scoutabout” to the television.
What about that elephant? Drayton Hastie, who owned the station, purchased a pygmy elephant named Suzie Q in the late 1950s. It was a gimmick to lure viewers away from the other station in town.
The pachyderm quickly became the station’s mascot and was beloved by those who stopped by 210 W. Coleman Boulevard to see her.
Suzie Q slept near the station’s Quonset hut, which housed its news studio. Sometimes she would escape her pen and people would find her strolling certain neighborhoods in remote Mount Pleasant.
She was eventually taken to live on a farm in Florida.
While the station shared some ABC programming previously, WUSN became a full-time ABC affiliate in 1962. Channel 2 would later become WCBD – what it’s known by today – in November 1971.
The new call letters referenced the three main counties it served: Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester. WCBD returned to its NBC roots in August 1996.
News 2 has always kept the Lowcountry informed since its very early days. While the physical building has changed many times, its geographical location has remained the same — at the bottom of the Cooper River Bridge on Coleman Boulevard.
Red Evans was a popular personality on the station in the 1960s. And it was big news in 1974 when Channel 2 went from black and white to color. Joan Mack joined the WCBD family and became the area’s first African American news anchor in 1979.
The faces of those who brought you the news changed as the years went by. There was Ted Knight, who started the ‘Action Line’ franchise. In the early 90s, Nancy Humphries got her start – you may know her today as Nancy O’Dell.
Dan Ashley and Leslie Lyles were a strong anchor team in the 1990s. Later, people tuned in for their news from Nina Sossoman and Darla Rourk. Carolyn Murray, Brendan Clark, Octavia Mitchell, Riley Benson, Rob Fowler, and Josh Marthers now lead our news and weather teams.
While the station has seen many changes over time, our commitment to the communities we serve – now including Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton, Georgetown, and Williamsburg counties – has never wavered.
We’ve kept the pace with technology, and the addition of a website, then a news app, and social media, has made our news product faster, more accurate, and more easily available than ever.
