A more likely reason, however, has to do with geography. The Jackson market is a fairly large market, covering a large swath of west-central Mississippi. Jackson had been allocated only two VHF frequencies—channels 3 and 12, occupied by WLBT and WJTV respectively. UHF stations initially didn't cover large stretches of territory very well. Even after the FCC mandated all-channel tuning in 1964, it took a long while for UHF to be a viable option to cover large areas. With Jackson sandwiched between Baton Rouge (channels 2 and 9) to the south and Monroe–El Dorado (channels 8, 10, 11 and 13) to the west with Alexandria (channel 5, southwest), Columbus–Tupelo (channels 2, 4 and 9, northeast), Greenville (channel 6, north), Hattiesburg (channel 7, southeast) and Meridian (channel 11, east) all in close proximity, it is not likely there would have been room to drop in a third VHF allocation in Jackson. In this case, with WAPT taking the ABC affiliation full-time, it took 17 years for Jackson to have television outlets for each of the "Big Three" networks.
