June 1967
When I was hired by Alec Gifford to come to New Orleans in 1967 it was to work at Channel 12.
It grew further too, switching channels with the public broadcaster WYES-TV in 1970.
As Channel 8, that let WVUE boost its broadcasting power and also aligned the news planets more precisely. Then the three main television players became Channel 4 WWL-TV (CBS), Channel 6 WDSU-TV (NBC), and Channel 8 WVUE-TV (ABC) in the days of no cable, or satellite, or even UHF.
Hell, in those days you even had to physically get up and walk across the room to change the channel on a TV set.