WBTW  WBTW, virtual and VHF digital channel 13, is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Florence, South Carolina, United States, serving the Pee Dee and Grand Strand regions of South Carolina. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group. WBTW's studios are located on McDonald Court in the unincorporated community of Socastee (but with a Myrtle Beach postal address), and its transmitter is located near Dillon, South Carolina (across from the tower of ABC affiliate WPDE-TV, channel 15). The station is carried on cable channel 8 in most parts of the market. The station went on the air on October 18, 1954 on VHF channel 8 from a transmitter at its original studios on TV Road (WBTW still owns studios at this location) in the Back Swamp section north of the town of Quinby (with a Florence address). It was owned by Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company (later becoming Jefferson-Pilot, now part of Lincoln Financial Group). It was Jefferson Standard's second television station behind WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. WBTW's call sign was derived from "W" being the next letter in the alphabet after "V." The two stations were programmed separately, but shared a microwave system built in 1959. On September 17, 1962, it moved to VHF channel 13 and its previous channel was re-allocated to High Point, North Carolina as WGHP. Jefferson Standard sold the station to the Shott family of Bluefield, West Virginia, publishers of the "Bluefield Daily Telegraph" and owners of WHIS-AM-FM-TV in Bluefield through the Daily Telegraph Publishing Company, in 1968. The move came because WBTV and WBTW had a fairly significant grade B signal overlap, and neither station would have been able to expand its signal if Jefferson Standard had kept them both. During WBTW ownership by the Shott family, the station often used local radio personalities to deliver news, sports and weather. Regular talent included Jim (James) Griffin and Gene Allen. In 1979, WBTW activated its current tower on Pee Dee Church Road in rural Dillon County, southeast of the county seat of Dillon south of South Carolina Highway 9. This more than doubled its coverage area, giving it at least secondary coverage as far north as Fayetteville, Raeford and Pinehurst; as far west as Polkton and Pageland; as far south as Georgetown and Summerton and as far east as Leland and Elizabethtown.