About WMBF

WMBF-TV, a television station in the Florence/Myrtle Beach, South Carolina market, was constructed by Raycom Media in late 2007. It was the first and only station built by the company, which inherited the construction permit for the station through its merger with Liberty Corporation, the owner of WIS in Columbia. The virtual station had been operating in the market since the 1990s. On July 2008, WMBF-TV began testing with a station ID slide and officially signed on on August 7 at 11:59 p.m. The following day, NBC welcomed the station on-air on various programs such as Today, NBC Nightly News, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The launch of WMBF-TV coincided with the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Prior to WMBF-TV's launch, the Florence/Myrtle Beach market was one of the few remaining areas on the East Coast without its own NBC affiliate and was also one of the few markets in the country without full service from the three legacy networks. WECT in Wilmington, North Carolina, had served as the default NBC affiliate for Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand, and had been available on cable in the Grand Strand since the arrival of cable in the 1970s. WIS, on the other hand, had served as the default affiliate for Florence and the Pee Dee, but had been picked up by most cable systems in the Grand Strand by the mid-1980s.