Channel 45 To Seek More Viewers Under New Owners BY JERRY KENION Daily News Television Writer Channel 45, the also-ran indepen dent in the Triad television market, is expected to join the serious com petition for viewers and advertis ing dollars when new owners move in next month. Television Corporation of North Carolina, whose purchase of WGNN-TV in Winston-Salem was approved Aug. 19 by the Federal Communications Commission, says it will invest $1.75 million in a transmitter providing maximum power for a UHF station and a new tower atop Sauratown Mountain in Stokes County. The station also will have new call letters — WJTM-TV. The cor poration is run by a group of Tide water Virginia investors who also own, through another corporation. a station in Virginia and who hope to buy other stations. Corporation President Tim Mc Donald said the Winston-Salem station also is promising better programming. “We will be heavily committed to prime-time sports. We will pick up network shows (declined by net work affiliates) if it makes sense. We have a strong ethic toward first-run programming,” said Mc Donald. McDonald said the station will carry all of Operation Prime Time’s 1981 programs as well as new shows from England and Australia. Some religious programming will be retained. The station will not run local editorials. “We are making the investment to provide the areawide service the license was meant to provide in the first place,” he said. “We don’t want to be second-class citizens, and our revenue base will be a local base.” Under McDonald’s leadership, WTVZ-TV, Channel 33, in Norfolk, another station owned by the Vir ginia investors, has won an average 9 percent of the TV audience in that market after only 11 months on the air. It is competing with three network affiliates and anoth er independent. Channel 45 in Winston-Salem, the only independent in the Triad 'area, has not registered in a rating book (having had less than 1 per cent of the audience during any period) during its 11 months of syn dicated reruns, old movies and reli gious programming. (See Channel 45: D-4, Col. 1)