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The '''United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court''' (or '''FISC''') is a [[United States federal courts|U.S. federal court]] authorized under {{UnitedStatesCode|50|1803}} and established by the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] of [[1978]] (known as FISA for short). Its jurisdiction is to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|F.B.I.]]) against suspected foreign [[secret agent|intelligence agents]] inside the United States.
{{Infobox_Broadcast |
call_letters = WSMV-TV/DT|
station_logo = [[Image:WSMV_logo.jpg]] |
station_slogan = Coverage You Can Count On.|
station_branding = Channel 4|
analog = 4 ([[VHF]])|
digital = 10 ([[VHF]])|
affiliations = [[NBC]]|
founded = [[September 30]], [[1950]]|
___location = [[Nashville, Tennessee]]|
callsign_meaning = '''W'''e '''S'''hield '''M'''illions ('''V''' for "'''V'''ision" added to differentiate from WSM radio)|
owner = [[Meredith Corporation]]|
former_affiliations = |
homepage = [http://www.wsmv.com/ www.wsmv.com]|
}}
Each application for one of these surveillance warrant (called a FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. Like a [[grand jury]], FISC is not an [[Adversary system|adversarial court]]: the federal government is the only party to its proceedings. However, the court may allow third parties to submit briefs as ''[[amicus curiae|amici curiae]]''. If an application is denied by one judge of the FISC, the federal government is not allowed to make the same application to a different judge of the FISC. Instead, denials must be appealed to the [[United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review]]. Such appeals are rare: the first appeal from the FISC to the Court of Review was made in [[2002]], 24 years after the founding of the FISC.
'''WSMV-TV/DT''' is the [[NBC]] affiliate serving the [[Nashville, Tennessee]] area. It broadcasts its analog signal on VHF channel 4, and its digital signal on VHF channel 10. Its transmitter is located in [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]].
Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a "secret court": its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. (Copies of those records with [[classified]] information redacted out can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC.
==History==
According to [[Federal Communications Commission|FCC]] records, WSMV began as '''WSM-TV''' on [[September 30]], [[1950]]. It was Nashville's first television station.
When the court was founded, it was composed of seven [[United States district court|federal district]] judges appointed by the [[Chief Justice of the United States]], each serving a seven year term, with one judge being appointed each year. In [[2001]], the [[USA PATRIOT Act]] expanded the court to eleven judges, and required that at least three of the judges of the court be from within twenty miles of the [[District of Columbia]]. No judge may be appointed to this court more than once, and no judge may be appointed to both the Court of Review and the FISC.
Original owner National Life & Accident Insurance Company named the station (and its corresponding radio stations) WSM, to reflect the company's slogan: We Shield Millions. National Life sold the station to Gillett Broadcasting on [[November 4]], [[1981]]. [[WSM (AM)]] & [[WSM-FM]] were sold to [[Gaylord Entertainment Company]] around the same time, and ever since have had no relationship with their former television sister. The call letters officially changed to WSMV on [[July 15]], [[1982]]. WSMV has been sold several times since, and currently belongs to [[Meredith Corporation]].
[[Category:Judicial Branch of the United States Government]]
The station's famous alumni include [[Pat Sajak]] (announcer and weekend weatherman in the mid-1970s) , [[John Tesh]] ([[News presenter|news anchor]] in the late 1970s), [[John Seigenthaler Jr.|John Seigenthaler, Jr.]] (weekend anchor in the 1980s and 1990s) and [[Huell Howser]] (reporter in the 1970s).
[[Category:Article III tribunals]]
==Station trivia==
*[[Alan Frio]], a former anchor of the syndicated program ''[[Hard Copy]]'', joined WSMV in [[2004]]. His co-anchor on the 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 weekend newscasts, [[Terry Merryman]], is also his wife. They're not the only Nashville-area husband-and-wife news anchor team — [[WKRN]]'s weekday morning anchor duo of [[Neil Orne|Neil]] and [[Heather Orne]] are also married.
*[[FOX News]] anchor [[Shepard Smith]] told [[Brian Lamb]] in [[April]] [[2002]] on [[C-SPAN]]'s ''[[Washington Journal]]'', that he actually wanted to work at WSMV during his career, but he never got there, although it still may be surprising, considering the fact that Smith was born in [[Holly Springs, Mississippi]], slightly outside of WSMV's broadcast area and much closer to the [[Memphis, Tennessee]] market.
*[[Dan Miller]], a longtime anchor of the station's newscasts, left WSMV in November, [[1986]] for an anchor job in [[Los Angeles]]. While there, Sajak, his buddy and former Channel 4 colleague, hosted a short-lived late-night talk show for [[CBS]]. Miller joined the cast of the show and was to Sajak what [[Ed McMahon]] was to [[Johnny Carson]]. Unfortunately for Miller and Sajak, Carson was still the king of late-night television, and Sajak's show was cancelled after barely a year. Miller stayed in California until [[1994]], when he returned to Nashville and WSMV, first reviving a nightly local interview show and then returning to the news anchor chair on [[March 9]], [[1995]].
==See also==
[[WSMV TV-Tower]]
==External links==
*[http://www.wsmv.com/ WSMV - Nashville]
*{{TVQ|WSMV-TV}}
{{US-bcast-stub}}
{{Nashville TV}}
[[Category: NBC network affiliates]]
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