WTLV
Channel 12 in Jacksonville began broadcasting on September 1, 1957, as WFGA-TV. Owned by the Florida-Georgia Television Company, it was the third station to be built in the city and an NBC affiliate. After WJHP-TV folded less than two months later, Jacksonville had two stations until 1966. While the station, it spent most of its first 15 years on air embroiled in legal conflict stemming from an influence scandal involving a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner. The case was ultimately resolved in 1969 by an operating consortium comprising Florida-Georgia and three groups also seeking channel 12, which was enshrined as its regular ownership in 1971. Shortly after, the station changed its call sign to WTLV.
Harte-Hanks Newspapers acquired WTLV in 1975. In 1980, the station switched affiliations from NBC to ABC at a time when ABC was number-one nationally and NBC stuck in third. ABC's ratings lead did not last, and by the middle of the decade, being an ABC affiliate was weighing on WTLV. In 1988, Gannett bought WTLV from Harte-Hanks and immediately switched its affiliation back to NBC. Over the course of the 1990s, the station became more competitive and posed the most serious challenge yet to the traditional news ratings leader in Jacksonville, WJXT (channel 4).
In 1999, as the FCC legalized duopolies, Gannett agreed to buy WJXX from Allbritton Communications. WJXX—which had been established as the city's new ABC affiliate in 1997—had been such a ratings underperformer that the combination of the two major network affiliates was permissible. Upon taking control in March 2000, WJXX's operation was combined with WTLV's, with mostly WTLV personnel and in WTLV's studios, as First Coast News. The combined news operation has remained the second-rated outlet in the market.
History
Construction
In April 1952, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted a years-long freeze on new TV station grants, opening the door to new TV stations in Jacksonville. Days after the freeze was lifted, the Florida-Georgia Television Company announced its intention to seek the channel. One of the stockholders in Florida-Georgia was Harold Cohn, who owned Jacksonville radio station WRHC. He stated his interest in television began in 1951, when a man told him he stopped listening to Cohn's radio station because he was watching more TV. That man was Alexander Brest, another stakeholder in the firm. Also represented was Miami movie theater operator Wometco Enterprises and its chairman, Mitchell Wolfson.
Florida-Georgia and two other groups sought channel 12: the city of Jacksonville, a broadcaster by its ownership of radio station WJAX, and the Jacksonville Broadcasting Company, owner of WPDQ (600 AM). These groups had each obtained pre-freeze permits then not acted on them. WJAX had previously held a pre-freeze construction permit for channel 2, and the FCC's final 1950 deletion of the permit was upheld in court in May 1951; WPDQ-TV's permit had been deleted in the same initial action. The FCC designated the three applications for hearing in January 1954, and FCC hearing examiner Charles J. Frederick delivered the initial decision in April 1955. It called for granting channel 12 to Jacksonville Broadcasting based on its superior integration of ownership and management—in other words, the participation of station owners in station operations.
The losing parties to the initial decision—Florida-Georgia and the city of Jacksonville—appealed the initial decision to the commission, which overturned it on August 31, 1956. In a 4–2 vote, the commission granted channel 12 to the Florida-Georgia Television Company. The two dissenters agreed with the original 1955 decision favoring WPDQ. Construction on channel 12's studios, on Adams Street near the Gator Bowl, began in January 1957, even as Jacksonville Broadcasting and the city of Jacksonville contested the award. On May 29, 1957, the appeals court upheld the award to Florida-Georgia and rejected a plea for denial by WJHP-TV (channel 36), an ultra high frequency (UHF) station that feared being driven out of business. By this time, the Adams Street studios were nearly complete, and foundations had been poured for the station's tower.
WFGA-TV broadcast its first test pattern on August 14, 1957, with regular programming following on September 1. It was affiliated from the start with NBC. Management boasted that WFGA-TV was the first station designed and built with color telecasting in mind; the station had color as well as black and white studio cameras.
WJHP-TV ceased telecasting on October 25, 1957, its problems having been exacerbated by WFGA-TV's debut; a country music program hosted by a young Johnny Tillotson, still attending the University of Florida at the time, moved from WJHP-TV to WFGA-TV after channel 36 folded. After it closed, ABC programming was split by WFGA-TV and Jacksonville's other commercial station, WMBR-TV/WJXT (channel 4). Jacksonville would not have a full-time ABC affiliate—or a third commercial station—again until WJKS-TV began on channel 17 in February 1966.
In addition to Tillotson, WFGA-TV brought a variety of local programs to Jacksonville screens in its early years. It produced the local version of children's television franchise Romper Room for 14 years from 1956 to 1970, with local schoolteacher Vivian Huff as "Miss Penny". For twelve years, from 1961 to 1973, "Skipper Ed" McCullers hosted cartoons; after the show ended, McCullers remained at channel 12 as public affairs director. Viewers across the country saw coverage of space launches at Cape Canaveral through WFGA-TV's cameras and facilities. Not only did WFGA-TV supply footage to NBC, but it often provided the press pool feed for other networks.
Ex parte influence scandal and assignment to Channel 12 of Jacksonville
As WFGA-TV was getting on the air, a scandal involving the FCC's decisions in several contested television station cases exploded into view. In January 1958, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson published a column alleging that FCC commissioner Richard Mack, a Florida native, had been influenced to switch the approval of channel 10 in Miami to a company affiliated with National Airlines. The resulting congressional investigation uncovered other cases of ex parte communications between attorneys and FCC commissioners on matters before the commission. Among the proceedings the committee investigated was that of channel 12 in Jacksonville. In April 1962, an FCC hearing examiner recommended the grant be voided because of Mack's involvement in the vote and found the other two applicants unqualified; the FCC overturned the initial decision in September 1963 and reaffirmed its original 1956 grant to Florida-Georgia, finding no improprieties on its behalf. It disqualified Jacksonville Broadcasting for its own ex parte contacts, while the city of Jacksonville application was denied as inferior to Florida-Georgia and not—as earlier proposed—for contacts made by one city commissioner.
In May 1965, a three-judge appeals court panel reversed most of the 1963 FCC ruling and concurred with the original April 1962 denial. It ordered the commission to open channel 12 to new applicants, as the city of Jacksonville had withdrawn from the proceeding and the judges upheld the disqualification of Jacksonville Broadcasting. Florida-Georgia survived the threat of disqualification on a 2–1 vote; in a partial dissent, Warren E. Burger said that both or neither of Jacksonville Broadcasting and Florida-Georgia should have been disqualified. The court rejected the two applicants' requests for rehearing, affirming the decision. In compliance with the court ruling, the FCC formally vacated the grants of WFGA-TV and WFTV in Orlando, which had a very similar ex parte–rooted case, in November 1965, though it allowed WFGA-TV to telecast in the interim.
With the channel 12 proceeding opened to all comers, the FCC began receiving bids from new applicants. The Community First Corporation, a consortium of local businessmen, had been formed in 1960 to seek a proposed channel 10 drop-in, but that never materialized; five years later, it filed for channel 12. Florida Gateway Television was headed by former Florida governor C. Farris Bryant. New Horizons Telecasting. These three competitors and Florida-Georgia were placed into comparative hearing status on July 7, 1967.
In September 1968, the Court of Appeals ordered the FCC to consider the interim operating authority requests from competing applicants for WFGA-TV and WFTV. These applications sought for groups to run the stations until a final decision was made on the underlying license. For WFGA-TV, proposals were received from Jacksonville University, St. John's Cathedral, and educational TV station WJCT. However, the appeals court rejected interim operators that were not seeking to run the stations on a full-time basis. With the shutdown of channel 12 the only other option, in January 1969, the FCC authorized all four pending applicants to join forces in an interim operator for WFGA-TV. Florida-Georgia agreed to lease the WFGA-TV facilities to the operator, and the existing staff was maintained except for the station president.
The hearing initially continued after the interim operation came into place. In 1970, the parties reached a settlement to assign the license to Channel 12 of Jacksonville, a permanent consortium of the four applicants and their stockholders. Channel 12 of Jacksonville consisted of 74 different stockholders, with the largest share being held by Wometco at 11 percent. The FCC approved in June 1971, and the new arrangement came into force on July 23. As part of a campaign to create a new image for the station, WFGA-TV changed its call sign to WTLV (for "television") on December 13, 1971.
Harte-Hanks ownership and switch to ABC
By 1974, Channel 12 of Jacksonville had received four offers for the station. One of the four, Harte-Hanks Newspapers of San Antonio, Texas, presented a buyout offer to the firm's stockholders. On September 30, Harte-Hanks announced it had secured a controlling 51-percent interest in Channel 12 of Jacksonville and would seek to purchase the remainder; the $10.5 million deal received FCC approval in March 1975.
Beginning in 1977, speculation emerged that WTLV might switch its network affiliation from NBC to ABC. At the time, ABC had surpassed NBC in the national ratings and was seeking affiliate upgrades nationwide, but it was stuck in Jacksonville on WJKS-TV, a station that did not even air an early-evening newscast. The comments were further bolstered by remarks made by ABC network president Jim Duffy stating that he had talked with other Jacksonville stations. WTLV signed a two-year renewal with NBC for 1978 through 1980, pinning its hopes on new NBC chairman Fred Silverman, Less than a year after signing the renewal, on May 3, 1979, WTLV announced it would switch to ABC in 1980. While NBC's affiliation agreement did not expire until September 1, the switch was moved forward to March 31, 1980.
Not long after the 1980 switch, the ratings fortunes of NBC and ABC reversed. By 1986, the president of Harte-Hanks's broadcasting division, Bill Moll, estimated that WTLV could improve its revenues by 12 percent if it returned to NBC, and the company had been in open dialogue with NBC since 1981. Moll admitted that switching to ABC "was a short-term help, and it's not helping us now". By May 1987, WTLV was a distant third in the local ratings.
Gannett ownership and return to NBC
In 1984, Harte-Hanks underwent a leveraged buyout that saddled it with $700 million in debt. To reduce this load, Harte-Hanks put a number of its divisions up for sale in October 1987, including three newspapers, seven cable systems, and WTLV and WFMY-TV in Greensboro, North Carolina. That December, Gannett agreed to buy WTLV and WFMY-TV for $155 million. The transaction was completed in February 1988, and within two weeks, Gannett announced that WTLV would return to NBC, replacing WJKS-TV and undoing the 1980 swap.
Duopoly with WJXX
On November 15, 1999, the FCC legalized television station duopolies—the common ownership of two stations in one market. The next day, November 16, Gannett announced it would purchase WJXX, which had been Jacksonville's ABC affiliate since February 1997, from Allbritton Communications. The deal was initiated after Allbritton approached Gannett about a possible sale. The new duopoly rules barred cross-ownership of two of the top four television stations in the same market, a restriction that typically prevented Big Four network affiliates from coming under common ownership. However, WJXX's fifth-place finish in total-day ratings allowed the deal.
WJXX had struggled in two and a half years of existence. Its launch was rushed after WJKS-TV, the outgoing ABC affiliate, began preempting more than half of ABC's prime time programming; this led to signal deficiencies and a poor picture on local cable systems. WJXX had introduced a news operation in December 1997, The circumstances forced Allbritton to divert its attention to the installation of temporary facilities. Seven months of inadequate transmitter coverage of Jacksonville and the even longer stretch without a direct feed to the cable company confused and alienated viewers just as channel 25 needed to make a good first impression. Furthermore, historically, ABC had usually not performed well in the Jacksonville market. In 2003, Charlie Patton, television editor for The Florida Times-Union, noted that "Jacksonville never acquired the ABC habit". Channel 25's news ratings, despite a product considered superior to that WJKS had produced as an ABC affiliate, lagged WJXT and WTLV; one bright spot was the market's only local newscast at 7 p.m. It became apparent that the combination of WTLV and WJXX would rely heavily on the former's facility and personnel, causing staffers to begin to depart.
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The FCC approved the purchase on March 16, 2000. Gannett took control the next morning, and about 36 WJXX employees—including 13 in news—joined the new combined WTLV operation, which immediately began simulcasting newscasts on both stations before relaunching on April 27 under the umbrella brand of First Coast News. Newscasts continued to be broadcast at the same time on each station, including the WJXX 7 p.m. newscast.
On June 29, 2015, the Gannett Company split in two, with one side specializing in print media and the other side specializing in broadcast and digital media. WTLV and WJXX were retained by the latter company, named Tegna.
WTLV was fined $55,000 by the FCC in 2017 for airing Jacksonville Jaguars promos that included the Emergency Alert System tones.
News operation
When WFGA-TV began broadcasting, the station's first news director was Harold Baker, who had served in the same position at WSM radio and television in Nashville, Tennessee. Baker would anchor the station's 6 p.m. news for 17 years and direct the nascent channel 12 newsroom for 19 years in total, winning the station major national journalism awards. It settled in as a consistent second-place finisher to WJXT in local news, though it worked to close the gap, particularly after its acquisition by Gannett in 1988.
After being acquired by Harte-Hanks in 1975, WTLV began producing the market's first hour-long evening newscast, branded as Action News; channel 12 began producing Jacksonville's first midday newscast at noon soon afterwards. WTLV's Action News launched the city's first morning newscast, Good Morning Jacksonville, in the early 1980s. Some of the first shows featured Pamela Rittenhouse and current First Coast News chief meteorologist Tim Deegan. Beginning in 1995, WTLV also aired a weekly television show called Monday Night Live, which aired at 7 p.m. every Monday during the NFL season, and was hosted by sports director Dan Hicken and John Jurkovic.
After the merger, continuing a trend already set by WTLV, the gap in viewership between First Coast News and market leader WJXT slowly closed to create tough competition in the Jacksonville market. The combination of WTLV and WJXX also surpassed WJXT in total revenue.
In 2002, the news department of Fox affiliate WAWS (channel 30) expanded to accommodate the move of the CBS affiliation to WTEV-TV (channel 47). The two stations rebranded as WFOX-TV and WJAX-TV in 2014 and their news as Action News as part of a wholesale change which included the firing of the previous main anchors. The Action News revamp improved ratings at the traditional third-place news operation in Jacksonville just as First Coast News remained without a news director for a year, causing a decline in viewership, and several key news personalities defected to Action News. Rob Mennie, who assumed the post of news director in 2014, noted of the newsroom as he encountered it, "This was a station ... I'll just use the word confused. They didn't know who they were. ... They were trying to figure out what makes us tick."
Notable staff
- Victor Blackwell – anchor
- Jeannie Blaylock – anchor, since 1985
- Donna Deegan (Hicken) – anchor, 1988–2012
- Curtis Dvorak – morning show contributor and co-host of First Coast Living
- Alan Gionet – anchor, 1998–2006
- Dan Hicken – sports anchor, 1986–2013
- Shannon Ogden – co-anchor, 2006–2016
- Nick Gregory – meteorologist, early 1980s
- Morris Jones – anchor, 1981–1983
- Curt Menefee – sports anchor, 1991–1992
- Lynne Russell – anchor, 1978–1979
- Roseanne Tellez – reporter and substitute anchor, 1988–1990
- Harmon Wages – sports anchor, late 1980s
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WTLV-HD | NBC |
| 12.2 | 480i | Antenna | Antenna TV | |
| 12.3 | Crime | True Crime Network | ||
| 12.4 | Defy | Ion Plus | ||
| 12.5 | ShopLC | Shop LC | ||
| 12.6 | HSN | HSN | ||
| 12.7 | Comet | Comet | ||
| 12.8 | Charge | Charge! |
Digital subchannel 12.2 originally carried NBC Weather Plus until the network ceased operations in November 2008; branded as First Coast News Weather Plus, it subsequently became a locally originated weather channel as part of the NBC Plus automated weather service. In April 2009, WTLV moved First Coast News Weather Plus to WJXX on a newly created second digital subchannel of that station. WTLV then began carrying Universal Sports over digital subchannel 12.2, which was subsequently replaced with The Country Network (now ZUUS Country) in January 2012, after Universal Sports ended operations as a digital multicast network and transitioned to a digital cable and satellite network. In the fall of 2013, the subchannel became an affiliate of Soul of the South Network.
Analog-to-digital conversion
WTLV began broadcasting a digital signal on April 17, 2000. On June 12, 2009, WTLV ended regular programming on its analog signal, on VHF channel 12, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 13, using virtual channel 12.
As part of the SAFER Act, WTLV kept its analog signal on the air until June 27 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.