WTLV
WTLV is a television station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Orange Park–licensed ABC affiliate WJXX, a combination known as First Coast News. The two stations share studios on Adams Street in downtown Jacksonville; WTLV's transmitter is located on Anders Boulevard on the city's Southside.
Channel 12 in Jacksonville began broadcasting on September 1, 1957, as WFGA-TV. It was an NBC affiliate owned by the Florida-Georgia Television Company and, beginning shortly after its launch, one of two stations in the city. WFGA-TV spent most of its first 15 years on air embroiled in legal conflict stemming from an influence scandal involving a Federal Communications Commission 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 was 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 nearly 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.
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 lifted a 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 its stockholders was Harold Cohn, who owned Jacksonville radio station WRHC. 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. These groups had each obtained pre-freeze construction permits they had not acted on. WJAX had previously held a 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, an ultra high frequency 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. ABC represented about 25 percent of the network programming aired on channel 12. 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 until 1988. 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 June 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 was primarily owned by Frank Pellegrin, who had radio station interests in Tennessee and New Hampshire. 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 on December 13, 1971. 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.