WTEV-TV

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the television station in Jacksonville, Florida. For the former WTEV in New Bedford, Massachusetts, see WLNE.

WTEV-TV
Jacksonville, Florida
Branding	CBS47
Channels	47 (UHF) analog, 19 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	CBS
Owner	Clear Channel Communications (sale pending)
Founded	August 1, 1980
Call letters meaning	A play on "TV"
Former callsigns	WXAO (1980-1983) & WNFT (1983-1995)
Former affiliations	Independent (1980-1995) UPN (1995-2002)
Website	www.wtev.com/

WTEV-TV is the CBS affiliate for Jacksonville, Florida and its surrounding areas, which stretch from St. Augustine in the south to Brunswick, Georgia in the north. Its transmitter is in Jacksonville.

Contents 1 History 2 Newscasts 3 References 4 External links

[edit] History

WTEV first signed on as WXAO on August 1, 1980. Originally, the station was mostly religious, with some secular shows. Religious shows aired for about 12 hours a day and secular shows for about 5 or 6 hours. The secular shows included cartoons, westerns and a few classic sitcoms.

The station originally was locally-owned, going by the legal name of WXAO, Incorporated. Gradually, the station moved away from most of the religious programming. In 1983, the station changed its call letters to WNFT, standing for "We're North Florida Television." At that point, the station began running more movies and drama shows.

By 1989, the station was airing a blend of cartoons, recent off-network sitcoms, movies, and drama shows. That year, WNFT was sold to Krypton Broadcasting, which also owned two other stations with similar formats: WTVX (channel 34) in West Palm Beach/Ft. Pierce and WABM (channel 68) in Birmingham.

Krypton would file for bankruptcy in 1993, selling each station to a separate owner within the following year. WNFT was sold to RDS Broadcasting, which entered into a local marketing agreement with Clear Channel Communications, owners of Fox affiliate WAWS (channel 30). WAWS and WNFT pooled resources and programming, running newer and stronger cartoons and sitcoms on WAWS, along with Fox programming and talk/reality shows. Meanwhile, WNFT's new schedule focused largely on older cartoons, movies, old sitcoms, and drama shows.

In January of 1995, WNFT became one of the charter affiliates of the UPN network. The station changed its call letters to WTEV later that year. Those calls were originally used by channel 6 in New Bedford during their first stint as an ABC affiliate, later becoming a CBS affiliate as WLNE-TV, and returned to ABC in 1995.

In the late 1990's the station moved away from most classic sitcoms and cut back on cartoons, as WTEV began to focus more on talk and reality shows. By the late '90s, a 6:30pm weekday newscast was added, produced by WAWS-TV. Clear Channel would buy WTEV outright in 2001.

In April 2002, The Florida Times-Union reported that WTEV would switch to airing CBS programming. The former CBS affiliate, WJXT moved to news intensive independent programming after 53 years after not being able to come to a new affiliation agreement with CBS.

WTEV officially became a CBS affiliate on July 15, 2002. At that time, UPN programming (including cartoons which ended fall of 2003), and most off network sitcoms moved to WAWS, with UPN's primetime line-up airing from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. after the news, which followed Fox's primetime programming.

Upon becoming a CBS affiliate, WTEV expanded it's news production from the existing news department at WAWS. The 6:30pm newscast was dropped (being off the air actually a couple of weeks before the affiliation switch), and replaced by a full slate of morning, noon, evening, and late newscasts.

On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced that it would be selling all of its television stations, including WTEV,^[1] after being bought by private equity firms.

[edit] Newscasts

All air on weekdays only unless noted

• CBS47 News at 5:30 - 5:30AM-6AM
• CBS47 News at 6 AM - 6AM-7AM
• CBS47 News at Noon - NOON-12:30PM
• CBS47 News at 5:30 - 5:30PM-6PM
• CBS47 News at Six - 6PM-6:30PM Weekdays and Saturdays
• CBS47 News at 6:30 - 6:30PM-7PM Sundays
• CBS47 News at Eleven - 11PM-11:35PM 7 Nights a week

While WTEV shares a news department with WAWS, WTEV maintains separate anchor teams for their weekday broadcasts, as well as different production elements such as a separate news set (with the WTEV/WAWS newsroom as a backdrop), graphics, and music.

[edit] References

1. ^ "Clear Channel agrees to sale", The Cincinnati Enquirer, Gannett Company, 2006-11-16. Retrieved on 2006-11-17.

[edit] External links

• WTEV website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WTEV-TV

CBS Network Affiliates in the state of Florida
WFOR 4 (Miami) - WCTV 6 (Tallahassee) - WKMG 6 (Orlando) - WTSP 10 (St. Petersburg) - WINK 11 (Fort Myers) - WPEC 12 (West Palm Beach) - WTEV 47 (Jacksonville) - WGFL 53 (High Springs / Gainesville)
See also: ABC, CW, Fox, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS, Religious, Spanish and Other stations in the state of Florida