WXAO: Christian TV for Jacksonville In February 1978, Christian Television of Jacksonville, a non-profit corporation, announced it would apply to the
Federal Communications Commission to build a non-commercial television station on channel 47 in
Jacksonville. The group of local businessmen was headed by
Tom McGehee and the second to apply for the channel, after
Malrite Communications; Malrite had filed for channel 47 when two other groups joined it in filing for channel 30. Malrite withdrew in a settlement agreement reached in 1978, and Christian Television of Jacksonville was awarded the
construction permit on June 22, 1979. However, facing financial difficulties as well as lower-than-expected contributions from potential viewers, it sold the permit to American Standard Leasing Corporation, a firm owned by Tom McGehee and his brother Frank. The new ownership meant the station would be operated on a commercial instead of noncommercial basis. WXAO began broadcasting on August 1, 1980, as the first new television station in Jacksonville since
WJKS (channel 17) began in 1966. The station's
call sign, WXAO, represented "Christ, the Alpha and the Omega". WXAO aired religious programming as well as family-friendly secular series. Its manager, George Ivey, came from the
Christian Broadcasting Network–owned
WANX in Atlanta. Within months, Jacksonville went from having no independent stations to having two, as channel 30—a majority share in the permit having been acquired by Malrite—began broadcasting on February 15, 1981, as
WAWS. That station quickly attracted a larger audience from sign-on to sign-off; a May 1981 ratings survey from the
Nielsen Company measured total-day viewership for WXAO at 5,000 viewers and WAWS at 19,000. At one point, the station held a wooden nickel contest that awarded prizes to people who received matching sets of WXAO wooden nickels.
WNFT: Second-rated independent Jim Kontoleon, a former general manager of
WTLV (channel 12), joined the staff as a consultant at the start of 1982 before becoming general manager. Under Kontoleon, management consciously began uncoupling channel 47 from its religious image and programming. Christian Television of Jacksonville, which had continued to exist as a producer of religious programming for WXAO, shut down that May. In February 1983, most of the prime time religious programming was removed from the station's lineup, with
The 700 Club moving into the 10 p.m. hour. The station added more children's programming, including the syndicated
TV Powww, which moved from WAWS. On August 8, it adopted a new call sign, WNFT (for North Florida Television). Kontoleon, who was known on-air for frequent editorials, departed WNFT in late 1983 to run
WTWS in
New London, Connecticut. With Kontoleon out, the McGehees invested in new programming and a signal upgrade; the station's antenna had been damaged in May 1982, affecting its signal, but this was not known for more than a year. The relaunch gave WAWS stiffer competition. However, the gap between the two stations widened again after WAWS became the Jacksonville affiliate of the startup
Fox network. In 1988, the station increased its
effective radiated power to 5 million watts. In spite of the increase, WNFT continued to struggle to shed the image it had earned in its early years as a "small-time" Christian station, and WAWS continued to lead WNFT in sign-on-to-sign-off ratings.
Krypton Broadcasting ownership and receivership .|alt=The Independent Life Building, a downtown skyscraper with signage reading Independent Life On March 30, 1990, McGehee announced that he had agreed to sell WNFT to Krypton Broadcasting of Jacksonville, a subsidiary of Krypton International Corporation of
Palm Beach. McGehee cited his age at the time; in a 2002 interview, his son Thomas McGehee Jr. noted that the family was glad to have returned to its primary industry, paper. The sale price of $3 million (equivalent to $ in ) was seen as a bargain by Feltner and other local broadcasters; WAWS had been sold the year before for $8.1 million. Krypton, which also owned a library of motion pictures and the Palm Beach Stingrays of the
United States Basketball League, was owned by Elvin Feltner and named for the community in Kentucky where he was born. Feltner intended for WNFT to be the first of up to 12 Krypton-owned stations. Seeking higher visibility, Feltner moved WNFT from its original studios on University Boulevard to facilities in the mezzanine level of downtown Jacksonville's
Independent Life Building. The move more than doubled the station's rent and equipment costs. Krypton, which later bought
WTVX in
Fort Pierce, serving
West Palm Beach, and
WABM in
Birmingham, Alabama, soon found itself in financial trouble. In 1991, WNFT's losses widened over the previous year. In January 1992, Krypton missed a payment on a $19 million loan it had received two years prior from Dutch bank
Internationale Nederlanden Bank N.V., and in June, the bank sued, seeking its money. While Krypton was attempting to buy a fourth station,
WQTV in
Boston, in 1993, several program suppliers asked a federal court to order WNFT and WTVX into bankruptcy. By August 1993, 26 cases had been filed against Feltner for debts owed, ranging from the 1990 loan to $1,300 in condominium association fees. WTVX owed $3.3 million to program distributors including
Columbia Pictures,
MCA Television,
Warner Bros.,
Paramount Television, and
20th Century Fox, while former WTVX employees recalled that tapes of programs they no longer had rights to air were being shipped from Jacksonville to Fort Pierce to air on that station before the companies obtained an injunction against such activity. Also in August, the Alabama station joined its Florida sisters in bankruptcy. In a court-ordered settlement in October 1993, Feltner relinquished all day-to-day control of WTVX and WNFT. A December report from a federal examiner, Soneet Kapila, suggested turning over their operations to a trustee. Kapila noted that Feltner had spurned an offer from
Paxson Communications Corporation, which at the time was pursuing an entrance into television, for all three stations. He found that the Krypton stations needed an infusion of new capital and that they could not be sold if Feltner was still involved. Even though Feltner was able to settle the suit filed by Internationale Nederlanden Bank in March 1994, and Feltner sued the syndicators alleging a conspiracy to hurt his stations, it was not enough. Columbia Pictures won an $8.8 million claim in the WTVX–WNFT case in July, when a federal judge found the stations had committed willful copyright infringement (in 1995, MCA would win a $9 million judgment upheld in 1997), and in September, the stations were ordered to auction in October. RDS Broadcasting submitted the highest bid at $10 million and was approved by the bankruptcy judge in October 1994. While the sale was pending, WNFT affiliated with
UPN, a new national TV network that launched in January 1995. After ten months, the FCC approved RDS's purchase of WNFT on August 23, 1995.
WTEV-TV: UPN affiliation and common operation with WAWS RDS Broadcasting from the outset intended to reach a
joint sales agreement with
Clear Channel Television, owner of WAWS, to market the two stations jointly. RDS's other station,
KTFO in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, was similarly operated in tandem with a Clear Channel station there. Under the agreement, Clear Channel assumed programming and most operational duties of the station, while RDS employed a general manager and chief engineer dedicated to WNFT; 14 employees of channel 47 were fired. The WNFT programming lineup was changed to prevent it from competing with WAWS's higher-rated selections of children's programs and situation comedies. The call sign was changed to WTEV-TV on March 4, 1996; the new designation, which sounded like "TV" when said out loud, was intended to symbolize a fresh start and emerged from a contest among station employees. With the consolidation of WTEV into WAWS and the launch of a local news operation and increased staffing for the latter, Clear Channel needed new studio space. The company purchased a building in the EastPark area of south Jacksonville and moved operations there in August 1997. The next month, the WAWS news department was extended to WTEV with the launch of
UPN47 News at 6:30, inspired by the success of a similar program at
WNUV in
Baltimore. MGA Broadcasting, a company owned by Van H. Archer III, acquired WTEV and KTFO from RDS for $825,000. In 1999, the FCC legalized
duopolies—the outright ownership of two broadcast licenses in a market—and Clear Channel acquired WTEV from MGA. Under general manager Susan Adams Loyd, who arrived at the station in 2000, Clear Channel began to target WTEV toward Jacksonville's
African American community, which it believed to be underserved. Clear Channel expanded the EastPark facility between 2000 and 2001 to house its radio stations and its outdoor advertising operation. An 11 a.m. newscast had been added to WTEV's lineup by 2002, and by the 2001–2002 TV season, WTEV was the seventh-highest-rated UPN affiliate in the country. Unusually for a UPN affiliate, it attracted a large audience among viewers aged 25–54, older than the target UPN audience. ==Becoming a CBS affiliate==