WTWV WTVA was the brainchild of
Frank K. Spain, an engineering graduate of
Mississippi State University, who had helped build NBC-
owned station WNBW (now
WRC-TV) in Washington, D.C. As then Technical Director at
WHEN-TV in
Syracuse, New York, in the early-1950s, he dreamed of bringing a television station to Tupelo, where he had spent most of his childhood. Spain applied for a license in 1953 which was granted by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1956. The station began airing on March 18, 1957, with the call letters WTWV. Its equipment (antenna, transmitter, cameras, etc.) was hand-built in Spain's garage, backyard, and basement in Syracuse. Spain hoped to parlay his good relations with NBC officials into getting his new station an affiliation with the network. However, several NBC executives believed Tupelo was not a desirable place for a local station because of its rural location, even though most viewers in northern Mississippi could only get NBC via grade B coverage from
WMC-TV in
Memphis, Tennessee,
WLBT in
Jackson, Mississippi (those two now
sister stations of WTVA), and WAPI-TV (now
WVTM-TV) in
Birmingham, Alabama. Nonetheless, they told Spain that if he could figure out a way to obtain a network signal, he could carry it. Spain allegedly negotiated under-the-table deals with WMC-TV and set up a network of
microwave relays and
repeater systems to carry the WMC-TV signal to Tupelo. Station engineers then switched to and from the signal when network programming aired. This setup, necessary in the days before
satellites, enabled WTWV to bring NBC programming to northeastern Mississippi and northwestern Alabama. The station also carried a secondary affiliation with
ABC (which apparently necessitated the use of
WHBQ-TV, now a
Fox affiliate). In the mid-1960s, WTWV was approached by ABC about becoming a full affiliate of that network. Spain, who was still receiving "bootleg" NBC programming, told NBC executives about ABC's offer to pay him the customary rates. This prompted NBC to finally negotiate a formal deal with Spain, which made WTWV an official NBC affiliate—one of only three primary NBC affiliates in Mississippi at the time. It still carried some ABC programming in off-hours (namely, college football on Saturdays) until WVSB (now
WLOV-TV) in nearby
West Point began operating in 1983. Starting in 1972, WTWV operated a full-time satellite for eastern central Mississippi, WHTV (now
WMDN) in
Meridian on channel 24; WHTV operated as such until 1980, when Spain decided to make it a stand-alone station, with a
CBS affiliation. WTWV built a new tower in the 1970s that not only brought a city-grade signal to Columbus for the first time, but gave the station one of the largest coverage areas in the country.
WTVA On July 4, 1979, WTWV changed its call letters to "WTVA" to reinforce its identity, not only as the first
TVA city, but also its then-current branding of "TV Alive". The WTWV call sign was later used on
WFRQ, a radio station in
Mashpee, Massachusetts, on
Cape Cod. The WTWV call sign is now in use by a
Memphis-based TV station. Neither the Massachusetts nor the Memphis station are related to the current WTVA. Frank Spain was
CEO of WTVA until his death on April 25, 2006. He continued to visit the station regularly well into his seventies. His widow Jane assumed the CEO position until the station was sold in September 2014. The outlet was the first
commercial television station in Mississippi to devote its entire morning broadcast schedule to
educational programming. The station also made history as the first in Mississippi to broadcast a live
basketball game. In the late 1990s, WTVA launched a
low-power translator, W22BS, which served as a primary
UPN affiliate, before selling the station to rival WCBI in 2002. The Spains continued to own WHTV/WMDN until it was sold to Meridian Media (now Waypoint Media) in January 2008. Although WTVA formerly operated WLOV through local marketing agreement (LMA), and previously operated ABC affiliate
WKDH through a similar arrangement from its 2001 sign-on until its final sign-off on August 31, 2012, each station had its own station manager and owner in accordance with FCC policy. WTVA, Inc. also previously owned and operated
WTVX in
Fort Pierce, Florida, and
KTFL in
Flagstaff, Arizona. During the majority of the time KTFL was broadcasting, it carried programing from
FamilyNet. KTFL's transmitter was licensed as the most powerful television station its own
market. On July 30, 1999, WTVA began its digital service on UHF channel 57 but is mapped to virtual channel 9; that service would move to VHF channel 8 on July 24, 2008. By comparison, sister station WLOV broadcast network programming in high definition over a low-power digital transmitter. It is likely the allowable power levels on channel 8, WTVA's post-
transition digital channel, will be severely limited due to potential interference to other stations. Previously, FamilyNet was carried on WTVA-DT2 until December 31, 2011, when it was replaced by
MeTV. The subchannel again switched affiliations, this time to ABC, on September 1, 2012; the subchannel replaced WKDH as the ABC affiliate for the Columbus–Tupelo–West Point market, which ceased operations the night before on August 31. The MeTV affiliation was moved to sister-station WLOV-DT 27.2.
Heartland Media announced on September 16, 2014, that it would purchase WTVA from the Spain family, ending 57 years of local ownership. Heartland Media assumed control of the station on February 11, 2015.
Allen Media Broadcasting, in turn, purchased Heartland in 2020, bringing WTVA into its portfolio. On June 1, 2025, amid financial woes and rising debt, Allen Media Group announced that it would explore "strategic options" for the company, such as a sale of its television stations (including WTVA). On August 8, 2025, it was announced that AMG would sell 12 of its stations, including WTVA, to
Gray Media for $171 million. The sale of WTVA was completed on March 27, 2026, marking Gray's entry into the Columbus–Tupelo market. ==Newscasts==