Early years Fort Pierce had previously had a television station,
WTVI (channel 19), in two separate stints from 1960 to 1962. It had been a money-loser and had failed twice for financial reasons. However, one of the minority owners of WTVI thought the venture was worth trying again in the wake of the
All-Channel Receiver Act mandating UHF tuning in television sets. In April 1965, Indian River Television, a company owned by J. Patrick Beacom (mayor of
St. Lucie Village) and Bill Minshall, filed to build a new television station on channel 19 in Fort Pierce, which the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted on July 28 of that year. The application had been amended to specify channel 34 when the FCC overhauled UHF allotments nationwide that summer. Indian River then spent $50,000 to acquire the studio and transmitter site along
US 1 just south of the
St. Lucie–
Indian River county line, built for WTVI in 1960, from that station's founder, Gene Dyer. Indian River reinstalled equipment after the structure had been stripped several years prior. WTVX went on the air on April 5, 1966, after broadcasting a test pattern since March 24. It immediately affiliated with CBS; previously, cable companies had imported Miami CBS affiliate
WTVJ (channel 4). However, WTVX could not air every CBS show immediately because some sponsors withheld their programs from the new station. The new station's 26 kW of effective radiated power did not reach past
Martin County. Due to WTVX's weak signal, WTVJ continued to claim the Palm Beaches as part of its primary coverage area; when that station opened a news bureau in West Palm Beach in 1970, 12.4 percent of its audience was said to come from Palm Beach County. After a sale announcement in 1970 was later labeled "premature", the Minshall and Koblegard families—which by this point owned the entirety of the station—reached a deal in 1977 to sell WTVX to Frank Spain, owner of
WTWV in
Tupelo, Mississippi. However, a federal investigation into station practices was sparked when Edward Trent, an employee who had been fired the previous year, told the FCC that WTVX engaged in an illegal practice known as "clipping", replacing commercials and short credits sequences from network programs with local commercials. The commission proceeded to designate the renewal of WTVX's
broadcast license for hearing on the matter. WTVX admitted to carrying out clipping in June 1978, claiming it had done so because it had oversold ad time; the station ultimately had its license renewed and paid a $10,000 fine. That allowed the sale of WTVX to Frank Spain to proceed.
Palm Beach expansion and blackout lawsuit Spain launched a major capital campaign to improve the station's facilities. More than $5 million was put into WTVX, including newer and larger Fort Pierce studios on North 25th Street (
SR 615) and the commissioning of a tower after some early county opposition. It featured the most powerful UHF transmitter in Florida, operating at the UHF maximum of 5 million watts. The station finally had a signal capable of reaching the Palm Beaches, filling what had been something of a donut hole in CBS coverage. In addition, the more powerful WTVX began appearing on Palm Beach County cable systems that had not previously carried it, further extending its reach. Although the station came to dominate the Treasure Coast with its improved facilities, the upgraded signal brought an end to a special arrangement. From
1972 to
1979, with the approval of CBS and NBC, WTVX carried
Miami Dolphins home games that would have to be
blacked out by West Palm Beach stations because their signals reached into the blackout radius around the
Miami Orange Bowl; hotels on
Singer Island invested in antenna systems to receive WTVX and attract patrons when Dolphins games were blacked out. (The earliest such telecast was
Super Bowl II in 1968.) After fighting the Dolphins and the league in court for two years at an estimated cost to Spain of $250,000, the station lost its fight against NFL blackout policies in appeals court in 1982 and opted not to continue.
Loss of CBS affiliation and independence In 1987, a series of events began in Miami that would culminate in WTVX being left without a network affiliation. That January, NBC bought WTVJ, which was contracted to be a CBS affiliate through the end of 1988. CBS then affiliated with and bought
WCIX (channel 6), Miami's Fox affiliate, to carry its programming beginning at the start of 1989. Technical limitations stemming from the addition of channel 6 to Miami several years after the other VHF assignments and the need to maintain spacing to
channel 6 in Orlando meant that WCIX's transmitter was sited further south than the other Miami stations. This left key areas of
Broward County having to rely on translator stations or cable to watch WCIX. CBS feared a loss of service in Broward, and WTVX's signal did not reach this area. After contacting both of the VHF stations in West Palm Beach—
NBC affiliate
WPTV-TV (channel 5) and ABC affiliate
WPEC (channel 12)—it reached a deal with WPEC. This put ABC in the position of searching for a new affiliate among three stations: WTVX, West Palm Beach Fox affiliate
WFLX (channel 29), and
WPBF (channel 25), a station whose studios were under construction in
Palm Beach Gardens and which was projected to sign on as an independent. Conventional wisdom when the WPEC switch to CBS was announced gave WTVX a strong chance of emerging with the ABC hookup. WTVX was the most established of the three stations and the only one with a functioning news department. Bob Morford, the news director, told his staff in a memo, "The bottom line for WTVX is that we expect we will become the next ABC affiliate for this market." In September, officials from the three stations made presentations to ABC executives in New York. WTVX was seen as being in the lead, with its established operation, but it was not based in West Palm Beach, the largest city in the media market. WFLX had solid ratings and viewership that extended into Broward County, though it had no news department. However, WPBF was cited by media as a "dark horse" and by WPTV's general manager as a "sleeper" because of its proposed technical facilities and the track record of one of its owners, John C. Phipps, in running Tallahassee-area CBS affiliate
WCTV, one of the most successful television stations in the country. In October, ABC handed down its decision: it had selected WPBF, which had offered to pay the first-ever fee to affiliate with a network. Longstanding industry practice called for networks to pay affiliates. The news reverberated with a thud in Fort Pierce; Morford cited his station's location as a disadvantage and believed that ABC was more interested in affiliating with a West Palm Beach–area station instead. The very same officials that just two months prior had stated they had "not even contemplated" life as an independent stared independence straight in the face. Morford declared the 35-person news staff would remain and that the station would reinforce its commitment to local news. Morford noted that, while movies and syndicated shows would be on the new lineup, "the world does not need another movie channel". Meanwhile, Frank Spain put WTVX on the market in November, trying to gauge its value without a network affiliation; he opted not to take the various offers that ranged from $9 to $24 million—half the $49 million value it had as a CBS affiliate. On January 1, 1989, the affiliation switch took effect, and WTVX relaunched as a general-entertainment independent with a lineup heavy on syndicated shows and news. The loss of CBS programming cost the station two-thirds of its total-day audience and 60 percent of its prime time audience. WTVX initially moved its late local newscast to 10 p.m., the first such program in the Palm Beach/Treasure Coast market. A Maryland real estate developer obtained an option to buy the station, but no deal was ever reached, and WTVX came off the market for a second time. However, by April 1990, the station was courting three suitors, and though Frank Spain initially backed out at the eleventh hour of a deal with Krypton Broadcasting, the firm, owned by Elvin Feltner of Singer Island, reached an agreement to spend $8 million to purchase WTVX. The purchase was part of a long-term plan to own 12 television stations in Florida. The sale was approved in February 1991 and consummated that April.
Krypton bankruptcy and Whitehead Media ownership Krypton, which also owned
WNFT in
Jacksonville and
WABM in
Birmingham, Alabama, soon found itself in financial trouble. 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 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 station employees recalled that tapes of programs they no longer had rights to air were being shipped from Jacksonville to Fort Pierce to air on WTVX 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 same week WTVX secured affiliation with the new United Paramount Network (
UPN) for 1995, the stations were ordered to auction in October. Five companies placed initial bids on WTVX. A firm backed by the chief operating officer for the two stations, Dan Dayton; local radio station owner Amaturo Group (which proposed to turn over operations to WPEC); WPFP, a company bankrolled by WFLX owner
Malrite Communications; and Price Communications, which once owned radio stations in West Palm Beach, all lost out to a $12.65 million bid by Whitehead Media, owned by
Silver King Broadcasting vice president Eddie Whitehead and financed by Paxson (which had just purchased WPBF). A judge approved the winning bids for WTVX and WNFT; Feltner unsuccessfully challenged the Whitehead sale, claiming that Paxson's hand in operations would constitute a then-illegal duopoly. The FCC tossed his challenge in early June, allowing Whitehead Media to close on the sale and enter into a
local marketing agreement (LMA) with Paxson to supply its programming. Even before the Whitehead deal closed, WTVX had begun to turn itself around. With UPN programming as well as an affiliation with
The WB, and a trustee at the helm, fiscal improvements were felt at the station. When Whitehead assumed control, it fired some of the station's 43 staffers, including the general manager, and operations moved from Fort Pierce to WPBF's Palm Beach Gardens studios, with its transmitter facility and use of WPBF's Treasure Coast bureau as a sales office remaining its only presence on the Treasure Coast. (
WTCE-TV, the
Trinity Broadcasting Network station in Fort Pierce, then occupied the studio building.)
Paramount/Viacom/CBS ownership Paxson Communications Corporation's businesses were rapidly shifting in the mid-1990s. Most notable was the development of a chain of major-market UHF television stations that primarily broadcast infomercials, Infomall TV (inTV). The ownership of network-affiliated WPBF and operation of WTVX did not fit this mold. In order to concentrate on Infomall TV and its Florida radio properties, Paxson retained an advisor in July 1996 to help it analyze a potential sale of the stations. Rumors ran hot about potential buyers for the pair, including
The Walt Disney Company, which had just purchased ABC. After Paxson decided to shop the two stations to separate acquirers, WTVX was the first to find a buyer: the
Paramount Stations Group, which paid $34.3 million. (Because of an overlapping contour with
WBFS-TV in Miami, which it owned, the license assets were assigned to another company, Straightline Communications, which then leased them to Paramount along with those of
WLWC in
New Bedford, Massachusetts.) When Paramount took control, it made two immediate changes: it dropped The WB, UPN's chief competitor (from which it only aired prime time shows at times not conflicting with UPN), and it moved operations to Miami, retaining a West Palm Beach office for sales, engineering, and a public affairs staffer. In 2000, after the FCC legalized television duopolies, Paramount parent company
Viacom merged with
CBS, which additionally owned WFOR-TV in Miami, and purchased WTVX outright. All three stations were run from Miami under one general manager. That same year, WB programming returned to WTVX, once again airing in off hours on channel 34; the entire network lineup moved from
WTCN-CA to WTVX in April 2002 but returned to
WTCN in 2005. When UPN and WB merged to form
The CW in 2006, WTVX was among 11 charter CBS-owned stations to be announced as an outlet of the new service.
Four Points and Sinclair ownership CBS agreed to sell a package of smaller-market TV stations, including WTVX, WTCN-CA, and WWHB-CA, in February 2007 to
Cerberus Capital Management for $185 million. Cerberus formed a new holding company for the stations,
Four Points Media Group, and closed on the deal on January 10, 2008. On March 20, 2009,
Nexstar Broadcasting Group took over the management of Four Points under a three-year outsourcing agreement. On September 8, 2011, the Sinclair Broadcast Group announced its intent to purchase Four Points from Cerberus Capital Management for $200 million. Sinclair then began managing the stations (including WTVX, WTCN, WWHB, and WLWC) under local marketing agreements following antitrust approval by the
Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Within months of announcing the Four Points deal, Sinclair moved to acquire the television station division of
Freedom Communications, which included WPEC. The deal with Sinclair acquiring Four Points was completed on January 3, 2012. ==Newscasts==