WAWS - History

History

The station signed-on February 15, 1981 as Jacksonville's first Independent outlet. Airing an analog signal on UHF channel 30, it used the call sign WAWS-TV which were sequentially assigned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The station's original owner was Malrite Television and it had a general entertainment format of cartoons, movies, sitcoms, and drama shows. The call letters were modified by dropping the use of the -TV suffix on October 8, 1981. On October 9, 1986, WAWS became a charter affiliate of Fox. In 1989, Malrite sold the station to Clear Channel Communications, a fast-growing broadcasting conglomerate based in San Antonio, Texas. That company had earlier purchased the first Independent station in the nearby Pensacola/Mobile, Alabama market, WPMI-TV (now an NBC affiliate) and was Clear Channel's first television station.

As was the trend for many Fox affiliates throughout the mid to late-1990s, WAWS began moving toward talk and reality shows and away from classic sitcoms. In 1993, Clear Channel began managing rival station WNFT (now WTEV-TV) through a local marketing agreement (LMA) in which the two outlets pooled programming and resources while running the strongest shows on WAWS. WNFT became a UPN affiliate at the network's launch on January 16, 1995 and Clear Channel bought the station outright in 2001. In 2002, WJXT (the longtime CBS affiliate in Jacksonville) decided to end its long relationship with the network after a squabble between CBS and WJXT's owners, Post-Newsweek Stations, over an affiliation contract. WTEV quickly dropped its UPN affiliation so it could become the new CBS affiliate, the end result being two media companies controlling each of Jacksonville's Big Four network affiliates (Gannett owns both ABC affiliate WJXX and NBC affiliate WTLV), as well as making Jacksonville one of the only television markets in the United States with all six major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and at the time, UPN and The WB) having affiliations with only five stations in a six station-market (which remains true in the present day with UPN and WB successors The CW and MyNetworkTV). WAWS then added UPN in a secondary nature running the network's two-hour prime time programming on a delayed basis from 11 at night until 1 the next morning.

On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced the two networks would end broadcasting and merge. The new combined service would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of corporate parents "C"BS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time "W"arner. On February 22, News Corporation announced it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This new service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming independent stations. It was also created to compete against The CW. In March, it was announced WB affiliate WJWB would become The CW affiliate for Jacksonville and change its call letters to WCWJ. On July 12, it was confirmed WAWS would carry MyNetworkTV on a new second digital subchannel instead of as a secondary affiliation.

However until January 2007 when the new second digital subchannel was actually launched, WAWS's website listed MyNetworkTV programming as airing at 11 p.m. after the WTEV-produced newscast at 10. With the sign-on of WAWS-DT2, MyNetworkTV began airing at its regular time (8 to 10 p.m.) on a dedicated channel known on-air as "VTV". During the daytime, this also aired programming from the now defunct Variety Television Network. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Newport Television, a broadcaster controlled by Providence Equity Partners. Since WTEV was also included in the deal this would have violated FCC rules preventing common ownership of two of the four largest stations in a single market. As a result, the FCC granted Newport Television a temporary waiver for the acquisition of WAWS and WTEV providing Newport sold-off either station within six months of consummation. The group deal closed on March 14, 2008 and the company originally planned to sell-off WAWS to another company while keeping WTEV.

In mid-May 2008, High Plains Broadcasting agreed to purchase the FCC assets of WTEV and six other stations from Newport Television due to ownership conflicts in the affected markets (including Jacksonville). But since this latest group deal was a sale in name only, Newport continues to operate the stations (and thus WTEV effectively remains a sister outlet to WAWS) after the sale closed on September 15. It effectively made High Plains Broadcasting a front company or "shell corporation" for Newport Television similar to the relationship existing between Mission Broadcasting and the Nexstar Broadcasting Group as well as the Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cunningham Broadcasting. This arrangement also placed WAWS in the unusual position of being the senior partner as a Fox-affiliated station in a virtual duopoly with a CBS affiliate (most virtual or legal duopolies involving a Fox affiliate and a Big Three-affiliated station result in the Fox affiliate serving as the junior partner). WAWS is the only Jacksonville television station that has never changed its primary network affiliation.

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of WAWS and WTEV-TV (along with Tulsa sister duopoly of KOKI-TV and KMYT-TV) to Cox Media Group. The sale to Cox Media would place WAWS and WTEV under common ownership with Cox's radio station cluster in Jacksonville (WOKV-AM/FM, WFYV-FM, WJGL, WXXJ and WAPE-FM). Due to the very same duopoly rule that forced the license of one of the stations to be transferred to a separate licensee back in 2008, Cox will acquire WAWS outright and transfer the license for WTEV to Bayshore Television, LLC who will then enter into a management agreement with Cox. The FCC approved the transaction on October 24, and it was finalized on December 3.