WTEV-TV - History

History

The station was the brainchild of John Stone Thigpenn who, while working as an announcer at Christian radio station WBIX (1010 AM, now WJXL) during May 1977, read Pat Robertson's "Shout it From the Housetops". This was Robertson's personal account of how he founded the Christian Broadcasting Network. Thigpenn, who gained faith to create a similar venture in Jacksonville, mentioned on-the-air that he wanted to start a Christian television station for the Jacksonville market.

Within minutes of this announcement, listener Janice Paulk from Fernandina called to ask who she should make a check out to in support of the effort. Thigpenn suggested the name "Christian Television of Jacksonville" knowing he could later formally create a business license and banking account under that name. Three days later, a check for $1,000 was received from Paulk.

Further inspired by such a generous donation, Thigpenn contacted his friend Russell Linenkohl, President of the local Full Gospel Businessmen's Association. Linenkohl suggested teaming up with other Christian business leaders to jointly discuss how best to proceed. Included in that group were physicians already known by Thigpenn, Stephen Gyland and Douglas Fowler. Other businessmen being recommended were local bankers Richard Martin, Rufus Kite Powell, and Thomas McGehee. The group agreed to hold a public meeting to invite citizen comments regarding the endeavor. At the end of this public meeting, the attendees voted to appoint the head table to form a selection committee tasked with appointing and forming a Board of Directors for Christian Television of Jacksonville.

Before the public meeting, Thigpenn had already contacted the Broadcast Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discover that two analog television frequencies (channels 30 and 47) were available for broadcast in Jacksonville. He also discovered that two entities were already competing for the channel 30 frequency. The group decided to avoid the time and expense of litigating a challenge for that allotment and opted to file for 47. Thigpenn, who did not share the same community prominence as the other appointing members, agreed to act as a silent partner to the newly appointed Board of Directors for Christian Television of Jacksonville. He subsequently headed up the Community Ascertainment requirement as one of several exhibits needed by the FCC as part of the license application process.

While Christian Television of Jacksonville received the construction permit and eventual broadcast license from the FCC, it did not garner the expected financial donations from the community to sustain its operating costs. The board then decided to transfer the ownership to Thomas McGehee who was serving as the board's President. McGehee and his brother Frank McGehee formed North Florida Television Incorporated which was awarded the license transfer by the FCC. Thigpenn was appointed to the new board and was listed as a principal on the newly granted license.

After all the planning and financing, the station officially signed-on as WXAO-TV on August 1, 1980. Thigpenn served as the station's first news director from 1980 through 1984. "XAO" stood for "Christ, the Alpha and the Omega" in Greek letters. Its intent was to be an alternative to commercial television's sex and violence by broadcasting religious programs from The PTL Club, Christian Television Network, and Trinity Broadcast Network. The station also aired secular shows including cartoons, westerns, and a few classic sitcoms. WXAO Incorporated was Jacksonville's first 24-hour station but never generated a large viewership. Gradually, it abandoned most of the religious programming. In 1983, the station changed its call letters to WNFT. At that point, it began running more movies and drama shows. By 1989, it were airing a blend of cartoons, recent off-network sitcoms, movies, and drama shows. The outlet was sold in 1990 for approximately $3 million to Krypton Broadcasting who also owned two other stations with similar formats, WTVX in West Palm Beach and WABM in Birmingham, Alabama.

Krypton filed for bankruptcy in 1993 and sold each station to a separate owner within the following year. WNFT was sold to RDS Broadcasting which in turn entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Clear Channel Communications who owned Fox affiliate WAWS. WNFT moved into that station's facility and the two stations pooled resources and programming. WAWS then began to run more popular cartoons and sitcoms along with Fox programming and talk/reality shows. Meanwhile, WNFT's new schedule focused largely on older cartoons, movies, sitcoms, and drama shows. On January 16, 1995, it became one of the charter affiliates of UPN and adopted the call letters WTEV-TV later that year. This call-sign had previously been used on ABC affiliate WLNE-TV in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In the late-1990s, WTEV moved away from most classic sitcoms, cut back on cartoons, and began to focus more on talk and reality shows. Clear Channel would buy the station outright in 2001.