WTLV - History

History

The station began broadcasting on September 1, 1957 as WFGA-TV (which stood for "We're Florida and GeorgiA"), owned by the Florida-Georgia Television Company. It was originally a primary NBC affiliate with a secondary affiliation with ABC. It was the first television station in the United States designed for color broadcasting. Two years later, WFGA donated tower space, money and transmitting facilities to the market's educational station and present-day PBS member station WJCT. In 1958, WFGA was selected "Newsfilm Station of the Year" by the National Press Photographers Association. WFGA-TV was the first television station to air a live launch from Cape Canaveral on October 11, 1958 – a Thor-Able’s successful launch of the Pioneer I lunar probe. The station also provided the remote facilities and supplied video and audio for all three major networks. This earned WFGA-TV the exclusive spot for NBC's space coverage. When WJKS (now WCWJ) signed on as an ABC affiliate, WFGA became a sole NBC affiliate.

In 1972, WFGA-TV changed call letters to the current WTLV. Later that year, Harte-Hanks Communications bought the station and began producing the market's first hour-long evening newscast, branded as Action News; channel 12 began producing Jacksonville's first midday newscast at noon soon afterwards. On March 31, 1980, WTLV switched its network affiliation with WJKS (now WCWJ) to ABC, which at the time was #1 among the then-three major U.S. broadcast networks. WTLV's Action News launched the city's first morning newscast, Good Morning Jacksonville, in the early 1980s. Some of the first shows featured Pamela Rittenhouse and current First Coast News chief meteorologist Tim Deegan.

Gannett bought WTLV and Greensboro, North Carolina sister station WFMY-TV from Harte-Hanks in 1988. On April 3 of that year, WTLV then swapped affiliations with WJKS, again returning to NBC in what the network called one of its most successful affiliation switches ever. By this time, NBC had once again become the highest-rated broadcast network. WTLV became the de facto official station of the Jacksonville Jaguars when the team joined the NFL in 1995, by virtue of NBC owning the rights to the American Football Conference. It aired most Jaguars games until 1998, when the AFC season games moved to WJXT after CBS acquired the broadcast rights to the conference's season and playoff games (most Jaguars games are now televised on WTEV, which obtained the CBS affiliation in 2002). WTLV also aired a weekly television show called Monday Night Live, which aired at 7 p.m. every Monday evening during the NFL football season, and was hosted by sports director Dan Hicken and John Jurkovic.