WTVA - History

History

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.. While serving as Technical Director at WHEN-TV (now WTVH) 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 first signed-on March 18, 1957 with the call letters WTWV. Its equipment (antenna, transmitter, cameras etc.) were all 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 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.

In the mid-1960s, WTWV was approached about becoming a full ABC affiliate. Spain, who was still receiving "bootleg" NBC programming, told NBC executives that ABC was willing to pay him. This prompted NBC to negotiate a formal deal with Spain and WTWV formally became an NBC affiliate. It still carried some ABC programming in off-hours until WVSB (now WLOV) in nearby West Point began operating in 1983. Starting in 1972, WTWV operated a full-time satellite for East-Central Mississippi, WHTV (now WMDN) in Meridian. WTWV built a brand-new tower in 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.

On July 4, 1979, it changed its call letters to WTVA in honor of Tupelo's recognition as the first Tennessee Valley Authority city in the Southeast. The WTWV call sign was later used on WFRQ, a radio station in Mashpee, Massachusetts. The WTWV call sign is presently in use by a Memphis, TN based TV station. Both stations are unrelated to the current WTVA. WHTV broke off from WTVA as the Pine Belt's CBS affiliate, and eventually changed its calls to WMDN. The Spains continued to own the station until it sold to Meridian Media (now Waypoint Media) in January 2008.

The station is still locally-owned by the Spain family today. Frank Spain served as CEO of WTVA, Inc. until his death on April 25, 2006. He continued to visit the station regularly well into his 70s. His wife Jane has assumed the CEO position and continues the Spain family ownership. 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.

Although WTVA operates 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 has its own station manager and owner in accordance with FCC policy. WTVA, Inc. also previously owned and operated 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 24, 2008, WTVA began its digital service on VHF channel 8 but is mapped via PSIP to virtual channel 9. By comparison, sister station WLOV broadcasts network programming in high definition over a low-powered 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 Me-TV. 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 Me-TV affiliation was moved to sister-station WLOV-DT 27.2.