| WTVX | |
|---|---|
| Fort Pierce / West Palm Beach, Florida | |
| Branding | The CW West Palm |
| Slogan | All Your News in Half the Time |
| Channels | Analog: 34 (UHF) Digital: 50 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | The CW Azteca América (on DT2) MNTV (on DT3) RTN (on DT4) |
| Owner | Four Points Media Group |
| Licensee | West Palm Beach Television Licensee Corporation |
| First air date | April 5, 1966 |
| Call letters' meaning | disambiguation of WTVJ (which WTVX replaced at sign-on) |
| Sister stations(s) | WTCN-CA WWHB-CA |
| Former Affiliations | Independent (1966 & 1989-1995) CBS (1966-1989) UPN (1995-2006) The WB (secondary, early 2000s-2005) |
| Transmitter Power | 5,000 kW (analog) 704 kW (DT) |
| Height | 454 m (analog) 438.3 m (DT) |
| Facility ID | 35575 |
| Website | The CW West Palm's Website |
WTVX, ch. 34, is the CW-affiliate TV station for West Palm Beach, Florida, licensed to Fort Pierce. It's transmitter is located south of Fort Pierce & I-95 in Martin County. Owned by the Four Points Media Group, WTVX is sister to My Network TV affiliate WTCN-CA & Azteca América affiliate WWHB-CA. All 3 stations are operated out of WTVX's studios on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach. Despite WTVX's call sign, it was never owned by the TVX Broadcast Group, which coincidentally was a predecessor to the Paramount Stations Group now called the CBS TV Stations Group. Syndicated programming on WTVX includes: Will & Grace, Sex & the City, Friends & The King of Queens. The station can be seen on Comcast cable ch. 4 in Palm Beach, Martin & southern St. Lucie Counties & cable ch. 6 in northern St. Lucie & Indian River Counties.
DTV[]
The station's DT channel is multiplexed. After the analog TV shutdown & DT conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on February 17 2009, WTVX will move it's DT broadcasts back to it's present analog ch. #, 34.
| Channel | Programming |
|---|---|
| 34.1 / 50.1 | main WTVX programming / The CW HD |
| 34.2 / 50.2 | WWHB-CA "Azteca América 48" |
| 34.3 / 50.3 | WTCN-CA "My 15" |
| 34.4 / 50.4 | "RTN West Palm Beach" |
History[]
WTVX began operations as an independent station on April 5, 1966 & soon after became a CBS affiliate. The station was originally owned by Indian River Television. Prior to the station becoming a CBS affiliate, the network was seen in the Palm Beaches via their former Miami affiliate WTVJ. In 1988, NBC bought WTVJ. CBS needed a new Miami affiliate & purchased WCIX which had a Grade B signal in Fort Lauderdale. West Palm Beach stations WPTV & WPEC had Grade A signals there. This forced CBS to switch their West Palm Beach affiliate on January 1, 1989 to WPEC leaving WTVX without network affiliation. As ABC decided to go from WPEC to new sign-on WPBF, WTVX was forced to become an independent station once again.
During the day, the station showed movies, drama shows & talk shows. By the Summer of 1989, the station became more of a traditional independent station with sitcoms & cartoons being added to it's schedule. Most of WTVX's shows were to have originally aired on WPBF before that station made the decision to affiliate with ABC. In 1990, WTVX was sold to Krypton Broadcasting & the general entertainment format remained. In 1995, Paramount / Viacom (who would eventually buy WTVX in 1997 along with CBS in 2001) joined with Chris-Craft / United Television to form UPN. WTVX immediately became an O&O affiliate of this network. By the late-1990s, WTVX had started to move away from cartoons & sitcoms, adding more talk / reality & court shows. In the early-2000s, they also started to carry The WB on a secondary basis. Programming from that network aired after UPN prime time. The station soon re-branded from "UPN 34" to "TVX 34" which was based on their call letters.
In the Fall of 2005, WTCN-CA (then a little-known community access channel) became the area's new WB affiliate. As a result, WTVX became a primary UPN station & returned to the "UPN 34" branding. On January 24 2006, The WB & UPN announced that they would end broadcasting & merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the 1st initial of it's corporate parents, CBS (the parent company of UPN) & the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On February 22, News Corporation announced that they would start up another new broadcast TV network called MyNetworkTV. This new network, which would be a sister network to FOX, would be operated by FOX TV Stations & it's syndication division, 20th Television. MyNetworkTV was created to give UPN & WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming independent. It was also created to compete against The CW. WTVX was announced as becoming the area's affiliate of the new network because it was full-powered & owned by CBS. WTCN affiliated with MyNetworkTV when that network began broadcasting on September 5. The CW began broadcasting on September 18.
On February 7 2007, CBS agreed to sell 7 of it's smaller-market stations to Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (including WTVX, WTCN & WWHB) for $185 million dollars. Cerberus formed a new holding company for the stations, Four Points Media Group, who took over the operation of the stations through LMAs in late-June of 2007. The group deal officially closed on January 10, 2008. Until the sale to Four Points, WTVX was 1 of 3 former CBS affiliates that later became CW stations who were owned by CBS. The other 2 are KSTW in Seattle/Tacoma, Washington & WPCW in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania both of which are still owned by the network. During CBS ownership, (WTVX, WTCN, and WWHB) had some internal operations based @ WFOR-TV's studios in Miami. As of February 25 2008, these 3 stations are now being operated out of Four Points' hub facilities @ KUTV in Salt Lake City, Utah. WTVX recently added Equity Broadcasting's RTN on it's 4th DT subchannel as well as Comcast digital cable ch. 225 or 187.
Newscasts[]
As a CBS affiliate, WTVX operated a small news department & produced local newscasts. As some point in time, the station moved it's 11 PM news to 10. Soon after that, the newscast died. All of WTVX's newscasts were canceled by the Summer of 1989. At one point as a CW affiliate, the station aired news updates under the title CW News Now on it's website. In the Summer of 2008, WTVX created a new news department & on August 4 debuted CW West Palm News @ 10. This production airs every night for 35 minutes & as of September 15 in HD. This newscast is the station's 1st news broadcast to air in nearly 20 years. It competes with the 10 PM news that airs on FOX affiliate WFLX. WTVX's newscast also rates in the Miami / Fort Lauderdale market. This is a trend some have attributed to a backlash of that market's FOX affiliate, WSVN. As a result, Adelphia (now part of Comcast service area) pulled WSVN off of it's cable lineup in 2005. While the actual news originates from KUTV's studios on South Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City, there is a news bureau @ WTVX's studios with reporters local to the area. Fields Moseley anchors the broadcast & reporter Lane Wright is seen frequently in many news stories. In addition to being a reporter himself, Moseley also anchors weeknights @ 4 & 4:30 on independent station KJZZ-TV which is also a Salt Lake City-based station. WTVX airs the nationally syndicated morning show, The Daily Buzz, on weekday mornings from 7-9 AM.