WJXT


WJXT, virtual channel 4, is an independent television station licensed to Jacksonville, Florida, United States. The station is owned by the Graham Media Group subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate WCWJ. The two stations share studios at 4 Broadcast Place on the south bank of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville and transmitter facilities on Anders Boulevard in the city's Killarney Shores section.
On cable, WJXT is available on channel 3 on Comcast Xfinity and channel 4 in most outlying areas of the market, and in high definition on Xfinity digital channel 437. In Gainesville, it is carried on Cox channel 19 in both standard and high definition.

History

As a CBS affiliate

The station first signed on the air on September 15, 1949 as WMBR-TV; it was the second television station to sign on in the state of Florida and the first that was licensed outside of Miami. The station was co-owned alongside WMBR radio. Though the station was originally a primary CBS affiliate, it also maintained secondary affiliations with NBC, ABC and the DuMont Television Network. In 1953, the WMBR stations were purchased by The Washington Post Company. WMBR-TV dropped the DuMont affiliation in 1955, less than a year before the network ceased operations. Since its only competition in the Jacksonville market came from UHF station WJHP-TV, channel 4 had a virtual television monopoly in northern Florida until September 1957, when it lost the NBC affiliation to upstart WFGA.
The Washington Post Company sold WMBR-AM-FM in 1958, while it kept the television station, whose callsign it changed to the current WJXT. WJXT remained a primary CBS and secondary ABC affiliate until WJKS-TV took the ABC affiliation upon its sign-on in February 1966, leaving WJXT exclusively with CBS. For much of its tenure as a CBS affiliate, WJXT was the only station affiliated with the network that was located between Savannah, Georgia and Orlando, Florida and was thus carried on many cable systems between Jacksonville and Orlando.
In 2001, WJXT was awarded the local broadcast rights to Jacksonville Jaguars preseason football games, replacing WTLV as the official station for the NFL franchise ; the deal also included carriage of the team's coaches show and other Jaguars-related television programs. The station had already been airing Jaguars games since 1998, when CBS gained the national broadcast rights to football games from the NFL's American Football Conference division. That year, speculation arose that WJXT would become an independent station after it had reached only a one-year affiliation renewal with the network, instead of a four to eight-year affiliation agreement that stations usually obtain from the major broadcast networks.

Independence

During negotiations between Post-Newsweek Stations and CBS on a new affiliation agreement in early 2002, CBS supplied Post-Newsweek with a list of demands that would have resulted in WJXT no longer receiving monetary compensation for the carriage of the network's programming and would have required the station to run the entire CBS network schedule in pattern without preemptions, except for extended local breaking news and severe weather coverage. Station and Post-Newsweek company management believed these stipulations would come at the expense of local programming. Rather than give in to CBS' demands, Post-Newsweek Stations announced on April 3, 2002 that it would not renew channel 4's affiliation agreement with CBS, which was set to expire on July 10.
UPN affiliate WTEV-TV —at that time owned by Clear Channel Communications—subsequently signed an agreement with CBS to become the network's new Jacksonville affiliate two weeks after WJXT's disaffiliation announcement on April 23, 2002. The affiliation switch became official at 5:00 a.m. on July 15, 2002, ending WJXT's 53-year association with CBS. The shift made Jacksonville one of the only television markets in the United States with all six major broadcast networks at the time having affiliations with only five stations in a six-station market, the only market in which each affiliate of the Big Four networks are controlled by two companies ; at the time, Clear Channel owned both Fox affiliate WAWS, and one of the few markets where an analog-era VHF station has no network affiliation while the market's other commercial stations do. In addition, this triggered an affiliation switch in Gainesville where WGFL became a CBS affiliate; that station was a primary affiliate of The WB at the time.
As an independent, WJXT expanded its news programming and began filling daytime, prime time and late night timeslots that were formerly occupied by CBS programs with additional syndicated programming, as well as replacing network sports coverage with SEC college football and basketball telecasts from the syndicated sports provider Jefferson Pilot Sports. WJXT retained rights to Jaguars preseason games for one additional year following the switch, despite the fact that the AFC regular season and playoff football games had moved to WTEV due to national broadcast rights held by CBS and a contract stipulation that reserved the team the right to move local broadcasts of preseason games and other Jaguars programs to another station if WJXT changed its network affiliation. The team cut ties with WJXT after the 2002 NFL preseason and moved its preseason games to WTEV-TV in 2003.
WJXT does not entirely follow the same "Local" branding scheme as its Graham Media sister stations, although it uses the on-air slogan "The Local Station", and in 2014, the station adopted a slanted logo similar to Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV-TV, but with elements of its previous boxed 4, alongside changing its news branding to News4JAX.
On May 27, 2016, it was announced that CW affiliate WCWJ, along with WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, would be sold to Graham Media for $120 million as part of the station divestitures required as a result of the pending merger of the Nexstar Broadcasting Group, then-owners of WCWJ, and WCWJ's former owner Media General. The sale was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on January 11, 2017 and completed January 17, making WJXT part of a duopoly with WCWJ.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
4.1720pWJXT-HDMain WJXT programming
4.2480iDABLDabl
4.3720p16:9WJXT-D3Start TV

Analog-to-digital conversion

On June 12, 2009 at 8:55 a.m., WJXT terminated its analog signal, on VHF channel 4, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WJXT's virtual channel as 4.
WJXT anchor/reporter Melanie Lawson reported live from WJXT's Killarney Shores transmitter site as a veteran station technician pushed the "plate off" button in the building at the base of the transmitter. The WJXT analog signal had transmitted from that site for over two decades following a failure on the original transmitter tower at the station's 4 Broadcast Place studios. The station's digital transmitter also broadcasts from the same site, alongside the digital transmitters of NBC affiliate WTLV and ABC affiliate WJXX. Several monitors at WJXT's South Bank studios were reported by on-camera talent to have gone out upon the digital switchover.

Programming

programs broadcast by WJXT include The Dr. Oz Show, Inside Edition, The Kelly Clarkson Show, The Big Bang Theory, Last Man Standing, Entertainment Tonight, and Daily Mail TV among others.

News operation

WJXT presently broadcasts 56½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week ; in regards to the number of hours devoted to local news programming, it is the third-highest newscast output among Florida's television stations, behind Fox stations WTVT in Tampa and WSVN in Miami.
Because of the ownership structure of the Jacksonville market's Big Four network affiliates, WJXT is the only television station in the market whose news department operates independently of the other local stations.
Channel 4 used the Eyewitness News format for its newscasts for 38 years from 1967 to 2005, when its newscasts were retitled as Channel 4 News. From 1997 until the station became independent in 2002, WJXT identified as News Channel 4 for general branding purposes, while the Eyewitness News title continued in use for its newscasts. This made for some rather verbose station announcements.. Since 2014, it has been known as News 4 Jax, a nod to its longtime Website URL.
WJXT has been the dominant news station in Jacksonville for almost half a century, in part because many of its personalities have been at the station for ten years or more. Its evening news team of anchors Tom Wills and Deborah Gianoulis, chief meteorologist George Winterling and sports director Sam Kouvaris were together for 22 years from 1981 until Gianoulis' retirement in 2003 – one of the longest-running anchor teams in the nation at the time. Upon losing its CBS affiliation, channel 4 rebranded as a news-intensive independent station. Following the example of a number of former Big Three affiliates that switched to Fox in the 1990s, it has a news schedule similar to its days as a CBS affiliate. It retained all existing newscasts, while tacking two additional hours onto its weekday morning program and adding a 6:30 p.m. newscast on weeknights and a 10:00 p.m. newscast seven nights a week.
On January 14, 2009 beginning with its noon newscast, WJXT became the first television station in the Jacksonville market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. The upgrade saw the introduction of new on-air graphics and news music, as well as the upgrade to robotic and computer-operated cameras for studio segments within its newscasts, the automation of its control room using the Miranda Vertigo system and Ignite technology.
On April 23, 2009, George Winterling announced he would semi-retire after nearly 47 years as WJXT's chief meteorologist. On May 20, 2009, Winterling stepped down as meteorologist for the station's 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. newscasts. Winterling remains with the station in a meteorologist emeritus role, appearing during severe and tropical weather coverage and serving as a fill-in for other meteorologists.
On May 21, 2012, Metro Jacksonville, a news and discussion blog on local urban issues, announced that it would enter into a content partnership with WJXT. Under the agreement, Metro Jacksonville will format content for WJXT's News4Jax.com website on a self-branded page. The mutually beneficial partnership provides WJXT with more web content and provides Metro Jacksonville with a wider audience. On October 28, 2013, WJXT expanded its weekday morning newscast to 5½ hours, with the addition of an hour to the program from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.

Notable current on-air staff