WZTV

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WZTV, virtual channel 17 (UHF digital channel 15), is a Fox-affiliated television station located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and is sister to MyNetworkTV affiliate WUXP-TV (channel 30, wholly owned by Sinclair) and CW affiliate WNAB (channel 58, owned by Tennessee Broadcasting but operated by Sinclair through an outsourcing agreement).

All three share studios on Mainstream Drive along the Cumberland River, WZTV's transmitter is located on Knob Road north of downtown along I-24. Syndicated programming on WZTV includes How I Met Your Mother, Jeopardy! (the program's carriage by WZTV being a rarity for a Fox affiliate), The Simpsons and Two and a Half Men.

History

The station originally began broadcasting on August 5, 1968 as WMCV from a small studio in West Nashville. It was the area's first UHF station, as well as the state's first independent station. Not surprisingly with three well-established network affiliates in the market, WMCV did not attract many advertisers and relied mainly on old movies, cartoons, religious programs, and syndicated fare. Many area households probably did not have sets capable of receiving the station's signal anyway. This was very typical of UHF start-ups in the late-1960s and early-1970s. WMCV went off the air on March 10, 1971. After a false start ended hopes for a 1974 return, new owner Reel Broadcasting brought the station back as WZTV on March 6, 1976 initially branding it as "Z TV" and later "Z 17".

WZTV's first several years showed far more promise in the programming lineup than WMCV ever did with coverage of college basketball and Cincinnati Reds baseball supplementing the usual independent syndicated program assortment such as cartoons, classic sitcoms, older movies, westerns, and reruns of old network dramas. Even though the station placed ads in TV Guide in 1979 and 1980 offering assistance to Middle Tennessee viewers who had problems receiving its UHF signal, the problem became mostly a moot one by the late-1980s as many households could now view the station clearly via cable.

In the early 1980s, WZTV was sold to Multimedia, which owned several NBC and CBS affiliates around the country. WZTV soon got some competition in the form of Murfreesboro-based WFYZ (channel 39), which took to the air in 1983. Soon after, in 1984, TVX Broadcast Group signed on WCAY-TV (channel 30). However, WZTV not only remained the dominant independent station in Middle Tennessee, but was the only one operating that was profitable.

Nashville was only a medium-sized market at the time, and by 1985, it was obvious that it was not big enough for three independent stations. However, Multimedia and TVX had more resources than Murfreesboro TV Corporation, owners of WFYZ, could possibly hope to match. With this scenario, channel 39 opted to broadcast only music videos (similar to MTV). Later that year, the Christian Television Network bought WFYZ and switched it to an all-religious format in 1986 under new calls, WHTN. WZTV then acquired most of WFYZ's former shows.

In 1988, Multimedia sold WZTV to Act III Broadcasting, who had a reputation for buying its competitors' stronger programming inventory. However, in most of those cases, Act III's competition was not nearly as well-heeled as TVX, so this strategy was not successful in Nashville. In 1987, TVX affiliated all of its stations, including WCAY, with the newly launched Fox network. However, WCAY did not get a substantial ratings boost. TVX bought Taft Broadcasting's five non-Big Three stations later that year; two of these stations were Fox affiliates, while the other three were independent. TVX acquired massive debt as well, and was forced to sell some of its underperforming medium-market stations to service the new debt. WCAY and sister station WMKW in Memphis were sold to MT Communications. After the sale was complete, WCAY changed its call sign to WXMT.

The deal between Fox and TVX had one catch. If one of TVX's underperforming stations (like WCAY/WXMT) was sold, that station could lose its Fox affiliation. As a result, in 1990, Fox pulled its affiliation from WXMT and moved it to WZTV. Act III was not done yet. The company approached Thompson about buying WXMT's syndicated programming inventory and moving it to WZTV, which would have left WXMT with only religious shows and Home Shopping Network programming. Thompson initially agreed, but backed out of the deal a few days later. He came up with another idea in which WXMT would sell its sitcoms, dramas and movies to WZTV, while WXMT would keep barter shows and cartoons. The deal closed in mid-February, around the same time that WZTV changed its on-air name to the current "Fox 17".

Over the years, WZTV's schedule began migrating towards more first-run talk, court, and reality shows. Most of channel 17's sitcoms and cartoons moved to WXMT around this time. In 1994, Act III merged with Abry Communications. Only a year later, Sinclair Broadcast Group bought most of Abry's stations, including WZTV. Sinclair then entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with channel 30, which was now UPN affiliate WUXP. Most of WZTV's sitcoms and cartoons moved to WUXP; Sinclair eventually bought that station outright in 2001. Fox discontinued its weekday cartoon block in 2001, allowing its affiliates to add even more first-run syndicated shows. Today, WZTV offers Fox programming, first-run reality, talk and court shows, and recent sitcoms.

From 2001 to September 5, 2006, WZTV served as the de facto Fox affiliate for Bowling Green, Kentucky, filling a gap created on March 21, 2001 when WKNT became WNKY dropped its Fox affiliation and switched to NBC. WZTV was offered on cable in that area and could be received over-the-air in the southern areas of the market. In 2006, ABC affiliate WBKO began to broadcast Fox programming on a new second digital subchannel.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WZTV, that will run through 2017.

Digital television

Digital channel

Channel	Video	Aspect	PSIP Short Name	Programming
17.1	720p	16:9	WZTV-FO	Main WZTV programming / Fox

Analog-to-digital conversion

WZTV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 17, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 15. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 17.

News operation

File:Wztv news.png

Nightly news open at 9.

WZTV broadcasts 34½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). On July 7, 1997, WZTV premiered a half-hour prime time newscast called Fox News at 9 that aired Sunday through Friday evenings and was produced by ABC affiliate WKRN-TV (channel 2) through a news share agreement, as a result of a demand from Fox that its affiliates air local newscasts. This station was one of the few Fox stations in the top 50 markets that did not air any local news programming prior to the launch of the program. Three years later on July 6, 2000, WZTV launched its news department and expanded the 9:00 p.m. newscast to one hour and to a seven night a week broadcast.

In 2004, WZTV began incorporating national news and sports, and local weather segments from Sinclair's News Central division into its newscast, which were based at the company's headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland; the station retained anchors and reporters to provide local news stories for the broadcasts. That year, it also launched a half-hour newscast at 10:00 p.m., Fox 17 News: Late Edition, to compete against late night newscasts from Nashville's big three network affiliates (WKRN-TV, WSMV-TV and WTVF). This came around the time that most Fox stations in larger markets were adding newscasts at 10 p.m. Central (11:00 p.m. Eastern). After News Central was shut down in March 2006, WZTV reformatted the program as Fox 17 News at 10 adding local sports and expanding the local news and weather segments, resulting in the hiring of additional on-air staff members.

On September 11, 2011, WZTV became the third station in the Nashville market to began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. This included a new news set designed by Devlin Design Group as well as an updated logo, which now uses a red, white and blue color scheme. On August 4, 2014, WZTV expanded its weekday morning newscast to 4½ hours with the addition of a half-hour at 4:30 a.m., and added a half-hour early evening newscast at 5:30 p.m. weeknights.

News/station presentation

Newscast titles

• ZTV News Headlines (1980s)
• Fox News at Nine (1997–2000)
• Fox 17 News (2000–present)
• Tennessee Mornings (morning newscast; 2006–2013)
• Fox 17 This Morning (2013-present)

Station slogans

• "You're Always Home with Fox 17" (1999–2000)
• "So FOX 17 (2009-present, localized version of FOX ad campaign)

References

7. http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130930/NEWS/309300059

External links

• Fox17.com - Official website
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