- TVX Broadcast Group
The TVX Broadcast Group was a company that owned a group of UHF television stations during the 1980s. Originally known as the Television Corporation, the company was headquartered in
Norfolk, Virginia , and was founded by a group of Norfolk-area businessmen led by Timothy McDonald. TVX began with a start-up television station,WTVZ , in 1979.History
In the late 1970s, the Hampton Roads area (as the region around Norfolk is known) was unique in that it was one of the largest markets to have only four commercial television stations:
NBC affiliateWAVY-TV ,CBS station WTAR-TV, ABC affiliateWVEC-TV , and independent station WYAH-TV. The latter station, however, was owned by the Virginia Beach-based evangelistPat Robertson 'sChristian Broadcasting Network , and ran a very conservative program schedule. The McDonald group secured a construction permit for Norfolk's vacant channel 33 in 1977, and signed it on two years later. WTVZ experienced early success, mostly through airing programming that had been considered too objectionable for WYAH, and had surpassed WYAH as the market's number-one independent station by 1981.Based on the early success of WTVZ, TVX decided to expand outside of Hampton Roads. TVX's second station was
WRLH-TV in Richmond, in February 1982. Ironically, CBN was going to build a station in the same area but donated it to a non-commercial religious group. As a result, WRLH was the only independent station in Richmond for its first few years of operation.TVX's first two acquisitions were in
North Carolina : WJTM-TV (later WNRW and nowWXLV-TV ) in Winston-Salem in 1983, andWLFL-TV in Raleigh in 1984.WNOL-TV inNew Orleans followed in 1985, and the construction permit for KMJD-TV inPine Bluff, Arkansas was bought by TVX and signed-on as KJTM-TV (nowKASN ) in June 1986.Along with buying stations, TVX was building them as well. The company signed on WMKW-TV (now
WLMT ) in Memphis in April 1983, followed by WCAY-TV (nowWUXP-TV ) in Nashville in February 1984. KRRT (nowKMYS ) inKerrville, Texas was signed-on in November 1985 as the San Antonio market's first English-language independent station. TVX's last station, WNYB-TV (nowWNYO-TV ) in Buffalo, debuted during 1987.TVX sold WRLH-TV to the
Times-Mirror Company in 1986. That same year, the newFox Broadcasting Company approached TVX with an affiliation deal for the company's New Orleans station. TVX agreed, but only if Fox also took on TVX's other properties. Fox added one stipulation: if one of TVX's underperforming stations was sold, Fox could then pull its affiliation from that station.In February 1987, TVX acquired five stations from the Taft Broadcasting Company, which was in the middle of a corporate restructuring. Included were Fox affiliates WTAF-TV in
Philadelphia and WCIX inMiami ; and independent stations WDCA-TV inWashington, D.C. ,KTXA inFort Worth, Texas , andKTXH inHouston . The purchase of the Taft stations, while transforming TVX's profile from small company into a large-market broadcaster, had a major negative impact: TVX acquired massive debt as well, resulting in the company selling many of their medium- and small-market outlets. Between late 1987 and the end of 1989, TVX found new owners for eight stations, though most were to satisfyFederal Communications Commission requirements on group ownership. Notable sales were those of: WNOL-TV to Qwest Broadcasting, which was controlled by musicianQuincy Jones ; of WTVZ, TVX's first station, to Sullivan Broadcasting; and of WCIX, whose status as the company's only VHF outlet (on channel six) played a factor in TVX's reluctant sale of the station toCBS in 1988. Fox, on the other hand, exercised the clause in the 1986 group affiliation contract and pulled its programming from several former TVX stations as soon as the sales were finalized.Despite having stripped itself down to a six-station group, made up mostly of profitable, highly-performing outlets, the sales of the smaller stations did not fully reduce TVX's debt load. In 1989, Tim McDonald sold a minority share (about 22 percent) of TVX to
Paramount Pictures . In 1991 Paramount acquired the rest of TVX and bought the group under its corporate umbrella, rechristening the company as theParamount Stations Group . In 1994, Viacom acquired the stations as part of its purchase of Paramount Pictures.Former TVX-owned stations
Note: **Indicates a station built and signed-on by TVX.
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