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WFOX-TV, virtual channel 30 (UHF digital channel 32), is a Fox-affiliated television station located in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. The station is owned by the Cox Media Group subsidiary of Cox Enterprises; Cox Media Group also operates CBS affiliate WJAX-TV (channel 47) under a joint sales and shared services agreements with owner Bayshore Television, LLC. The two stations share studio facilities located on Central Parkway in Jacksonville's Southside section; WFOX-TV maintains transmitter facilities located on Hogan Road, also in the city's Southside section. On cable, the station is available on Comcast channel 10 and in high definition on digital channel 434. ==History== The station first signed on the air on February 15, 1981 as WAWS-TV (the "-TV" suffix was dropped from the call letters on October 8, 1981); it was the first independent station to sign-on in the Jacksonville market. The station's original studios and transmitter facilities were located on Hogan Road on Jacksonville's Southside. Founded by Malrite Communications, the station maintained a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, movies, sitcoms and drama series. WAWS became a charter affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company when the network launched on October 9, 1986. In 1989, Malrite sold the station to the San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications, which had earlier purchased the first independent station in the nearby Pensacola/Mobile, Alabama market, WPMI-TV (now an NBC affiliate) and was the first television station to be owned by Clear Channel. As was the trend for many Fox affiliates throughout the mid to late 1990s, WAWS began shifting its programming toward talk and reality shows and decreased its reliance on classic sitcoms. In 1993, Clear Channel began managing rival station WNFT (channel 47, now WJAX-TV) under a local marketing agreement; the two stations pooled programming and resources, while running the strongest syndicated programs on WAWS. Clear Channel bought channel 47, which by that point had become UPN affiliate WTEV-TV, outright in 2000, creating the second television duopoly in the Jacksonville market. After WTEV took the CBS affiliation from longtime affiliate WJXT (channel 4), which dropped the network after it demanded that Post-Newsweek Stations reverse compensate CBS to carry its programming and run the entire network schedule in pattern – only allowing pre-emptions for extended local breaking news and severe weather coverage,〔(WJXT-TV 4 to drop CBS ), ''The Florida Times-Union'', April 3, 2002.〕〔(TV-4's decision rooted in bottom line ), ''The Florida Times-Union'', April 5, 2002.〕 UPN programming moved to WAWS on July 15, 2002 as a secondary affiliation, airing weeknights from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.; it also acquired several syndicated sitcoms that WTEV no longer had room to carry on its schedule.〔(TV-47 to become new CBS affiliate ), ''The Florida Times-Union'', April 23, 2002.〕〔(Stations confirm changes ), ''The Florida Times-Union'', May 10, 2002.〕 The shift made Jacksonville one of the only television markets in the United States with all six major broadcast networks at the time (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and The WB) having affiliations with only five stations in a six-station market (which remains the case with UPN and The WB's successors The CW and MyNetworkTV in the present day) and the only market in which each of the Big Four network affiliates are controlled by two companies (Tegna, Inc. currently owns NBC affiliate WTLV (channel 12) and ABC affiliate WJXX (channel 25)). On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW.〔('Gilmore Girls' meet 'Smackdown'; CW Network to combine WB, UPN in CBS-Warner venture beginning in September ), CNNMoney.com, January 24, 2006.〕〔(UPN and WB to Combine, Forming New TV Network ), ''The New York Times'', January 24, 2006.〕 On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of a new "sixth" network called MyNetworkTV, which would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division Twentieth Television, to give UPN and WB stations that would not become CW affiliates another option besides converting to independent stations.〔(News Corp. Unveils MyNetworkTV ), ''Broadcasting & Cable'', February 22, 2006.〕 That March, then-owner Media General announced that WB affiliate WJWB (channel 17) would become the market's CW affiliate, it would later change its call letters to WCWJ. On July 12, Clear Channel confirmed that WAWS would carry MyNetworkTV on a new second digital subchannel. However until the new second digital subchannel launched, WAWS carried MyNetworkTV programming from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in the interim. MyNetworkTV programming moved to WAWS-DT2 once the subchannel signed on in January 2007, airing in the recommended 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. timeslot, with programming from the Variety Television Network airing at all other times. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its television stations to Newport Television, a newly formed television station group controlled by private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. Since WTEV was also included in the deal, this would have violated FCC rules preventing common ownership of two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market as Clear Channel had bought WTEV when it was a UPN affiliate outside of the Commission's total-day ratings criteria for duopolies (by this point, WTEV surpassed WJXT and WCWJ in the total-day viewership). As a result, the FCC granted Newport Television a temporary waiver to acquire WAWS and WTEV, provided that Newport sell one of the two stations within six months of the sale's consummation. After the group deal closed on March 14, 2008, Newport had originally planned to sell off WAWS to another company while keeping WTEV. In mid-May 2008, High Plains Broadcasting agreed to purchase the license assets of WTEV and six other stations from Newport Television due to ownership conflicts in the affected markets (including Jacksonville). But since this latest group deal was a sale in name only, Newport continued to operate the stations (and thus, WTEV effectively remained a sister outlet to WAWS) after the sale closed on September 15. It effectively made High Plains Broadcasting a front company or "shell corporation" for Newport Television similar to the existing relationships between the Nexstar Broadcasting Group and Mission Broadcasting and the Sinclair Broadcast Group and Cunningham Broadcasting. This arrangement also placed WAWS in the unusual position of being the senior partner as a Fox-affiliated station in a virtual duopoly with a CBS affiliate (the Fox station normally serves as the junior partner in most virtual or legal duopolies involving a Fox affiliate and a Big Three-affiliated station). WAWS is the only television station in the Jacksonville market that has never changed its primary network affiliation. On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of WAWS and WTEV-TV to Cox Media Group, in a four-station deal that also involved the Tulsa, Oklahoma sister duopoly of KOKI-TV and KMYT-TV.〔(Newport Sells 22 Stations For $1 Billion ), ''TVNewsCheck'', July 19, 2012.〕 The sale to Cox placed WAWS and WTEV under common ownership with the company's radio station cluster in Jacksonville (WOKV (690 AM and 106.5 FM, now WEZI), WFYV-FM (104.5, now WOKV-FM), WJGL (96.9), WXXJ (102.9) and WAPE-FM (95.1)) as well as Cox's Orlando duopoly of ABC affiliate WFTV and independent station WRDQ. Due to the very same rules that forced the license of WTEV to be transferred to a separate licensee back in 2008, Cox acquired WAWS outright and transferred WTEV's license assets to Bayshore Television, LLC, which then entered into joint sales and shared services agreements with Cox. The FCC approved the transaction on October 24, and it was finalized on December 3.〔http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1513654.pdf〕〔http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/Auth_Files/1517997.pdf〕 On August 26, 2014, Cox announced its intention to change WAWS's call letters to WFOX-TV, contingent on FCC approval, through a request made on July 30. In an email to ''The Florida Times-Union'', general manager Jim Zerwekh stated that the change would better reflect the station's status as one of Fox's ten strongest affiliates. Concurrently with the change to WFOX-TV, sister station WTEV-TV was renamed WJAX-TV. The change took effect on September 7, 2014. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WFOX-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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