WTVX

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WTVX is the UPN affiliate for West Palm Beach, Florida, licensed to Fort Pierce. The station is owned by the CBS Corporation, and airs its programming on channel 34. WTVX is sister station to WFOR, CBS in Miami, WBFS UPN for Miami, and WTCN-CA, WB for West Palm Beach.

History

WTVX began operations as an independent station on April 5th, 1966, and soon after became a CBS affiliate. The station was originally owned by Indian River Television. Prior to becoming a CBS affiliate, the network was provided by their Miami affiliate, WTVJ. The station also had a small news department.

In 1988, NBC bought WTVJ. CBS thus needed a new Miami station, and purchased WCIX channel 6, which had a grade B signal in Fort Lauderdale, while West Palm Beach stations (WPTV and WPEC) had grade A signals there. This forced them to switch their West Palm Beach affiliation to WPEC, leaving WTVX without an affiliation. On January 1, 1989 the switch occurred. As ABC decided to go from WPEC to a new sign-on (WPBF), WTVX was forced to become an independent station once again.

Initially WTVX retained its newscasts, but moved the 11 pm newscast to 10 pm. The rest of the day they went with movies, drama shows, and talk shows. The station's newscasts were cancelled by the summer of 1989, and the station became more of a traditional independent station, with sitcoms and cartoons added to the schedule. Most of its shows were to have originally aired on WPBF before that station made the decision to affiliate with ABC.

In 1995, Paramount/Viacom (who would eventually buy WTVX, along with CBS) joined with Chris-Craft/United Television to form the United Paramount Network, or UPN. WTVX immediately became an affiliate of this network. By the late 1990's WTVX had started to move away from cartoons and sitcoms, adding more talk/reality and court shows. In the early 2000s, they also started to carry WB programming when possible, and soon rebranded from UPN34 to TVX34, which was based off of their call letters.

In the fall of 2005, WTCN-CA, then a little-known community access channel, became the new WB affiliate for West Palm Beach, so WTVX returned to the UPN34 branding. However, that branding will be short-lived as the WB and UPN announced a merger between the two struggling networks on January 24, 2006. The new network, called The CW, will be affiliated with WTVX effective in September 2006.

Despite the call sign, it was never owned by the TVX Broadcast Group, which was a predecessor to the Paramount Stations Group, which is now called the CBS Television Stations Group.

WTVX is one of three former CBS affiliates that have since became UPN stations owned by CBS, along with KSTW in Seattle/Tacoma, Washington and WPCW in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (when it was in Johnstown), incidentally, both of the latter stations will also become CW stations.

Logos

External links

• [Official website]
• [Query the FCC's TV station database for WTVX]

.54 billion USD (2005) | Employees: Unknown at this time. | Stock Symbol: NYSE: [CBS] | Website: [www.cbscorporation.com]

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