WUXP-TV (channel 30) is a television station in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It is programmed primarily as an independent station, but maintains a secondary affiliation with MyNetworkTV. WUXP-TV is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside WZTV (channel 17), an affiliate of Fox and The CW, and co-managed with WNAB (channel 58). The three stations share studios on Mainstream Drive along the Cumberland River; WUXP-TV's transmitter is located along I-24 in Whites Creek. Channel 30 in Nashville began broadcasting in February 1984 as WCAY-TV. Built by the TVX Broadcast Group, the station competed as Nashville's second independent outlet with WZTV for most of the 1980s. It was the Fox affiliate in Nashville from 1986 to 1990 before selling most of its programming inventory to WZTV amid a competitive market. Renamed WXMT in 1989 after being purchased by MT Communications, the station remained the second independent in Nashville and affiliated with UPN in 1995. WZTV began managing channel 30's operations in 1996, a year in which the license was sold and the station renamed WUXP-TV. Sinclair assumed control of the station in 1998, when it acquired WZTV, and purchased it outright in 2000; when UPN folded in 2006, the station switched to MyNetworkTV. WUXP-TV and WNAB are Nashville's two ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) stations.
History
The TVX years In November 1981, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated 13 competing applications for UHF channel 30 in Nashville for comparative hearing. The very large field featured names well-known in other cities, including Carolina Christian Broadcasting, Golden West Broadcasters, and American Television and Communications (the cable TV division of Time, Inc.). By January 1982, only five of the applicants were still seeking for the construction permit: Television Corporation of Tennessee, a company headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, in which mayor Richard Fulton became a minority investor; Music City Thirty, owned primarily by Methodists; Satellite Broadcasting Systems of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Nash Broadcasting; and Page Broadcasting. The FCC granted the construction permit to Television Corporation (TVX, later known simply as TVX Broadcast Group) in August 1983. By that time, the call letters of WCAY-TV had been selected, as had a tower site. Meanwhile, the Nashville market—already having WZTV, an independent in service since 1976—gained a second independent station with the launch of WFYZ in Murfreesboro on December 31. What was once a mid-April launch target moved up to February as TVX signed for studio space at Third Avenue South and Peabody Street. WCAY-TV began broadcasting on February 18, 1984. It immediately entered into a money-losing competition with WFYZ; however, TVX outlasted the Murfreesboro station, with its limited financial resources. In September 1984, WFYZ executed the first of several rounds of cutbacks. That station, sold and renamed WHTN in 1985, exited the battle by converting to a Christian format in May 1986. In January 1986, TVX—already having relegated WHTN to the status, per company chairman J. Timothy McDonald, of showing "freebies no one else wants"—refocused its attack on WZTV, Nashville's leading independent. While TVX's independents had mostly risen to lead their markets, WCAY-TV was the exception. The station became affiliated that fall with the new Fox network, but TVX continued to need to devote additional attention to improving channel 30's ratings against WZTV, hiring new management and increasing its promotional efforts. Despite the fact that WCAY-TV was not TVX's most successful station, the company expressed its resolve to stick with the Nashville market. However, financial circumstances combined to change that policy. In 1987, TVX acquired five major-market independent stations from Taft Broadcasting. This purchase left TVX highly leveraged and highly vulnerable. TVX's bankers, Salomon Brothers, provided the financing for the acquisition and in return held more than 60 percent of the company. The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its junk bonds even before Black Monday. As a result, TVX sought buyers for some of its smaller stations to reduce its debt load. That May, TVX announced the sale of WCAY-TV to SouthWest MultiMedia Corporation of Houston for $6 million. However, this deal fell apart over the intervening months.
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