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| - WFTS-TV first went on the air on December 14, 1981 as an independent station. Being a flagship of the locally-based Family Group Broadcasting, the station programmed a family-oriented general entertainment format with cartoons, off-network dramas, old movies and religious shows. Its call letters originally stood for Family Television Station. An era of local ownership ended on April 22, 1984, when it was acquired by Capital Cities Communications. It was Capital Cities' first station in Florida, the group's first -- and only -- independent station, and was also the last station acquired by the group prior to its merger with ABC.
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| abstract
| - WFTS-TV first went on the air on December 14, 1981 as an independent station. Being a flagship of the locally-based Family Group Broadcasting, the station programmed a family-oriented general entertainment format with cartoons, off-network dramas, old movies and religious shows. Its call letters originally stood for Family Television Station. An era of local ownership ended on April 22, 1984, when it was acquired by Capital Cities Communications. It was Capital Cities' first station in Florida, the group's first -- and only -- independent station, and was also the last station acquired by the group prior to its merger with ABC. Under Capital Cities, the station added more off-network sitcoms and reduced the number of religious shows and dramas on its schedule. In 1986, Capital Cities stunned the world with its purchase of ABC -- the network was ten times bigger than CapCities was at the time. CapCities owned several ABC affiliates, and two CBS affiliates: KFSN-TV in Fresno and WTVD in Durham, North Carolina. The company's combined assets exceeded FCC ownership limits at the time, so CapCities decided to keep its CBS affiliates and change their affiliations to ABC, along with WPVI-TV in Philadelphia and KTRK-TV in Houston, and sold WFTS and ABC's O&O in Detroit, WXYZ-TV, to the E. W. Scripps Company, while selling several other stations to minority-owned firms. WXYZ would figure in WFTS' history once again less than a decade later. Scripps continued the format on WFTS, running cartoons, sitcoms, movies, and dramas. A 10pm newscast was planned for the station, but did not come to fruition. WFTS picked up the Fox affiliation in 1988 after WTOG dropped it and the station began to identify on air as "Fox 28", and soon after briefly identified its call letters as standing for Fox Television Station. On May 22, 1994, New World Communications came to an agreement with Fox, and most of New World's stations, including WTVT, Tampa Bay's longtime CBS affiliate, were to affiliate with Fox. Among the stations making the switch were longtime CBS affiliates WJBK in Detroit and WJW in Cleveland. Not wanting to be relegated to the UHF band, CBS heavily wooed Detroit's longtime ABC affiliate, WXYZ, as well as Cleveland's longtime ABC affiliate, WEWS-TV. Both stations were owned by Scripps. With this as leverage, Scripps told ABC that it would have to affiliate with four other stations owned by Scripps: WFTS, KNXV-TV in Phoenix (which was also due to lose its Fox affiliation to a New World station), WMAR-TV in Baltimore and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati -- the latter had to wait for ABC's affiliation contract with WKRC-TV to expire in June 1996 to switch. Scripps insisted on including WFTS and KNXV in the deal even though neither had a news department (see below). As a result, in December 1994, WFTS assumed the ABC affiliation from longtime affiliate WTSP, which took over the CBS affiliation from WTVT. WFTS then sent most of its syndicated programming to WTTA, WTOG and/or WTMV, which would also air Fox Kids. A decade later, WFTS became one of three Florida television stations, and one of the many Scripps-owned ABC affiliates that preempted Saving Private Ryan. The station is not available on Comcast cable in Venice (Southern Sarasota County) due to the presence of WWSB, an ABC station formed after WTSP's coverage of the Sarasota area was insufficient when WTSP was an ABC affiliate. This means WFTS is not available to over 91,000 cable subscribers. [1] In September 2007, both WFTS and WWSB began to carry Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!; previously WTSP had aired the two game shows from 7-8 p.m. Tampa-St. Petersburg is the fourth largest market with a major network on the UHF dial, while the larger markets with a major network on the UHF dial are Phoenix (KNXV-TV, channel 15), Atlanta (WGCL-TV, channel 46) and Detroit (WWJ-TV, channel 62). KNXV is an ABC affiliate while WGCL is an CBS affiliate and WWJ is a CBS owned and operated station.
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