WITV (Florida)

Former Florida governor Fuller Warren (right) in the WITV studios.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its four-year-old freeze on television station applications in 1948, channels 17 and 23 were placed in Fort Lauderdale. Applications for both allotments were received, and on July 30, 1952, the FCC granted channel 23 to radio station WFTL and channel 17 to Gerico Investment.[2] Gerico, a group of local business interests, added television experience when Mortimer Loewi, a former executive of the DuMont Television Network, bought a stake in the firm at the start of 1953.[3] Construction took place that fall, with studios going up in the Hollywood Ridge Farms area and a transmitter being constructed at Hallandale.[4] The station picked up affiliations with DuMont and ABC,[5] though first-call rights for any of these networks' programs were held by the original VHF station in the region, WTVJ (channel 4).[6] A 90-minute opening program on the evening of December 1, 1953, marked the start of channel 17's broadcasting life.[7] Former Florida governor Fuller Warren joined the station in early 1954 as a political analyst[8] and hosted a weekly news commentary program on Sunday nights.[9][10]

In August 1954, officials from WITV and WFTL-TV announced they were pursuing a merger agreement to combine forces and avoid competition among UHF stations with the threat of networks' preference for VHF stations looming.[11] Their announcement followed a more definite report by the Miami Herald that WITV was to buy out the other station, with channel 17 surviving the merger.[12] However, no final agreement could be reached as the parties differed on particulars of the combination of the two stations.[13] Three months later, WFTL-TV was sold to Storer Broadcasting, which also purchased a construction permit for WMIE-TV channel 27 in Miami.[14] WFTL-TV moved to Miami as WGBS-TV by combining the assets and channel number of WFTL-TV with the Miami location and proposed facilities of the unbuilt WMIE-TV.[15]

In 1957, WITV proposed to move to channel 6, which had just been allocated to Miami, claiming that the FCC's action "effectively deleted UHF service in the Miami area". The idea of a channel 6 station drew criticism to the north and south, from co-channel stations in Orlando (WDBO-TV) and Havana (CMQ-TV).[16] However, the commission rejected WITV's assertion that it was entitled to the channel, ordering it to file applications opposite other interested bidders, and denied its effort to bid on channels 7 and 10, whose statuses had been thrown into doubt due to illegal influence on their comparative hearing proceedings.[17] Meanwhile, the station was given what amounted to a death blow when the third VHF station for Miami appeared. WGBS-TV folded in April 1957 and sold its equipment to Public Service Television, a division of National Airlines, which started up WPST-TV on channel 10 that August and took away the ABC affiliation that had been held by WITV since its inception.[18]

The station then adopted a "curtailed" schedule of programming,[19] broadcasting the minimum 28 hours a week. This continued until WITV limped off the air after its broadcast day on May 11, 1958; owner Loewi was reported to be on a yacht at sea and thus unavailable for comment.[20] The news was reported at the time by the Miami Herald and The Miami News, but it was more than a month before it was "generally known" at the FCC and reported by trade publications.[21] Bill Bayer, WITV's news director from the station's launch, joined WPST-TV in the same capacity and took his weekly Sunday night political debate program with him.[22]