WJXT

WJXT originally signed on the air on September 15, 1949, as WMBR-TV. It was Jacksonville's first television station, the second television station in Florida and a primary CBS affiliate on VHF channel 4 after WTVJ (also on channel 4, now an NBC owned-and-operated station on channel 6) in Miami–Fort Lauderdale. The station was co-owned alongside WMBR radio (1460 AM,[2] now WQOP;[3] and 96.1 FM, now WEJZ). Though the station was originally a primary CBS affiliate, it also maintained secondary affiliations with NBC, ABC and the DuMont Television Network. In 1953, the WMBR stations were purchased by The Washington Post Company. WMBR-TV dropped the DuMont affiliation in 1955, less than a year before the network ceased operations. Since its only competition in the Jacksonville market came from UHF station WJHP-TV (which signed on in 1953 and went dark three years later), channel 4 had a virtual television monopoly in northern Florida until September 1957, when it lost the NBC affiliation to upstart WFGA (channel 12, now WTLV).

The Washington Post Company sold WMBR-AM-FM in 1958, while it kept the television station, whose callsign it changed to the current WJXT. WJXT remained a primary CBS and secondary ABC affiliate until WJKS-TV (channel 17, now CW sister station WCWJ) took the ABC affiliation upon its sign-on in February 1966, leaving WJXT exclusively with CBS. For much of its tenure as a CBS affiliate, WJXT was the only station affiliated with the network that was located between Savannah, Georgia, and Orlando, Florida, and was thus carried on many cable systems between Jacksonville and Orlando.

In 1973, WJXT's FCC license renewal was challenged by supporters of President Richard Nixon following the Watergate coverage of his administration by The Washington Post, whose parent company owned the station. Robert W. Schellenberg, WJXT's general manager, successfully led the effort to defeat the opposition.[4]

In 2001, WJXT was awarded the local broadcast rights to Jacksonville Jaguars preseason football games, replacing WTLV as the official station for the NFL franchise (WTLV had carried preseason games and Jaguars-related programs starting with the team's 1995 inaugural season); the deal also included carriage of the team's coaches show and other Jaguars-related television programs.[5] The station had already been airing Jaguars games since 1998, when CBS gained the national broadcast rights to football games from the NFL's American Football Conference division. That year, speculation arose that WJXT would become an independent station after it had reached only a one-year affiliation renewal with the network, instead of a four to eight-year affiliation agreement that stations usually obtain from the major broadcast networks.[6]

During negotiations between Post-Newsweek Stations and CBS on a new affiliation agreement in early 2002, CBS supplied Post-Newsweek with a list of demands that would have resulted in WJXT no longer receiving monetary compensation for the carriage of the network's programming (CBS was moving toward a reverse compensation model for its affiliates during this time) and would have required the station to run the entire CBS network schedule in pattern without preemptions, except for extended local breaking news and severe weather coverage. Station and Post-Newsweek company management believed these stipulations would come at the expense of local programming.[7][8] Rather than give in to CBS' demands, Post-Newsweek Stations announced on April 3, 2002, that it would not renew channel 4's affiliation agreement with CBS, which was set to expire on July 10.[7][8][9]

UPN affiliate WTEV-TV (channel 47, now WJAX-TV)—at that time owned by Clear Channel Communications—subsequently signed an agreement with CBS to become the network's new Jacksonville affiliate two weeks after WJXT's disaffiliation announcement on April 23, 2002.[10] The affiliation switch became official at 5:00 a.m. on July 15, 2002, ending WJXT's 53-year association with CBS. This also triggered an affiliation switch in Gainesville where WGFL became a CBS affiliate; that station was a primary affiliate of The WB at the time.

As an independent, WJXT expanded its news programming and began filling daytime, prime time and late night timeslots that were formerly occupied by CBS programs with additional syndicated programming, as well as replacing network sports coverage with SEC college football and basketball telecasts from the syndicated sports provider Jefferson Pilot Sports (later Raycom Sports).[11] WJXT retained rights to Jaguars preseason games for one additional year following the switch, despite the fact that the AFC regular season and playoff football games had moved to WTEV due to national broadcast rights held by CBS and a contract stipulation that reserved the team the right to move local broadcasts of preseason games and other Jaguars programs to another station if WJXT changed its network affiliation.[12][13] The team cut ties with WJXT after the 2002 NFL preseason and moved its preseason games to WTEV-TV in 2003.[14]

WJXT does not entirely follow the same "Local" branding scheme as its Graham Media sister stations, although it uses the on-air slogan "The Local Station", and in 2014, the station adopted a slanted logo similar to Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV-TV, but with elements of its previous boxed 4, alongside changing its news branding to News4JAX.

On May 27, 2016, it was announced that CW affiliate WCWJ, along with WSLS-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, would be sold to Graham Media for $120 million as part of the station divestitures required as a result of the pending merger of the Nexstar Broadcasting Group, then-owners of WCWJ, and WCWJ's former owner Media General.[15] The sale was approved by the FCC on January 11, 2017, and completed January 17,[16] making WJXT part of a duopoly (Graham Media's first) with WCWJ.

• Bryan J. Kelly – traffic reporter (now announcer for the WWE as "Byron Saxton")
• Steve Kroft – investigative reporter (1975–1977; was most recently with CBS News, retired correspondent for 60 Minutes)
• Mike Patrick – sports anchor (1970–74; was most recently with ESPN, former play-by-play broadcaster for ESPN Sunday Night Football from 1987 to 2005; now retired)[23]
• Randall Pinkston – reporter (1974–1976; was most recently with Al Jazeera America until it folded on April 12, 2016)
• George Winterling (AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist Seal of Approval) – hurricane expert (chief meteorologist from 1962 to 2009); deceased
• Toni Yates – weekend anchor (now at WABC-TV in New York City)

The station's signal is multiplexed:

On June 12, 2009, at 8:55 a.m. (during its broadcast of the weekday morning newscast The Morning Show), WJXT terminated its analog signal, on VHF channel 4, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[25] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42.[26] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WJXT's virtual channel as 4.

WJXT anchor/reporter Melanie Lawson reported live from WJXT's Killarney Shores transmitter site as a veteran station technician pushed the "plate off" button in the building at the base of the transmitter. The WJXT analog signal had transmitted from that site for over two decades following a failure on the original transmitter tower at the station's 4 Broadcast Place studios. The station's digital transmitter also broadcasts from the same site, alongside the digital transmitters of NBC affiliate WTLV and ABC affiliate WJXX. Several monitors at WJXT's South Bank studios were reported by on-camera talent to have gone out upon the digital switchover.