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| City | Huntsville, Alabama |
| Channels | |
| Branding | Fox 54; My8 (54.2) |
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| Ownership | |
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| History | |
First air date | April 14, 1985 (39 years ago) (1985-04-14) |
Former channel number(s) |
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| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 28119 |
| ERP | 522 kW |
| HAAT | 525.3 m (1,723 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 34°44′12.8″N86°31′58.9″W / 34.736889°N 86.533028°W /34.736889; -86.533028 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WZDX (channel 54) is atelevision station inHuntsville, Alabama, United States, affiliated withFox andMyNetworkTV. Owned byTegna Inc., the station maintains studios onNorth Memorial Parkway (US 72/231/431) in Huntsville, and its transmitter is located onMonte Sano Mountain.
WZDX began broadcasting in April 1985 as the firstindependent station for the Huntsville area; it became a Fox affiliate in November 1987. Its original owner, Media Central, filed for bankruptcy that year and eventually sold the station in 1990 to a consortium ofCiticorp andMilton Grant, marking the latter's return to TV station ownership after a prior bankruptcy. The station started a cable channel that served as the local affiliate ofThe WB—predecessor to its MyNetworkTV subchannel—in 2001. A local newscast, produced at first out-of-state and then by localABC affiliateWAAY-TV, began to air in 2008.
The Grant stations were acquired byNexstar Broadcasting Group in 2013; Nexstar brought local news production in-house by establishing its own newsroom in 2016, and it formed a duopoly in the market by acquiringThe CW affiliateWHDF two years later. When Nexstar acquiredTribune Media, owner of HuntsvilleCBS affiliateWHNT-TV, in 2019, it retained that station and WHDF and spun out WZDX along with other stations to Tegna.
In 1975, Thomas Barr and James Cleary under the name Pioneer Communications petitioned theFederal Communications Commission (FCC) to add another television channel to the Huntsville area for the purpose of building anindependent station. At the time, only four channels were assigned to Huntsville: 19, 25, 31, and 48. The FCC proposed adding channel 54, but two Huntsville stations,WAAY-TV andWYUR-TV, opposed the proposal. In 1977, the FCC suggested inserting channel 54 atDecatur, Alabama, which already had channel 23. However, unlike channel 54, channel 23 could not be used atMonte Sano—the main television transmission site in the region, resulting in low interest.[2]
Channel 54 was ultimately added to Huntsville, but there were no applications on file until C. Michael Norton, an attorney fromNashville, Tennessee, applied for it in September 1981 after seeing it on a list of unused TV allocations.[3][4] Norton was soon joined by other applicants, with the FCC selecting Community Service Broadcasting, a company owned by John Pauza ofChattanooga, Tennessee, and Joel Katz ofAtlanta. Pauza owned Media Central, which specialized in the construction of new independent stations in medium markets.[5]
For two years, Media Central missed a series of deadlines. In February 1983, after being selected for theconstruction permit, Media Central announced it intended to begin broadcasting that fall.[5] By that fall, the target date had shifted to spring 1984.[6] Issues with locating the station's tower impeded a launch at that time,[7] but in late 1984, channel 54 began to take shape. A tower site was purchased in August, the call letters WZDX were assigned in September,[8] and construction began in November.[9] Even then, the station did not start broadcasting in 1984; the antenna was not hoisted onto the station's new tower on Green Mountain until March 1985.[10]
From studios on Mastin Lake Road in northeast Huntsville, WZDX first signed on April 14, 1985, as Northern Alabama's first independent station and the area's first new outlet to launch in 22 years.[11][12] Programming consisted of syndicated reruns, movies, and short local newsbreaks.[11] The station cost the owners between $5 million and $6 million to put on the air.[12]
When theFox network began late-night service on October 9, 1986, WZDX initially abstained from affiliating with the network unlike many other strong independent TV stations across the country that had signed on with them, despite the network wanting the station "badly". Program director David Godbout felt that his weekend shows were already attracting ratings and that he would have to charge too much for advertising within Fox programming for it to work economically.[13] This was a posture shared by the entire Media Central chain at the network's launch.[14] However, after Godbout left in late 1987, WZDX joined Fox in December of that year,[15] becoming the fifth Media Central outlet to join the network in 1987.[16]
The late 1980s were times of uncertainty for Media Central. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1987,[17] andAct III Broadcasting submitted a bid to buy WZDX andWDBD inJackson, Mississippi, the next year;[18] both were among Media Central's most desirable properties. Act III's bid was rejected, as were proposals from Media Central itself and Maryland investment firm Donatelli & Klein, which did come away with WDBD andWDSI-TV in Chattanooga.[19]
The bankruptcy court approved the acquisition of the station by a consortium ofCiticorp andMilton Grant in August 1989;[20][21] the $6.1 million transaction was approved in January 1990.[22] While WZDX represented Citicorp's first venture into broadcasting,[20] WZDX became the first outlet in Grant's return to station ownership.[21] Grant Communications was the successor to the original Grant Broadcasting System, a three-station chain of independent outlets that filed for bankruptcy protection in 1986 and was ultimately sold to its bondholders.[23]
Grant obtained rights toWB network programming in the Huntsville market in 1999, airing it in late night hours on WZDX; the move was a consequence ofSuperstation WGN ceasing carriage of WB programs.[24] The company then announced it would launch full-time WB channels in Huntsville and two other markets where it owned stations—theQuad Cities of Iowa and Illinois andRoanoke, Virginia—in December 2000.[25] "WAWB", known as "The Valley's WB", launched as a cable channel in October 2001.[26] When The WB andUPN merged intoThe CW in 2006, the merged network selected UPN affiliateWHDF (channel 15), and "WAWB" became "WAMY", broadcastingMyNetworkTV.[27][28]
WZDX began broadcasting a digital signal on June 1, 2002.[29] In 2004, the station moved its broadcasting equipment from Green Mountain to Monte Sano on the replacement tower for WAAY-TV, whose mast collapsed during repair work in September 2003, killing three.[30]
On November 6, 2013,Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it would purchase the Grant stations, including WZDX, for $87.5 million.[31] The sale was completed on December 1, 2014.[32] Four years later, in July 2018, Nexstar agreed to acquire WHDF fromLockwood Broadcast Group for $2.25 million; Nexstar concurrently took over WHDF's operations through atime brokerage agreement.[33] The sale was completed on November 9, creating aduopoly with WZDX.[34]
On December 3, 2018, less than a month after closing on its purchase of WHDF, Nexstar announced it would acquire the assets ofTribune Media—owner of CBS affiliate WHNT-TV since December 2013—for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. WHNT-TV and WZDX, as two of the four highest-rated stations in the market, could not be owned together, though Nexstar could own either station plus WHDF.[35][36][37] Nexstar decided to retain the higher-rated WHNT-TV along with WHDF and sell WZDX toTegna Inc. after finalizing the Tribune sale; WZDX was one of 19 stations disposed by Nexstar to Tegna and theE. W. Scripps Company in separate deals worth $1.32 billion.[38][39] The sale of Tribune to Nexstar was approved by the FCC on September 16.[40]
In January 2008, WZDX launched a 30-minuteprime time newscast known asFox 54 Nine O'Clock News. It was produced byIndependent News Network (INN) inDavenport, Iowa; two local reporters contributed local news stories to the news program, which was presented from Davenport. It was the second prime time newscast in the market, as WAAY had previously produced one for air on WHDF from 2000 to 2001.[41] The INN program continued to air for two and a half years and was replaced in September 2010 with a 9 p.m. newscast produced by WAAY; WAAY news personnel were joined by Ellis Eskew, a WZDX reporter.[42][43]
Nexstar announced in December 2015 that WZDX would launch a standalone news operation on April 4, 2016. Concurrently, the station's newscast was extended to an hour.[44]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 54.1 | 720p | 16:9 | WZDX-HD | Fox |
| 54.2 | 480i | MyNet | MyNetworkTV | |
| 54.3 | MeTV | MeTV | ||
| 54.4 | Mystery | Ion Mystery | ||
| 54.5 | Crime | True Crime Network | ||
| 54.6 | Quest | Quest | ||
| 54.7 | NEST | The Nest | ||
| 54.8 | NOSEY | Nosey | ||
| 54.9 | COMET | Comet |
WZDX shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 54, on June 12, 2009, as part of thefederally mandated transition from analog to digital television; the station continued to broadcast on channel 41, usingvirtual channel 54.[46] It was then repacked to channel 18 in 2020.[45]
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