+1989 South Florida television affiliation switch at a glance Station Market Channel Affiliation(pre-1989) Affiliation(post-1989) WTVJ Miami–Fort Lauderdale 4 CBS NBC WCIX Miami–Fort Lauderdale 6 Fox CBS WSVN Miami–Fort Lauderdale 7 NBC Fox WPEC West Palm Beach 12 ABC CBS WPBF West Palm Beach 25 Not signed on ABC WTVX West Palm Beach 34 CBS Independent On January 1, 1989, six television stations in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida, markets, exchanged network affiliations. The event, referred to in contemporary media coverage as "The Big Switch", was described as "Miami's own soap opera" and at times compared to Dallas and Dynasty because of the lengthy public disputes between multiple parties that preceded it. Approximately three million television viewers in both markets were affected.
The changes were initiated after NBC's January 1987 purchase of WTVJ (channel 4), the market's CBS affiliate. This was the first time that a television network in the United States had purchased an affiliate of one of its competitors; due to existing contractual obligations, WTVJ was taken over by NBC in September 1987 but operated as a CBS affiliate for nearly 16 months. Miami's existing NBC affiliate, WSVN (channel 7), and owner Sunbeam Television protested this transaction, but after Sunbeam president Edmund Ansin failed to come to an affiliation agreement with CBS, CBS purchased the market's Fox affiliate—WCIX (channel 6)—in August 1988, prompting WSVN to join Fox. Due to WCIX's multiple signal and technical deficiencies that prevented them from servicing much of Broward County with a reliable over-the-air signal, West Palm Beach's ABC affiliate WPEC (channel 12) switched to CBS, with existing CBS affiliate WTVX (channel 34) becoming an independent station and WPBF (channel 25) signing on as the new ABC affiliate. WPBF's agreement to join ABC was the first reverse compensation deal in which a station paid a network to affiliate.
The new NBC station, WTVJ, had a mixed ratings performance. On WCIX, CBS struggled in the Miami market for the next six years, with fourth-rated local newscasts despite a major investment in personnel and in additional transmitters to mitigate the coverage issue. Quickly proving to be an influential Fox affiliate, WSVN adopted a tabloid, news-intensive approach that was a ratings success and duplicated in other markets. In West Palm Beach, WPEC picked up many new Broward County viewers for its CBS network programming but failed to lure them to its newscasts or surpass longtime market leader WPTV. WPBF, the new ABC affiliate, found itself a distant third in the news race and ultimately had to renegotiate the payments it had promised to the network. Without a network affiliation, WTVX's value diminished greatly, and its news department folded in August 1989 after months of cutbacks.
Overview
Prior to January 1, 1989, the "Big Three" network affiliates in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale television market consisted of WTVJ (CBS), WSVN (NBC), and WPLG (ABC), with WCIX as the market's first full-fledged independent and Fox affiliate.
WTVJ was the first television station to sign on in Florida, having done so on March 21, 1949, on channel 4. As the station signed on after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed a freeze on issuing television station licenses in September 1948, WTVJ was the only station to operate in Miami for nearly four years. Owned by Wometco Enterprises, a movie theater chain with diversified interests headed by Mitchell Wolfson, WTVJ was a primary CBS affiliate but also carried programming from DuMont, ABC, and NBC during this period. Initially, the remaining networks were represented by ultra high frequency (UHF) stations: WITV took the DuMont and ABC affiliations and WFTL-TV took the NBC affiliation when they signed on in 1953. WTVJ's first 34 years of broadcasting were characterized by unusual levels of stability, led primarily by Wolfson's stewardship of Wometco; its CBS affiliation; and Ralph Renick, the station's founding news director, lead anchor, and personal friend of Wolfson.
At channel 7, WSVN was originally WCKT, which signed on in 1956 as the second full-time NBC affiliate in Miami and owned by Sunbeam Television since 1962. Sunbeam was founded in 1953 by real estate developer Sidney Ansin and his son Edmund, with the family's interest in broadcasting dating back to when Sidney sold land to Wolfson for WTVJ's tower. Both were heavily involved in WCKT's operations but largely eschewed any meaningful on-air presence. When Sidney died in 1971, Edmund took over as president of Sunbeam; like his father, Edmund asserted himself as a real estate developer, particularly in the Indianapolis metropolitan area. WCKT took the WSVN call sign in June 1983. WPLG was the market's third ABC station and the second to operate on channel 10; it signed on as WLBW-TV in 1961, replacing WPST-TV, and had been owned by Post-Newsweek Stations since 1969.
The channel 6 allocation in Miami was first proposed by the FCC in 1956, providing a brief reprieve for a struggling WITV, which lost the ABC affiliation to WPST-TV and folded shortly thereafter. The proposal was met with confusion among Miami television officials, as the FCC had already assigned the same channel to Orlando, where it was in use by WDBO-TV. Channel 6 in Miami had to have a transmitter located much further south than the other stations in order to meet the minimum spacing of from WDBO-TV; its transmitter was located in Homestead, with a limited tower height to accommodate a nearby Air Force base. When WCIX-TV took to the air in September 1967, its tower placement resulted in many areas north of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County not receiving an acceptable signal, which the station addressed by signing on UHF translators throughout Broward, Boca Raton, and Hallandale. General Cinema Corporation purchased WCIX in 1968 and became the theater chain's sole broadcast asset to turn a profit. Taft Broadcasting acquired the station via a 1982 trade. Long the market's only full-time general independent, WCIX was challenged by the emergence of two UHF competitors, WDZL (channel 39) in 1982 and WBFS-TV (channel 33) in 1984, with WBFS tying WCIX in local ratings by March 1986. WCIX became a charter Fox affiliate in October 1986.
Wolfson died of a heart attack on January 28, 1983, which came after two heart attacks the previous February that fueled concern among financial circles about Wometco's financial health. Contrary to Wolfson's repeated prior insistence of a "secret plan" so Wometco could never be taken over or sold off, no such succession plan was ever found or mentioned in his will, and no one was designated as a succeeding chairman. In fact, Wolfson was the largest stockholder in Wometco at the time of his death. Some believed Wolfson intended to have his family decide the company's future, while others felt his "secret plan" was simply never to leave.
KKR takes over Wometco and Storer After approving several measures in a shareholders meeting designed to prevent a hostile takeover, the Wolfson family and Wometco board sold the company to merchant banker Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) on September 21, 1983, in a $1 billion leveraged buyout. At the time, it was both the largest corporate transaction in Florida history and a record for a leveraged buyout. While Wometco still existed after the buyout was completed on April 13, 1984, the company was taken private and split into two entities: one based around the television station licenses and Wometco Home Theater and the other centered around the theater chain, Miami Seaquarium, bottling, and cable television divisions. The majority of the latter's assets were sold to a Wometco executive, while the bottling operations were sold separately. With the loss of support from Wolfson and having been stripped of most internal managerial power by KKR, Ralph Renick resigned from WTVJ on April 10, 1985, to pursue a bid for governor of Florida; Renick's 6 p.m. newscast had been consistently rated number one in the market, often by significant margins, from July 1950 until the November 1984 sweeps.
KKR then acquired Storer Communications in another leveraged buyout engineered to thwart a liquidation of that company by dissatisfied shareholders and to prevent a hostile takeover by Comcast. Completed in December 1985, approval by the FCC was contingent on KKR divesting either Storer's cable systems in Miami and Wometco's cable systems in Atlanta, or WTVJ and Storer's WAGA-TV, within 18 months to satisfy cross-ownership rules. While Storer and Wometco remained nominally separate companies, the FCC recognized KKR as the primary owner of both. KKR opted on April 25, 1986, to retain the Storer cable system and put WTVJ on the market with a deadline of May 1, 1987, to make a sale. Wometco's cable systems were also divested.
Attempted sale of WTVJ to Lorimar
One anonymous Wometco staffer told The Miami Herald that several broadcast networks showed an interest in WTVJ, with a CBS official identifying Miami as one of eight "Sun Belt" markets for future acquisitions. A revision to the Herald story revealed that NBC also made an inquiry about the station, but that network's executives were not available for comment. KKR had originally intended to sell off WTVJ by itself and had rejected a $350 million offer by CBS in the process, but it soon fielded inquiries about including some of the Storer stations in a potential sale.
Television and film production and syndication company Lorimar-Telepictures emerged as the buyer of WTVJ—along with Storer stations WAGA-TV, WITI, WJBK, WJW-TV, WSBK-TV and KCST—in a $1.85 billion group deal announced on May 21, 1986. WTVJ, including the studio building and surrounding land, was itself sold for $405 million. Also included was Storer's program production company, advertising sales division and Washington news bureau. A KKR representative said the firm stood "to make a bundle" and that Lorimar-Telepictures, unlike KKR, had the resources to do more with the stations. Lorimar-Telepictures was not a stranger to broadcast station ownership, already owning five television stations inherited from predecessor Telepictures and having made concurrent offers to purchase WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh and WTTV in Bloomington, Indiana, serving Indianapolis.
Lorimar founder Merv Adelson and associate Irwin Molasky found themselves the subject of scrutiny via a September 15, 1986, profile in The Wall Street Journal that detailed their past ties to several organized crime figures including Moe Dalitz, Allard Roen and Allen Dorfman, even though Adelson and Molasky were never implicated in any unlawful behavior. The deal also faced opposition from both the Cleveland chapter of NABET and a group of minority Wometco shareholders, but Lorimar-Telepictures president Alan Bell expressed confidence those disputes would be resolved.