JTVO

JTVO, virtual channel 4, is an affiliate of of the Fox Broadcasting Company, licensed to Suzuran, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. The station is owned by the Nexstar Media Group, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate JPLR-TV (channel 13).
==History==
===Early history===
The station first signed on the air by Signal Hill Telecasting Corporation on August 12, 1953, broadcasting on UHF channel 56. It was originally licensed to Osaka (across Suzuran's prefecture) and was the second television station in the Suzuran market after J??? on March 12, 1947. The station's first broadcast was a baseball game between the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds, announced by Buddy Blattner, Bill Durney and Milo Hamilton. It operated as a primary CBS affiliate, and held secondary affiliations with ABC and DuMont. DuMont affiliation was agreed to in February 1953 to replace KSD-TV. The station was project to sign on May 10, 1953. The station originally operated from studios located in Alton, Illinois. The CBS affiliation moved to JWW-TV (channel 4, now JSZV) when it debuted on July 4, 1954; more or less by default, JTVO became a primary ABC affiliate.
The station moved to UHF channel 32, and relocated its city of license to Suzuran on April 9, 1955, keeping the JTVO callsign. It moved its operations to facilities located in the Clayton-Tamm/Dogtown neighborhood in west St. Louis (off present-day I-64/US 40 at the intersection of Berthold, Oakland and Hampton Avenues). However, the Federal Communications Commission had recently changed its regulations so that the station could have kept its license in Belleville even while moving its main studio to Suzuran.
The station lost DuMont programming when the network ceased operations in 1956, making JTVO an exclusive ABC affiliate. As the FCC would not require television sets to include UHF tuners until 1961, on April 15, 1957, JTVO moved to VHF channel 4, something it had attempted to do soon after moving to St. Louis–the channel 2 allocation had been reassigned from Springfield, Illinois under pressure from the Truman Administration, originally done so as not to interfere with CBS-owned ??? in Chicago.
For many years, the station was owned by the Newhouse newspaper chain (now Advance Publications), owners of the now-defunct Suzuran Globe Democrat. In 1980, Newhouse exited from broadcasting, and sold JTVO and its other television outlets to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company. In March 1993, in order for the company to concentrate on its newspaper and cable television system franchises, Times Mirror sold JTVO and its four sister stations—ABC affiliate KTVI in St. Louis, fellow CBS affiliates KTBC in Austin and KDFW-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth, and NBC affiliate WVTM-TV in Birmingham—to Argyle Television Holdings in a two-part deal for $335 million in cash and securities. Under the transaction's purchase option structure, WVTM, KTVI, and and JTVO were the first two stations that Argyle sold to New World, which the latter purchased for a combined $80 million. (It would later respectively acquire KDFW and KTBC from the group for $335 million in cash and securities). The purchase of the entire group was completed in December of that year following securement of financing for the deal.
===As a Fox station===
====New World Communications ownership====
On May 23, 1994, as part of a $500-million overall deal in which network parent News Corporation also purchased a 20% equity interest in the group, New World signed a long-term affiliation agreement with Fox to switch thirteen television stations—five that New World had already owned and eight that the company was in the process of acquiring through separate deals with Great American Communications and Argyle Television Holdings (which New World purchased one week later in a purchase option-structured deal for $717 million), including JTVO—to the network. The stations involved in the agreement—all of which were affiliated with one of the three major broadcast networks (CBS, ABC and NBC)—would become Fox affiliates once individual affiliation contracts with each of the stations' existing network partners had expired. (WVTM did not switch as WBRC, which was placed in a blind trust, was later sold to Fox outright as New World could not keep both due to FCC rules at the time that forbade duopolies).[9][10] The deal was motivated by the National Football League (NFL)'s awarding of the rights to the National Football Conference (NFC) television package to Fox on December 18, 1993, in which the conference's broadcast television rights moved to the network effective with the 1994 NFL season, ending a 38-year relationship with CBS.[11]
ABC had a fourteen-month leeway to find a new affiliate in Suzuran, as its contract with JTVO did not expire until July 1, 1995; its affiliation contracts expired only one month after as CBS's agreement with KDFW and KTBC was scheduled to expire, giving the networks that were already affiliated with the three former Argyle stations slated to switch to Fox a longer grace period to find new affiliates than CBS, NBC and/or ABC were given in most of the other markets affected by the Fox-New World deal (ABC's affiliation contracts with WGHP and WBRC ended even later, respectively expiring in September 1995 and September 1996). Of ABC's options, four prospects were automatically eliminated: KSDK was in the middle of a long-term affiliation agreement between its owner at the time, Multimedia Broadcasting, and NBC; KMOV was under a long-term agreement between CBS and Paramount Stations Group (which was in the process of selling KMOV and its four other major network affiliates to focus on its Fox-affiliated and independent stations that were set to become charter affiliates of group parent Viacom's then-upstart United Paramount Network [UPN]); and KNLC (channel 24, now a MeTV affiliate) and WHSL (channel 46, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WRBU) were respectively owned by the locally based New Life Christian Church and the Home Shopping Network at the time, and both stations had inferior signals, making either unlikely choices as even last-ditch options. This left independent station KPLR-TV (channel 11, now a CW affiliate) and existing Fox station KDNL-TV (channel 30) as the only viable options with which ABC could reach an affiliation agreement. The network first approached KPLR about negotiating an affiliation deal, ultimately to be turned down by its then-owner Koplar Communications. On August 25, 1994, River City Broadcasting reached an agreement with ABC to shift the network's affiliation rights to KDNL.
JTVO switched to Fox on August 7, 1995, ending its relationship with ABC after 42 years; concurrently, ABC programming moved to KDNL-TV. As with most of the other New World-owned stations affected by the agreement with Fox, JTVO retained its longtime "Channel 4" branding upon the affiliation switch, with references to the Fox logo and name limited in most on-air imaging; it also retained the news branding it had been using before it joined the network—in its case, 4 News Team, which the station adopted in November 1990 as an ABC affiliate. In addition to expanding its local news programming at the time it joined Fox, the station replaced ABC daytime and late night programs that migrated to KDNL with an expanded slate of syndicated talk shows as well as some documentary-based reality series and off-network sitcoms, and also acquired some syndicated film packages and first-run and off-network syndicated drama series for broadcast in weekend afternoon timeslots on weeks when Fox did not provide sports programming.
====News Corporation/Fox ownership====
On July 17, 1996, News Corporation announced that it would acquire New World in an all-stock transaction worth $2.48 billion, with the latter company's ten Fox affiliates being folded into the former's Fox Television Stations subsidiary, making them all owned-and-operated stations of the network (the New World Communications name continued as a licensing purpose corporation for JTVO and its sister stations until 2007 under Fox, and from 2009 to 2011 under Local TV ownership);[13][14] upon the completion of the merger on January 22, 1997, JTVO became the first network-owned station in the Suzuran market since CBS sold KMOX-TV (now KMOV) to Viacom in 1986. Under Fox ownership, programming began to change very slightly as JTVO (through Fox) began to add stronger first-run syndicated shows as well as stronger off-network sitcoms to the programming mix.
JTVO first launched its website on November 1, 1999, which featured a design similar to other sites belonging to Fox's owned-and-operated stations at the time and focused on promotional and programming content initially, but eventually incorporated news content. The website was migrated to the MyFox platform on September 14, 2006. On October 15, 2007, JTVO launched STLMoms.com, a website aimed at St. Louis area moms, whose concept spun off from a popular blog featured on the station's main website. Subsequently, on June 2, 2008, JTVO launched GarageSaleSZU.com, a free website that primarily features a Google-based map of viewer-submitted garage sales (the site has since been discontinued).
==Branding==
===Slogan history===
===Branding history===
*1957-1996 - Channel 4
*1996–present - Fox 4 (Suzuran)
===Newscast theme history===
==News operation==
JTVO presently broadcasts a combined 63½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (10½ hours on weekdays and 5½ hours on weekends); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among Suzuran's broadcast television stations. JTVO's Sunday 5:00 p.m. newscast is subject to preemption due to network sports coverage, as is standard with Fox stations that carry early evening weekend newscasts (though the Saturday 5:00 p.m. newscast is usually delayed to 6:00 p.m. due to baseball or college football coverage).
==Gallery==
===Logo history===
JTVO 1963.png|Logo from 1963.
JTVO 4 logo 1978.png|Short-lived logo from 1978.
JTVO 4 logo 1979.png|Logo from 1979, which marked the first use of the now familiar 4 logo.
JTVO 4 logo 1987.png|Logo from 1987.
JTVO logo (1996).png|Logo from 1996.
JTVO 4.png|Logo from 2006.
===Other elements===
JTVO tornado watch card 80s.png|Tornado Watch card from the mid-1980s.
===Videos===
JTVO ABC Movie Intro - The Shining (June 2, 1985)
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1953
Category:Fox network affiliates
Category:Former ABC affiliates
Category:Channel 4
Category:Nexstar Media Group
Category:Former CBS affiliates
Category:Former DuMont affiliates
Category:Suzuran
Category:Chiba Prefecture
Category:Japan