WSVN

WSVN, channel 7, is a television station located in Miami, Florida. WSVN is owned by Sunbeam Television, and is an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company. The station has its studio facilities located in North Bay Village and transmitter based in north Miami-Dade County. WSVN is one of three South Florida stations based in Miami-Dade County alongside WFOR-TV and WBFS (both owned by CBS).

WSVN operates a Key West repeater, WKIZ-LP, on channel 49. WKIZ's calls are a play on the Florida Keys since the translator serves Key West.

History

The station began broadcasting on July 29, 1956. It had the call letters WCKT and was a NBC affiliate owned by Biscayne Television Corporation. The station was a partnership of the Cox and Knight publishing families who owned Miami's two major newspapers: the Miami News and Miami Herald, respectively. The same partnership also owned WCKR radio (610 AM, now WIOD) and WCKR-FM (97.3, now WFLC). Before WCKT signed on, NBC had been carried on WFTL-TV (channel 23) in Fort Lauderdale (later known as WGBS-TV after it had been acquired by Storer Broadcasting) along with some DuMont programming. However, WFTL struggled because television sets were not required to have UHF tuning capability. When the Cox/Knight partnership won a construction permit and license for channel 7, NBC quickly agreed to move its affiliation to that channel since WCKR had long been the NBC Radio affiliate in Miami. Channel 23 became an independent station and eventually...
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