‘First Coast News’ Seeks VHF-to-UHF Upgrade

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In Jacksonville, Fla., TEGNA brands its NBC and ABC affiliates serving the northeast Florida metropolis as “First Coast News,” owing to nearby St. Augustine. Both stations air shared newscasts, and have been a “duopoly” since a November 1999 decision by Allbritton Communications to sell the NBC-affiliated property to Gannett.


Today, that station is owned by TEGNA, and it is asking the Commission to give it an digital-era upgrade.

A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was released Tuesday (4/16) by the Commission that sets a comment period for the January 19, 2024 request by “Multimedia Holdings Corp.,” the official licensee of WTLV-TV, to swap its VHF Channel 13 for UHF Channel 33.

This would require a change to the Table of Allotments.

As such, a Comment Date has been established for 30 days after publication of the NPRM in the Federal Register. A Reply Comment Date will be 45 days following such publication.

In the digital world, a UHF signal has better coverage and signal propagation than a VHF signal. However, a self analysis using the FCC’s TVStudy software tool shows WTLV’s move to channel 33 would result in 274,303 persons no longer being located within the station’s noise limited service contour (NLSC).

But, the TEGNA subsidiary noted, there are three other NBC affiliated TV stations whose NLSC overlaps with WTLV’s proposed NLSC — WSAV-3 in Savannah, Ga., owned by Nexstar Media Group; WESH-2 in Daytona Beach-Orlando, owned by Hearst Television; and WNBW-9 in Gainesville-Ocala, owned by MPS Media and operated under a master services agreement by Sinclair Inc.

Once comments are filed, Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman will determine whether or not the shift to UHF is permissible.