In November 1979, Lakeland Telecasters filed an application seeking the unused channel 32 allocation at Lakeland. By May 1980,[3] a total of seven applicants had filed seeking the channel. Most were owned by out-of-state interests, among them Kenneth R. Giddens, owner of WKRG-TV in Mobile, Alabama.[4] By February 1983, the field had winnowed to four, and these firms agreed to a settlement, hours before comparative hearings were to begin.[5] The winning firm was Lakeland Public Interest Telecasters, a merger of Lakeland Telecasters and the Public Interest Corporation of St. Petersburg Beach.[6]
Channel 32's programming plans were announced in June 1985. Instead of being a general-entertainment independent station, WTMV would broadcast mostly music videos.[7] However, channel 32's start-up was postponed due to construction delays[8] as well as holdups in securing a tower site. WTMV began broadcasting on April 15, 1986.[9] Broadcasting from a transmitter site at Mulberry, southeast of Tampa and southwest of Lakeland, the station had a fringe signal in western portions of Tampa Bay, such as St. Petersburg.[10] It was known on-air as V-32.[11]
WTMV featured hosted music video segments—George Lowe was one of its first video jockeys (VJs)—as well as a talk show featuring Richard Shanks, formerly of WPLP (570 AM).[12][13] On one edition of The Richard Shanks Show, the host mooned his viewers in support of a high school student who was punished for doing the same thing.[14] Though the Shanks program was canceled months later, the mooning incident was later cited by The Ledger as having sowed anti-WTMV sentiment in the community.[15]
The music video format never had the audience acceptance or revenue it needed to survive. Owner Dan Johnson noted in a 1988 interview that ratings services required viewers to have a telephone to be measured, hindering their ability to report viewership for people under the age of 30. On September 21, 1987, some of the music video programming was dropped; Lowe, Buehl, and Shanks were dismissed; and WTMV added classic TV series, cartoons, talk shows, and syndicated college sports telecasts to its lineup.[16] The new format won WTMV increased interest from local cable systems, some of which did not previously offer channel 32 in their lineups.[17] By 1988, WTMV was airing music videos nine hours a day and was the last over-the-air music video station in the country.[18] That year, the station moved most of its operations from Lakeland, where the lease on its original studio ended, to a facility in east Hillsborough County that had once housed offices for Group W Cable.[19][20] To improve its picture in Pinellas County, WTMV began being rebroadcast on a low-power TV station on channel 63 in St. Petersburg in 1991.[21]
In the early 1990s, WTMV added programming discarded by Tampa Bay network affiliates. In addition to airing rebroadcasts of local newscasts from WTVT (channel 13),[23] it began airing CBS's Saturday cartoons when WTVT dropped them for a newscast.[24] From NBC affiliate WFLA-TV (channel 8), it picked up a game of the 1991 NBA Finals that WFLA preempted for a telethon;[25] and NBC's package of Notre Dame Fighting Irish football games, which WFLA-TV discarded to air syndicated Southeastern Conference football.[26] WTMV became Tampa Bay's affiliate of The WB when it launched on January 11, 1995.[27]
