[1] Armed with an agreement to share the tower of public television station WHRO-TV,[2] the group applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and received a construction permit for WTVZ-TV in June 1978.

[4] The investors, including market broadcast veteran Gene Loving, secured the services of John A. Trinder, general sales manager at CBS affiliate WTAR-TV,[5] and Tim McDonald, who had last been programming Washington independent WTTG, to help run the new WTVZ.

[6][7][8] The station aimed to offer counterprogramming to the existing network affiliates, reach the children's market (which Trinder and McDonald felt underserved), and provide facilities for local commercial production.

[1] WTVZ-TV began broadcasting on September 24, 1979, featuring a general-entertainment mix including movies, sitcoms, cartoons, and sports, designed to provide an alternative to the existing stations in the Norfolk area.

[10][11] It took just seven months for WTVZ to turn a profit, quickly leaving behind the early days when, Trinder recalled, "we made payroll by going to the bank and trading auto titles for cash".

In 1980, they purchased WGNN-TV, a small Christian television station in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and rebuilt it as WJTM-TV (representing John Trinder and Tim McDonald in its call letters).

[17] In expanding, TVX sought situations where novice broadcasters had gotten in over their heads and wanted to sell in Sun Belt cities predicted to have growing markets.

[8][7] This strategy earned TVX derisive nicknames in a business known for a glamorous image: a 1986 feature article on the company was titled "McStations",[8] and it was also dubbed the "Kmart of broadcasting".

WNOL-TV had been put on the air in 1983 by a group that was losing money; TVX renegotiated programming contracts and cut such niceties as covered parking for station executives.

[24][25] The company also was the driving force behind a proposed distress purchase of WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1981; the troubled station was being sold by its licensee at a discount, and TVX joined forces with Herman Valentine, a Black employee of the company, and the Hispanic-owned East Los Angeles Community Union in order to qualify as a minority licensee under FCC distress sale rules.

The stations were all in markets larger than the existing TVX portfolio: WTAF-TV in Philadelphia (renamed WTXF-TV in 1988); KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas; KTXH in Houston; WDCA-TV in Washington, D.C.; and WCIX in Miami.

[18] The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its junk bonds even before the Black Monday stock market crash.

[47] However, CBS ultimately walked away because it feared that the Miami station, whose signal had technical deficiencies in several populated areas of the market, would bring down network ratings.

[53] Despite the successful recapitalization,[54] Salomon Brothers reached an agreement in principle in January 1989 for Paramount Pictures to acquire options to purchase the investment firm's majority stake.