WITV (Florida)

Owned by the Gerico Investment Company, it was the third television station on the air in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale area and the fourth in South Florida, operating from December 1953 to May 1958.

It was doomed by troubles that plagued ultra high frequency (UHF) television in the days before the All-Channel Receiver Act and particularly the arrival of two additional VHF TV stations to Miami in 1956 and 1957.

The WITV transmitter facility was purchased by the Dade County School Board, eventually resulting in the reactivation of channel 17 as Miami-based WLRN-TV in 1962.

When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its four-year-old freeze on television station applications in 1948, channels 17 and 23 were placed in Fort Lauderdale.

[7] Former Florida governor Fuller Warren joined the station in early 1954 as a political analyst[8] and hosted a weekly news commentary program on Sunday nights.

WGBS-TV folded in April 1957 and sold its equipment to Public Service Television, a division of National Airlines, which started up WPST-TV on channel 10 that August and took away the ABC affiliation that had been held by WITV since its inception.

[21] Bill Bayer, WITV's news director from the station's launch, joined WPST-TV in the same capacity and took his weekly Sunday night political debate program with him.