The stations share studios on Mainstream Drive along the Cumberland River; WZTV's transmitter is located along I-24 in Whites Creek.

Two years later, it was sold at bankruptcy auction to radio executive Bob Hudson, who attempted to return channel 17 to air as WTLT.

However, an economic downturn prevented him from raising sufficient capital to begin operations, and it fell to Reel Broadcasting Corporation, owned by Robert K. Zelle, to put the station back on air as WZTV in March 1976.

Act III Broadcasting acquired WZTV in 1988 and purchased the Fox affiliation for the Nashville market in 1990, moving it from WCAY-TV (channel 30), where it had been since the network's inception.

[2] The application was spearheaded by Alven S. Ghertner, who proposed to build studios on land he owned that was occupied by a service station.

[7] WMCV owned a mobile production unit, the "Jolly Green Giant", which allowed it to produce the first regular local telecasts of high school basketball games.

The studio also needed attention; when Hudson's team first entered, they found cigar and cigarette butts on the floor, coffee cups untouched since 1971, and a half-opened letter.

WTLT was able to broadcast test patterns in February 1975,[17] and programming and staff had been secured, but Hudson Broadcasting was unable to assemble the capital necessary to begin full-time operations of the station, owing to an ongoing recession, high interest rates, and the unwillingness of banks to support a new speculative television venture.

[18] In July 1975, the entire facility was put up for sale, with Bob Hudson telling The Tennessean that his firm was "in the right place at the wrong time".

[18] The FCC granted approval on September 30,[2] and the sale closed in early November, with new WZTV call letters selected nearly immediately.

[25] In December 1978, Reel Broadcasting agreed to sell WZTV to Multimedia, Inc., whose television station holdings consisted of network affiliates in the Midwest and South.

[36] WFYZ was purchased by Hudson and renamed WHTN in 1985,[37] but it lost money, went off the air in April 1986,[38] and returned the next month in the process of being sold to the Christian Television Network.

[40] By 1988, Multimedia's Nashville-based entertainment division was producing and syndicating the Music City News Awards telecast from the Grand Ole Opry and Christmas specials with the Statler Brothers.

[50] On February 6, 1990, after negotiations that had been in progress for a week, Act III acquired the Nashville Fox affiliation and the vast majority of WXMT's programming inventory from MT Communications.

[52] Nashville became the first of four markets, all in the South, where Fox moved its affiliation during 1990; of the other three, two (Little Rock, Arkansas, and Memphis) involved ex-TVX stations.

[54][55] Less than a year earlier, in July 1989, MT Communications had offered to purchase WZTV's programming inventory, a deal that fell apart late in negotiations.

New World continued to negotiate to acquire WSMV-TV,[57][58] but despite being described as a near-done deal, talks fell apart, leaving the affiliation status quo in place in Nashville.

[59] In 1995, Act III was acquired by ABRY Broadcast Partners;[60] the Boston buyout firm named Dan Sullivan, president of the TV division of Clear Channel Communications, to run Sullivan Broadcasting, a joint venture with ABRY to manage the former Act III portfolio.

In response, in 1997, WZTV began hiring anchors and reporters to produce a 9 p.m. newscast in collaboration with Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN-TV.

[70] The program remained a half-hour in length until July 6, 2000, when WZTV brought news production in-house and expanded it to an hour.