WTVJ: 59 Years Of Firsts

MIRAMAR, Fla. -- WTVJ was born in March 1949 as Florida's first television station.

In the beginning, the station aired programs from four networks: NBC, CBS, ABC and the old Dumont network. There was no cable or satellite TV, so all of the network programs were shipped from New York on film and run in Miami sometimes a week later.

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As the 1950s progressed, WTVJ, then CBS-affiliated Channel 4, was changing fast and growing what would become known as one of the best news departments in the country.

Ralph Renick ran the news department for 36 years. Bob Weaver did the weather for 54 years, and Bernie Rosen, who ran the sports department, is still at WTVJ nearly 60 years later.

From the beginning, WTVJ was known for the quality and depth of its coverage, the stability of its staff and the ability to grow and change with the times.

Renick took local anchoring to a new level in 1959, traveling first to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro and then to the Kremlin to interview Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev.

In the 1960s, as the first group made an exodus from Cuba to South Florida, WTVJ was in the forefront again, airing the first-ever Spanish newscast with Manolo Reyes. WTVJ was there in the 1960s as hurricanes Cleo, Donna and Betsy slammed South Florida.

Then, WTVJ had more firsts. It hired its youngest-ever reporter, South Florida's first black reporter, the first woman news reporter and the first female sports reporter.

The 1970s brought an end to film and the switch to videotape. WTVJ was the first with tape, and in 1975 became the first station in Florida to begin airing live field reports called the Live Eye.

The 1980s came with a new style and more changes to WTVJ and to South Florida. The decade was defined by the Mariel boatlift in 1980, the Miami riots in 1981 and by cocaine for the rest of the decade. Drug dealing became South Florida's biggest industry.

Amidst this chaotic background, WTVJ, then a Wometco-owned station, was sold twice: first to the investment firm KKR in 1984, then to NBC in 1988.

The early 1990s brought Hurricane Andrew and continuing live coverage as South Florida began to rebuild. WTVJ changed again in the mid-1990s as it switched dial positions from 4 to 6, but the WTVJ tradition continued in NBC 6.

As WTVJ moved into the new millennium, it moved from Miami-Dade County to a new state-of-the-art facility in Broward County. The station said goodbye to videotape and hello to a new partner and another first: Telemundo 51 joined NBC 6 to form South Florida's first duopoly -- two television stations operating together out of the same building, sharing resources, expanding coverage and community outreach.

NBC6.net became a much larger part of the WTVJ picture, allowing more comprehensive coverage and, for the first time, instant viewer involvement. In 2007, WTVJ became the first South Florida station to stream all its newscasts live on the Internet.

WTVJ's firsts continue to mount -- it was first with a live undersea broadcast at Aquarius and, just months ago, became the first and only station in South Florida to broadcast news in high definition.

As WTVJ faces change once again, the station does it with pride and passion -- pride in what it has accomplished in the last nearly 60 years and pride in offering that heritage and that passion to its new owners.