When Jones College sold 90.9 WKTZ and 1220 WJAX Jacksonville to Educational Media Foundation earlier this month, Jones retained the WJAX call letters. Now we know why.
FTVLive.com reported yesterday that Cox has applied for the WJAX call letters for its CBS affiliate WTEV-TV 47 Jacksonville. Concurrently Cox is applying to change FOX 30 WAWS to WFOX-TV. In regards to the latter, Cox possessed the rights to the WFOX call letters on 97.1 Gainesville, GA until 2006 and then 95.9 Norwalk, CT until it was sold to Connoisseur Media last year. There were no provisions in the sale agreement in regards to the WFOX call letters.
No word on whether any cash exchanged hands to allow Cox rights to the WJAX or WFOX-TV call letters. Applications for the change were filed on July 30.
In addition to the two television stations, Cox owns a Jacksonville radio cluster including CHR 95.1 WAPE, Classic Hits “96.9 The Eagle” WJGL, Alternative “X102.9” WXXJ, News/Talk “News 104.5” WOKV-FM/690 WOKV, Urban “Power 106.1” W291CI , and Urban AC “Hot 106.5” WHJX.
Joseph_Gallant 
Charles Everett 
Nathan Obral 
Wouldn’t Fox itself want the “WFOX-TV” call letters for New York, replacing “WNYW”??
Fox is not going to get those call letters. The Florida Times-Union reported yesterday that the FCC has approved Cox’s callsign changes in Jacksonville. No date has been given yet for the new callsigns to be used.
WNYW is a legacy callsign that mimics the prior legacy callsign of WNEW-TV. Besides, WNYW is universally recognized as “Fox 5” to the point where a vanity callsign change is totally unnecessary and pointless.
If Fox wanted WFOX, they’d have it already; 21st Century Fox (née News Corp) has the deep pockets to buy it.
WNYW brands as “Fox 5,” only using their call letters (in small print) for legal IDs,, so they’d have little use for fancy call letters anyway.