WPTV-TV (channel 5) is a television station in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Stuart-licensed news-formatted independent station WHDT (channel 9); Scripps also provides certain services to Fox affiliate WFLX (channel 29) under a shared services agreement (SSA) with Gray Television. The stations share studios on South Australian Avenue in downtown West Palm Beach (mailing address says Banyan Boulevard, also known as 1st Street), while WPTV-TV's transmitter is located in Lake Worth along US 441/SR 7. History The station began broadcasting on August 22, 1954, as the primary NBC affiliate for all of South Florida with the call letters WJNO-TV. At sign-on, the first words heard on-air were from Control Room Director Vern Crawford: "The power has just been turned on for WJNO-TV channel 5 by Frank M. Folsom, President of The Radio Corporation of America." Crawford later became a fishing reporter for the station. (While the station is the oldest in operation in the region, the area's first TV station was WIRK-TV, Channel 21, which was in operation from 1953 to 1956.) At that time, it was owned by William Cook and Theodore Granick and there were only 32 employees working at the station. WJNO was later purchased by the Phipps family in 1956 and changed the call letters to WPTV. Then in 1961, Mort Watters, President of Scripps-Howard Broadcasting, purchased the station for Scripps-Howard. Under new ownership, the station began expanding. WPTV's current transmitter tower was built along with new transmission facilities. The station's original West Palm Beach studios were expanded. In May 1971, Scripps-Howard built new studio facilities for the station on Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach. During the 1960s and into the early 1970s, WPTV's evening news team of news director and anchor Bill Gordon, sports director and anchor Buck Kinnard, and weather anchor Tony Glenn were number one in the Nielsen ratings. Sometime in the mid-1970s, WPTV adopted the "circle 5" logo that was used for many years by sister station WEWS-TV in Cleveland. In 1976, WPTV began operating the market's first live mobile news van, as well as the first color weather radar. It remained an NBC affiliate throughout the South Florida network switches of January 1989. West Palm Beach is one of the markets that were unaffected by the 1994–96 TV realignment and eventually the ABC/Scripps deal (one of