WJZY (channel 46) is a television station licensed to Belmont, North Carolina, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for the Charlotte area. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Rock Hill, South Carolina–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYT-TV (channel 55). WJZY and WMYT-TV share studios on Performance Road (along I-85) in unincorporated western Mecklenburg County (with a Charlotte mailing address); through a channel sharing agreement, the two stations transmit using WJZY's spectrum from an antenna in Dallas, North Carolina, along the Catawba River. WJZY was originally established in 1987 by a Charlotte group that included Harvey Gantt, the city's mayor. Soon after, that group sold the station, and channel 46 operated for the next 25 years as an independent station, then a UPN and CW affiliate, until it was purchased by Fox Television Stations in 2013, resulting in the station switching affiliations to Fox and the establishment of a new news service. History Early history Two of the nine competing applicants for the channel 46 frequency in Belmont merged as Metro–Crescent Communications in 1985 and won the construction permit by settling with the other contenders. Metro–Crescent's shareholders included two executives of Suburban Radio Group (then-owner of WPEG), Bob Hilker and Bill Rollins; Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt; dentist Spurgeon Webber; and Winston-Salem attorney David Wagner. Originally, the station received the call letters WHMU, but changes came even before it went on the air. Capitol Broadcasting Company of Raleigh reached a deal to buy a 49 percent stake in Metro-Crescent with an option to purchase the remainder later in February 1986; to do so, it had to divest itself of two Charlotte-market radio stations. The sale stood to make the partners, including Gantt, about $3 million; Gantt later admitted to the Charlotte city council that he had violated city ethics policy in failing to disclose his stake in the firm. Before the station even went on the air, the call letters were changed to WJZY in November 1986 in order to differentiate from other Charlotte television stations, none of which had a "J" or "Z" in their call signs. WJZY, originally an independent station, made its first broadcast on March 9, 1987. Channel 46 pushed up its launch to aid cable companies who dropped out-of-town stations to carry it. In Charlotte itself, for example, it replaced Washington, D.C.'s WDCA on Cablevision (later Time Warner Cable, now Charter Spectrum) on cable channel 8.