WJXX (channel 25) is a television station licensed to Orange Park, Florida, United States, serving the Jacksonville area as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside NBC affiliate WTLV (channel 12). The two stations share studios on East Adams Street (near EverBank Stadium) in downtown Jacksonville; WJXX's transmitter is located on Anders Boulevard on the south side of the city.

Though plans for an Orange Park television station dated to 1977 and the construction permit to 1988, it took upheaval in the city's ABC affiliation to induce the construction of channel 25, which began broadcasting in February 1997. The launch was moved two months ahead of schedule after outgoing ABC affiliate WJKS-TV ceased airing more than half of the network's prime time lineup. Final transmission facilities were not built out for another seven months, and signal issues alienated viewers in Jacksonville, a market already comparatively weak for the ABC network. Even though the founding owner, Allbritton Communications, built studios and started a local news team, WJXX made little headway in the ratings. The problems caused by the early launch proved insurmountable, leading Allbritton to sell WJXX to Gannett, owner of WTLV, just as common ownership of two stations in a market was permitted. Gannett merged the two stations at WTLV's studios in 2000 and began to simulcast nearly all local newscasts under the name First Coast News.

In 1977, a group known as Clay Television, Inc., was formed and petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allocate channel 25 to Orange Park, a community in Clay County, Florida, 12 miles (19 km) south of Jacksonville. The FCC allocated the channel in January 1980, and in October, Clay filed an application for a construction permit to build the proposed station. Principals in Clay Television consisted of Richard Fellows, a former city manager in Green Cove Springs and Orange Park; his son; and three Clay County physicians and their wives. A second application was received for the channel in early 1981 from Orange Park Florida T.V., a company majority-owned by Malcolm Glazer.

In 1982, an FCC administrative law judge refused to grant the construction permit and returned both applications. Clay Television had experienced a cumulative change of 50 percent of ownership, which, per the judge, required refiling; Orange Park Florida T.V. was "basically and technically unqualified" because its antenna site did not meet minimum spacing requirements to other stations. The FCC then permitted Clay to cure the defect on its application, citing uncertainty about processing practices, and ultimately granted a construction permit in October 1982; the former action was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1987 and remanded to the FCC. The FCC reviewed the action in 1988; deeming that continuing the lengthy comparative hearing was not in the public interest as Orange Park had continued to wait for new TV service, it upheld Clay's victory. As part of a sequential assignment of television station call signs across the United States in 1989, Clay Television received the call sign WYDP.

The station remained unbuilt due to financial difficulties. In December 1992, after offering WYDP to the Clay County school board, Clay Television filed to sell the construction permit to the University of North Florida. The university proposed to partner with public television station WJCT (channel 7) to build WYDP as a student-run TV station if the Florida Board of Regents would approve the financial outlay.

On February 16, 1996, Allbritton Communications Company announced it would purchase WBSG-TV (channel 21) in Brunswick, Georgia, north of Jacksonville in Glynn County, for $10.5 million. Allbritton simultaneously announced that its entire station group would either renew their existing ABC affiliations or—in the case of stations in Charleston, South Carolina; in and around Birmingham, Alabama; and WBSG-TV in Brunswick—switch to ABC. At the time, WBSG-TV operated as an affiliate of The WB and also had a news department producing local newscasts covering southeast Georgia, though it was not considered the WB affiliate of record in Jacksonville; the local newscasts had gone on the air with the station in April 1990 and been cut back to early and late evening airings by 1996. Allbritton announced that it would repurpose WBSG-TV as a full-market ABC affiliate for Jacksonville by building a full station facility there. The news blindsided WJKS (channel 17), which had served as the ABC affiliate for the First Coast from 1966 to 1980 and again since 1988. The switch was to occur on January 1, 1997, making the Jacksonville switch among the last in a years-long period of national affiliation realignment that had started in 1994.

However, WBSG-TV's transmission facility in Hickox, Georgia, did not provide sufficient coverage of Jacksonville, particularly homes south of Interstate 10. As a consequence, Allbritton filed to erect a new 2,000-foot (610 m) tower in Kingsland, Georgia. WJKS attempted to block this move by making its own application for a tower in Kingsland, though it retracted this request; the FCC rejected WBSG's Kingsland proposal, leading Allbritton to instead increase the height and power of the existing WBSG-TV facility, though this did little to expand coverage to the south. By August 1996, when the FCC approved the upgraded Hickox facility, the affiliation switch had been put off until at least February, and WJKS had given up its fight to remain with ABC.

We've been put in a position where we need to accelerate the process so we can get the people in Jacksonville the programs they want as quickly as possible.