WFLA TV

History

The station first signed on the air on February 14, 1955, with a live broadcast of the Gasparilla Pirate Festival. It was originally owned by The Tampa Tribune, along with WFLA radio (970 AM and 93.3 FM, now WFLZ). WFLA-TV has been an NBC affiliate since the station's inception. Largely because of its newspaper background, it was the early ratings leader in the Tampa market until WTVT (channel 13) passed it for first place in 1962. In 1966, Richmond Newspapers, publishers of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and part-owner of the Tribune, acquired full control of the paper and the WFLA radio and television stations. Three years later, Richmond Newspapers changed its name to Media General, and WFLA-TV, the first television station owned and operated by the company, has been the flagship of its broadcasting group since then.

The station's callsign was changed to WXFL on January 19, 1983, after WFLA-AM-FM were sold (WFLA and WFLZ are currently owned by iHeartMedia). At the time, Federal Communications Commission cross-ownership regulations forced Media General to sell the radio stations; however, the company was granted a permanent waiver permitting it to keep The Tampa Tribune and the television station. Channel 8 reverted to its original WFLA-TV call letters on January 1, 1989. That same year, it surged to first place in the Tampa Bay ratings and has stayed there for most of that time, led by one of the most popular anchor teams in the country.

In the midst of a market shake-up in December 1994, which saw three Tampa area stations swapping network affiliations (CBS affiliate WTVT switching to Fox; ABC affiliate WTSP, channel 10, switching to CBS; and Fox affiliate WFTS-TV, channel 28, switching to ABC), WFLA was one of the few major stations in the market that did not change its network affiliation. As a result, it became the highest-rated station in the market, a position formerly held by WTVT, which saw its ratings drop after switching from CBS to Fox. However, since NBC's ill-fated primetime experiment with The Jay Leno Show from September 2009 to January 2010, WTVT regained the top spot.

WFLA and The Tampa Tribune remained corporate siblings until Media General sold the newspaper to Tampa Media Group Inc. in October 2012 as part of Media General's selloff of its newspaper holdings in a reorganization to alleviate the company's substantial debt load. (With the exception of the Tribune, the company's other newspapers went to World Media Enterprises). Despite the split, the two outlets have continued a newsgathering partnership and their operations remain located adjacent to one another at the downtown Tampa facility. In January 2013, as a result of the sale, WFLA began outsourcing its digital operations and website to Worldnow, as part of a group deal with the company. Following the takeover of the company by the principal staff of LIN Media, Media General's stations, including WFLA, have since migrated to the WordPress.com-based platform and site design previously introduced by LIN.

On August 20, 2014, Media General announced that it would acquire MyNetworkTV affiliate WTTA channel 38 from Sinclair Broadcast Group. The deal made WTTA a sister station to WFLA.

On January 27, 2016, it was announced that the Nexstar Broadcasting Group would buy Media General for $4.6 billion. WFLA and WTTA became part of the newly-minted Nexstar Media Group on January 17, 2017.

Digital channels

The station's digital channel is multiplexed:

WFLA-TV replaced the Retro Television Network with MeTV on digital subchannel 8.2 on September 26, 2011, as part of a groupwide affiliation agreement with Media General; the Weigel Broadcasting-owned MeTV network also replaced RTV on some Media General-owned stations in other markets.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WFLA-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 8, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition VHF channel 7, using PSIP to display WFLA-TV's virtual channel as 8 on digital television receivers.

Programming

Syndicated programming seen on WFLA-TV includes Rachael Ray, Steve Harvey, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Extra. WFLA mostly clears the entire NBC programming lineup, but it airs the fourth hour of Today at noon instead of the network's recommended 10:00 a.m. time slot which is occupied by the local lifestyle program, Daytime (see below). It also does not air reruns of the CNBC show Mad Money during the late night/early morning hours, opting instead to give the show's time slot to syndicated programming. However, both of these are common practices among some of the stations affiliated or owned by NBC.

Daytime

The station produces Daytime, a lifestyle and entertainment program which airs weekday mornings at 10 a.m.; the program features regular correspondents and contributors for various topics. In 2003, WFLA and Daytime caused controversy after The New York Times reported of its "pay for play" practices. The article revealed that businesses were charged several thousand dollars to appear on the show, effectively making their segments "paid segments". Many people saw this as payola, a practice that is illegal under a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling. After much dispute, WFLA agreed to identify each paid segment as such to avoid an intervention from Congress.

Original hosts Debra Schrills and Brian Fasulo left the show in 2005. The current hosts are Cyndi Edwards and former Hard Copy and Extra correspondent (who continues to serve as announcer for the latter program) Jerry Penacoli. From 2008 to September 2011, the show aired nationally on the Retro Television Network as part of Media General's affiliation deal with the network, but was dropped by RTV when Media General switched most of its stations' subchannel affiliations to MeTV. National broadcasts of the show currently air on The Family Channel.

News operation

WFLA presently broadcasts 36 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours on weekdays and three hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Arch Deal and Bill Henry were the prominent faces of WFLA's newscasts in the 1960s. Deal's tenure was abruptly cut short in 1975, when he suffered injuries from a parachute accident. Bob Koop served as the evening anchor from 1977 to 1979. Longtime anchorman Bob Hite came to the anchor desk in 1979. The station began using a helicopter for newsgathering called "Eagle 8" in October 1985.

Bill Ratliff, who was brought in to anchor the evening newscasts in 1982 and had been morning and noon anchor since 1985, retired from WFLA on June 25, 2009; Ratliff (who was previously a political contributor at WTSP) died on May 8, 2012. WFLA began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition in early 2007. Following Bob Hite's November 2007 retirement after 30 years, Keith Cate assumed anchor duties of the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts along with veteran anchor Gayle Sierens.

In the February 2012 sweeps period, WFLA was the clear ratings winner for early morning, evening and late news. It was also the only station in the market to gain audience for its late newscast despite NBC's lackluster ratings performance. On July 30, 2012, WFLA debuted a new weeknight 7:00 p.m. newscast; the first such program in that timeslot in the Tampa market since WFLA produced a similar newscast for WXPX-TV (channel 66) from 2000 to 2002. On August 26, 2013, WFLA launched an hour-long 4:00 p.m. newscast. Concurrent with the addition, WFLA dropped its 11:30 a.m. newscast on August 23 (the second time WFLA discontinued its midday newscast in its history, although it retains a noon newscast on Saturdays and Sundays), however management stated that a midday newscast may return to the station's weekday schedule in September 2014. However, it was less than 3 years later in May 2016, when WFLA reintroduced a new one-hour midday newscast at 11:00 a.m.

At the start of 2015, WFLA assumed production of WTTA's news updates, Great 38 News Now. Previously, the news updates, which debuted eleven days before Media General's acquisition of WTTA, were produced by that station's former sister station in West Palm Beach, WPEC. On January 4, 2016, WFLA once again began producing a local newscast for WTTA, this time, a nightly hour-long newscast at 8pm under the title NewsChannel 8 at 8:00 on Great 38, pushing WTTA's MyNetworkTV programming back one hour.

Notable current on-air staff

Silencing Christians

On June 27, 2009, WFLA aired an hour-long documentary, Silencing Christians, which dealt with the Christian position of condemning homosexuality as a sin, and claims of the gay community's drive to make all criticism of homosexuality as hate speech, in the name of political correctness. The documentary, presented as a paid program from the American Family Association, was televised at 7 p.m. that evening, on the same day that St. Petersburg held the city's pride parade, St. Pete Pride, on the weekend of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Prior to the telecast, the station was swamped with numerous phone calls and e-mails against WFLA's broadcast of the program. After it aired, the station logged hundreds of phone calls and over 1,000 e-mails protesting the broadcast.

General manager Mike Pumo refused to elaborate on the decision, other than the show's content did not "raise the red flag" during pre-screening. Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of Equality Florida, considered the show hate speech, saying, "I think this program is a piece of homophobic propaganda and it has no place on a major network like NBC."

On July 15, 2009, 70 to 100 protesters gathered outside of WFLA's studios to protest against the special and the station's attitude towards the community. The station, however, remained firm on its decision to show the program.