WFLX - History

History

WFLX began operations in 1982 as the West Palm Beach market's first Independent. The station was owned by Malrite Communications and ran a programming lineup typical of independent stations at the time—early-morning cartoons, late-morning religious programming, movies in early-afternoons/primetime, classic sitcoms in the late-afternoon, and current sitcoms during early/late-evenings. Unlike most independents, the amount of children's programming seen on WFLX during this time was low compared to similar stations in other markets, a trend owing to the older demographics of the West Palm Beach area.

On October 9, 1986, WFLX became one of the charter affiliates of Fox. At the time, it was the de facto affiliate of the network in all of South Florida since WCIX had a signal unable to reach most Broward and Northern Miami-Dade County viewers. WFLX retained this Fox affiliation through a heavy South Florida affiliation swap in January 1989, but it did lose most of its Miami/Ft. Lauderdale market share to WSVN, which became a Fox affiliate through the swap.

As the 1990s approached, WFLX picked up Fox Kids programming in afternoons and phased out older sitcoms for talk and reality shows. After the 1993/1994 season, it was recognized as the "Fox Affiliate of the Year". In September 1998, Malrite merged with current owner Raycom Media. Shortly after the merge, ratings came out affirming that WFLX was one of Fox's highest affiliates in terms of network ratings and has even showed numbers in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale market. In April 2002, WFLX was the first station in the West Palm Beach market to broadcast in high definition showing Fox programming in the updated format. Raycom merged with The Liberty Corporation in mid-2006.

In March 2011, Raycom announced that WFLX would be operated through a shared services agreement with WPTV-TV, the NBC affiliate for the Treasure Coast that is owned and operated by E. W. Scripps Company. In addition to news content, which WPTV has produced for WFLX since the beginning of 2011 (see "News operation" below), WPTV will handle technical, promotional, and online operations for WFLX, along with possible production of local content outside of news. The stations will have separate sales departments; WFLX's sales team (which will remain separate from WPTV) will lease space at WPTV's studios on South Australian Avenue in Downtown West Palm Beach. It was later announced that WFLX would vacate their existing studio in Riviera Beach at the end of May.