WFLX - News Operation

News Operation

After Fox required most of its affiliates air newscasts in 1990, WFLX entered in a news share agreement with CBS affiliate WPEC (then owned by the Photo Electronics Corporation). On September 11, 1991, that station started producing a nightly prime time broadcast at 10 pm on WFLX known as Fox 29 10 O'Clock News. Originally thirty minutes long, it soon expanded to a full hour. In 2000, an hour-long weekday morning show at 7 am began to air entitled Fox 29 Morning News; this was expanded to two hours on September 6, 2006.

WFLX and WPEC maintained separate news sets and on-air identities but shared a weather set and most on-air personnel, except for a few that only appeared on one station. While produced by WPEC, the broadcasts maintained their own separate identity and look, similar to other Raycom stations. As with network programming, the newscasts also rated in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market, a trend some have attributed to backlash to that area's Fox affiliate WSVN. As a result, Adelphia (now Comcast) pulled WSVN off its West Palm Beach cable lineup in 2005. On January 31, 2008, WPEC and WFLX became the second and third stations respectively in all of South Florida to offer newscasts in high definition behind NBC affiliate WPTV.

WFLX is currently the only station in the West Palm Beach market to air a prime time newscast at 10 pm, although they did face competition from CW affiliate WTVX, which aired their own 10 pm newscast (produced at the studios of its Salt Lake City sister station, KUTV, and including two locally based reporters) from August 4, 2008 until it was moved to 6:30 pm on March 2, 2009 (and was discontinued altogether three months later).

It was announced on October 22, 2010 that the agreement with WPEC would end on December 31, 2010. On January 1, 2011, WPTV (owned by E.W. Scripps Company) established a new partnership with WFLX and began producing the two-hour weekday morning show and nightly hour-long primetime newscast. These newscasts originate from a secondary set at WPTV's facilities on South Australian Avenue in Downtown West Palm Beach (its mailing address actually says Banyan Boulevard, which is also known as 1st Street) and required the addition of more than a dozen new personnel. The new news agreement eventually led to WFLX's shared services agreement with WPTV later in 2011.

WPTV's agreement marked the first time that a Scripps station has produced such a newscast since a now-defunct arrangement between WXYZ-TV and WKBD-TV (which was then a UPN affiliate). An entire new format was introduced and the coverage is different. On Friday and Sunday nights at 10:45, there is a fifteen-minute sports highlight show called Sports Zone. On September 19, 2011, WPTV added a half-hour weekday late afternoon newscast to WFLX known as Fox 29 News First at 4. With this addition, there is now 57 hours of local news each week provided by the two stations. This addition makes it the third Fox affiliate to broadcast newscast produced by another station in the same market to carry a late afternoon or early evening newscast, along with WSYM-TV in Lansing, Michigan and WQRF in Rockford, Illinois.