WPBF - History

History

WPBF first went on-the-air January 1, 1989 owned by Brenda Skipper and Sylvia Salinas. The original plans called for the station to be an Independent. However in mid-1988, CBS (which was due to lose its longtime Miami affiliate WTVJ to NBC) bought Fox affiliate WCIX (now WFOR-TV). That station only provided a Grade B ("rimshot") signal to Fort Lauderdale and Broward County because its transmitter was farther south than the other Miami stations.

CBS persuaded the longtime ABC affiliate in West Palm Beach, WPEC, to switch to CBS in order to get a city-grade signal in Fort Lauderdale. In Fall 1988, ABC made the decision to affiliate with WPBF rather than with former CBS affiliate WTVX. These changes occurred on the day of WPBF's sign-on. The station had bought a large inventory of classic sitcoms and cartoons but now had no time to air them. It sold this programming to WTVX a couple of months after signing-on when that station shut down its news department.

In 1993, WPBF was sold to Paxson Communications which at the time owned several FM radio stations as well as a few ABC and CBS affiliates. In 1997, Paxson sold their radio stations and network affiliates (including WPBF) in order to finance the acquisition of stations for PAX (now ION Television) with this channel going to the Hearst Corporation. As soon as the transaction was finalized, Hearst handed over control of WPBF to its majority-owned subsidiary, Hearst Television (formerly Hearst-Argyle Television). All Hearst ABC affiliates including WPBF preempted Saving Private Ryan in 2004. The station was one of three ABC affiliates in the state of Florida that preempted the movie. WPBF shut down analog transmissions at 11:59 p.m. on June 12, 2009. The station began broadcasting from its pre-transition channel 16.