History
The station's original construction permit was issued as early as 1990. It took to the air on April 23, 2000 under the ownership of Reece Associates Ltd., with WFTV (which has been owned by Cox since 1985) operating the station under a local marketing agreement (LMA); Reece was co-owned by Marsha Reece, a former WFTV reporter. Several months before WRDQ signed on, in August 1999, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began allowing duopolies of commercially-licensed television stations, allowing Cox to exercise an option to acquire the station outright on February 1, 2001. On April 14, 2008, the station launched a new second digital subchannel to carry the Retro Television Network. On February 17, 2009, WRDQ shut off its analog signal ahead of the June 12 analog shutoff deadline.
As of May 24, 2011, Cox decided to use WRDQ to carry coverage of the Casey Anthony trial in full from 9 a.m.–4 p.m., with WFTV airing the last hour from 4–5 p.m., pre-empting the station's weekday programming schedule. High interest in the trial eventually led to coverage being increasingly shifted to WFTV (with WRDQ generally only airing "more procedural" and "more dry or technical" portions); as of June 8, coverage was moved to WFTV for good, after ABC granted Cox permission to move ABC Daytime programming to WRDQ for the trial's duration. It returned to WFTV upon the trial's conclusion.
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