WFLX

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WFLX
West Palm Beach, Florida
Branding	FOX 29
Channels	29 (UHF) analog, 28 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	FOX The Tube (on DT2)
Owner	Raycom Media
Founded	1982
Call letters meaning	FLorida FOX
Former affiliations	Independent (1982-1985)
Website	wflx.com

WFLX is the FOX-affiliated television station in West Palm Beach, Florida. Licensed to the city, the station broadcasts its analog signal on UHF channel 29 and its digital signal on UHF channel 28. Its transmitter is located south of Wellington. The station is owned by Raycom Media and has studios located on West Blue Heron Blvd. in West Palm Beach. WFLX is known on-air as "FOX 29".

WFLX offers The Tube, a 24-hour digital music video channel, on its DT2 digital subchannel. It is also offered on Comcast digital cable channel 220.

[edit] History

WFLX began operation in 1982 as the West Palm Beach market's first independent station. The station was owned by Malrite Communications and ran a lineup typical of independent stations at the time. This included early morning cartoons, late morning religious programming, movies in early afternoons and primetime, classic sitcoms in the late afternoon, and current sitcoms early and 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 market.

In 1985, WFLX became one of the launch affiliates of FOX and retained this affiliation through the affiliation swap of January 1989 which involved WPEC, WTVX, and then-startup WPBF. 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, WFLX was recognized as the FOX Affiliate of the Year.

In September of 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 shown ratings numbers (though small) in the Miami - Fort Lauderdale market. Raycom itself would merge with The Liberty Corporation in mid-2006.

[edit] Newscasts

After FOX requested most of its affiliates air local news in the mid-1990s, the then-newsless WFLX entered in an news share agreement with the area's CBS affiliate WPEC. On September 11, 1991, WPEC started producing a daily 10 PM newscast for WFLX. Originally 30 minutes long, it soon expanded to a full hour. In 2000, an hour-long weekday morning newscast at 7 AM began to air, which on September 6, 2006, expanded to two hours.

As with FOX programming, the newscasts have also rated in the Miami - Fort Lauderdale market (a trend some have attributed to backlash to that market's FOX affiliate, WSVN). As a result, Adelphia (now Comcast) pulled WSVN off of its cable lineup in 2005.

Weekdays

• FOX 29 Morning News (7 to 9 AM)
  • Anchors: Ric Blackwell and Claudia Shea
  • Weather: Chris Farrell

• FOX 29 Ten O'Clock News (10 to 11 PM)
  • Anchors: Eric Roby and Suzanne Boyd
  • Weather: John Matthews
  • Sports: Pat Murphy

Weekends

• FOX 29 Ten O'Clock News (10 to 10:30 PM Saturdays, 10 to 11 PM Sundays)
  • Anchors: Alan Gerstel and Stephanie Dukes
  • Weather: Michael Ehrenberg
  • Sports: Nick Foley

during WPEC-produced WFLX newscasts, additional news personnel from WPEC are used, see the main WPEC article for a complete listing

[edit] External Links

• Station Website
• WPEC Website
• FOX Website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WFLX

Fox Network Affiliates in the state of Florida
WSVN 7 (Miami) - WTVT 13 (Tampa) - WPGX 28 (Panama City) - WFLX 29 (West Palm Beach) - WAWS 30 (Jacksonville) - WOFL 35 (Orlando) - WFTX 36 (Cape Coral) - WTLH 49 (Bainbridge / Tallahassee) - WOGX 51 (Ocala / Gainesville)
See also: ABC, CBS, CW, MyNetworkTV, NBC, PBS, Religious, Spanish and Other stations in the state of Florida