Loading your audio article
The news came over my phone with the force of a bulletin bursting through the middle of a favorite TV show: “We interrupt this program … “
The news was about the news — that South Florida’s Channel 10, WPLG, will soon part ways with the ABC network after 69 years.
The station, owned by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, decided that in an age of such dramatic technological change, it no longer makes sense to pay hefty fees to carry ABC programs like the Oscars, which viewers can easily see for free on the web or their phones.
“The network television model has changed dramatically in recent years and it is declining more and more each year,” the station’s CEO, Bert Medina, said in a statement. “The programming we get from ABC is no longer the same as it has been in years past. Exclusivity, which is the core to our relationship, is disappearing. Even when ABC airs high-quality programming, like the Oscars, ABC airs that same programming on other platforms. We no longer feel we are getting what we pay for.”
Severing ties with a network behemoth is a gutsy move by WPLG, one that has huge potential for viewers in the country’s 18th-largest TV market.
The news that WPLG will be an independent station, an “indy” without a network affiliation, was a shock at first.
But it soon gave way to the realization that this is an historic moment for South Florida to have what this region richly deserves: a full-time local news operation.
When a similar shakeup took place in Jacksonville in 2002, the result was that WJXT, Channel 4, that market’s perennial leader but suddenly no longer part of CBS, became “The Local Station,” with a round-the-clock news presence replacing daytime game shows, soap operas and prime-time escapism.
It can and should happen here, too — and I trust WPLG’s management that it will. The station that calls itself “Local 10,” unshackled from ABC programs, will be more local than ever (but as its own story about the shakeup noted, it will still carry two popular syndicated shows, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy).
Local 10 is looking to hire more reporters and producers to cover what has long been regarded as the liveliest local news market in the country.
More coverage should mean better coverage with less reliance on shootings and car crashes that are cheap and easy to cover, but which over time create a badly distorted image of daily life and cheat viewers out of what they need to know about taxes, property insurance and politics.
In 1956, when this partnership began, Miami was a winter getaway, Channel 10 was WPST (for “public service television”) and ABC was a third-rate network behind CBS and NBC when those were viewers’ only options.
CBS had Edward R. Murrow and I Love Lucy. NBC had Huntley-Brinkley and Bonanza. The staples of ABC’s weak lineup included The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Wyatt Earp.
Things improved when ABC partnered with Warner Brothers, which soon cranked out one prime-time hit after another, such as Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. Surfside 6 was, for a time, a Miami Beach-themed knockoff of “77” that helped put this place on the map.
Rebranded as WPLG in 1970 after being bought by Post-Newsweek, the station built a first-class news operation with its own helicopter, investigative reporting unit, and a bureau in fast-growing Broward County that I joined as a young reporter in 1981.
The call letters stood for Philip L. Graham, CEO of the Washington Post and brother of Bob Graham, a two-term governor, three-term U.S. senator and one of the most popular leaders in Florida’s history.
Our base of Broward operations was the 19th floor of what was then called the Landmark Bank building, the only high-rise in a then-desolate downtown Fort Lauderdale.
The height helped our little microwave relay send smoothly-produced stories about Coral Springs or Davie to the control room on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami.
Long-time viewers will surely remember my colleagues Susan Candiotti, Garrett Glaser and Jim Reynolds — a pilot who commuted to work in his Cessna and later was the intercom “voice” of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The station’s minicams were a common presence everywhere. We were “Newswatch 10” then, but we soon became “Eyewitness News” and “the one and only” Channel 10. So this fundamental realignment of South Florida TV is personal to me.
I worked with Ann Bishop, Dwight Lauderdale and “Uncle Walter” Cronise, a popular weatherman who wore colorful bow ties on the air.
By the 1980s, ABC was flying high, with hugely popular shows like Happy Days, The Love Boat and Monday Night Football, and we overtook Channel 4’s anchorman Ralph Renick in the news ratings.
When this big switch occurs Aug. 4, ABC shows will move to a sub-channel of WSVN, Channel 7, which will keep its Fox affiliation (and which hardly sounds like a win-win for ABC).
Good Morning America and Grey’s Anatomy won’t be on Channel 10 anymore, but the station will have something much more valuable: an abundance of air time to provide more comprehensive coverage of Miami-Dade, Broward, the Keys and the whole state.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.
