#13: Tampa Bay over the past year.

We got some changes in this market as well, but most of them are very recently.

WTVT 13 / Tampa - St. Petersburg (“FOX 13 Tampa Bay”)

WTOG 44 / St. Petersburg - Tampa (“Tampa Bay 44”)

WFLA-TV 8 / Tampa - St. Petersburg (“NewsChannel 8”)

WTTA 38 / St. Petersburg - Tampa (“The CW Tampa Bay”)

Now onto Florida’s biggest market, the Tampa Bay region. Several moves were made here.

First off, WTVT slightly moved their three-hour Sunday morning newscast from 6:00-9:00 a.m. to an hour later from 7:00-10:00 a.m. Now WTVT competes against WFLA, WTSP (CBS), and WWSB (ABC Sarasota) at 7:00 a.m. while competing against WTSP and WFLA (ABC; half-hour) at 8:00 a.m. and against WFLA at 9:00 a.m.

Also, WTOG cut its only local news at 10:00 p.m. when the News NOW format (from CBS News and Stations’ Innovation Lab) ended on August 31st of this year. They now fill the hour with syndicated programming, marking the first time since 2020 that WTOG has gone news-less again. That would’ve meant that WTVT would be all alone at 10:00 p.m. However…

We go to the WFLA/WTTA duopoly. Because WTTA is now the new home of The CW in Tampa Bay (thanks to Nexstar ownership), WFLA couldn’t run its weeknight primetime newscast at 8:00 p.m. anymore. Therefore, they’ve decided to split it into two: the first half-hour is now weeknights only at 6:30 p.m., which helps them compete against WTVT (and even against sister station WSNN; Ind) in that half-hour, and a second half-hour, nightly at 10:00 p.m., which is also against WTVT (and WSNN). They’ve also moved their hour-long weeknight Spanish block of programming to 10:30 p.m., right after the new 10:00 p.m. news. This includes Noticias Tampa Bay at 10:30 and the lifestyle show Todo Tampa Hoy at 11:00 p.m. All of these changes took place on WTTA’s first day as a new CW-owned-and-operated station: Friday, September 1st, 2023.

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