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WPLG-TV, one of South Florida’s television stalwarts, announced Thursday it is divorcing the ABC network, asserting its partner wanted to charge too much money to remain an affiliate.
“After nearly 69 years, WPLG-TV and the ABC television network are breaking up,” the station said in a statement posted mid-afternoon on its website.
CEO and President E.R. Bert Medina informed the staff, which is based at the station’s Pembroke Park studios, “during an all hands meeting.”
“After months of negotiations between the Berkshire Hathaway-owned television station and the network, the two parties could not reach an agreement to extend the affiliation agreement and, as a result, ABC will pull its programming effective Aug. 4,” the statement said.
“We made a generous offer to ABC, but it became clear the two sides were not going to agree to a new deal,” Medina added, according to the WPLG article. The two companies’ old deal expired Dec. 31.
Not long after WPLG broke its divorce news, ABC owner Disney Entertainment and Sunbeam Television Corporation, operator of Miami Fox affiliate WSVN-Channel 7, announced a new affiliation agreement to deliver the ABC network’s content to the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market.
The deal gives WSVN a second major network to offer its viewers, with the ABC content distributed over-the-air on a subchannel. A cable channel has yet to be assigned.
“Under the terms of the new, multi-year agreement, the new ABC affiliate will begin broadcasting as ABC Miami on channel 7.2 over-the-air beginning Monday, August 4, moving from Berkshire Hathaway Media’s WPLG Local 10,” the Disney-Sunbeam statement said. “To ensure a smooth transition, Disney Entertainment will continue to provide WPLG with uninterrupted access to its ABC network programming until that date.”
“We are incredibly excited to join forces with Sunbeam Television in South Florida moving forward as they not only share Disney’s enduring commitment to serving local communities, but they also recognize the value of ABC’s esteemed brand and the significant investments we’re making to our world-class network content,” said Susi D’Ambra Coplan, senior vice president of affiliate relations, Disney Entertainment. “We would also like to thank Berkshire Hathaway Media and everyone at WPLG Local 10 for their partnership — we are very proud to have brought some of the most compelling programming to our highly-valued, mutual viewers over the years.”
“When the opportunity to affiliate with ABC became available, we knew that our combined resources would allow us to develop an extremely strong partnership,” said Paul Magnes, co-president of Sunbeam. “Adding ABC programming to our stations’ portfolio will only strengthen our footprint.“
ABC also maintains an affiliation with WPBF-Channel 25 in West Palm Beach. It renewed close to 50 agreements in 2024.
Too expensive for WPLG
Medina of WPLG was less charitable about the strength and appeal of ABC’s content. He noted that television stations nationwide have engaged in “massive layoffs in recent years,” and his station would have been forced to follow a similar path if it agreed to pay “the hefty price the network was demanding.”
Medina indicated that the station would dedicate the money it paid ABC to local news gathering.
“Instead of sending our money to New York, we will keep it in our community and use that money to finance a massive expansion in local news and other local programming,” Medina said, according to the WPLG website.
“Our job is to serve this community with news and local programming, that’s why we have an FCC license,” he said. “If we agreed to the ABC terms, that mission would have suffered.”
He criticized network television programming as a distribution model in decline.
“The programming we get from ABC is no longer the same as it has been in years past,” he said. “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.”
Noting that a “majority of our staff” grew up in South Florida, he said the station intends to deploy them around the station’s own regional neighborhood.
“We are excited for the future of Local 10,” Medina said. “Just watch us. We are about to serve this community in an even bigger and better way.”
