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WFTS - branded Tampa Bay 28 - is the Tampa Bay area's ABC affiliate: a station that started life as a family-oriented independent in 1981, passed through Fox, and landed on ABC in the great affiliation shakeup of 1994. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company and broadcasting from studios on North Himes Avenue in Tampa, it pairs ABC's national programming with the ABC Action News operation that has covered the bay since the mid-1990s, and its newscasts also stream live online.

Channel 28's story is one of Tampa Bay television's stranger journeys: built as a family station, flipped twice between networks, and now one of Scripps' key stations in a state where the company runs a small empire.

ABC Action News

The news operation launched in rented studio space in Clearwater after the 1994 switch to ABC - newscasts that debuted in fourth place in the market and have been more competitive ever since. Today ABC Action News covers the bay from morning to late night, with weather coverage that earns its keep every hurricane season: a market that stretches from Tampa to St. Petersburg to Sarasota lives or dies by the storm track, and the station's storm coverage and live stream become the region's companion whenever a system enters the Gulf. Consumer reporting and investigative work round out the newsroom's identity in a market where viewers have real problems - insurance, hurricanes, growth - worth investigating.

From Family Station to Fox to ABC

Channel 28 signed on 14 December 1981 as a family-oriented independent station - cartoons, off-network dramas, classic movies and religious programs - with call letters that stood for Family Television Station. The original owners built the station for six million dollars, turned a profit in the first year, and sold it to Capital Cities in 1984 for more than thirty - a deal that put channel 28 inside a company about to buy the ABC network. Scripps acquired the station in 1985, made it the bay area's Fox affiliate in 1988, and then moved it to ABC in the 1994 multi-market affiliation switch - the network shuffle that redrew big-market television across the country and gave Tampa Bay the lineup it still watches.

The Himes Avenue Campus

In 1996 Scripps built the station's present home on North Himes Avenue, near Raymond James Stadium on Tampa's northwest side - a building large enough that several business functions for the entire Scripps station group run from Tampa. The transmitter in Riverview carries the signal across the bay, the digital lineup runs alongside independent sister station WXPX-TV, and the live stream carries the whole operation to phones and screens far beyond the bay - a station that has changed networks twice but never left the market it was built to serve.

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