Fiktiv USA - WSFL-TV

WSFL-TV, virtual channel 39 (UHF digital channel 27), is a CW-affiliated television station licensed to Miami, Florida, United States and also serving Fort Lauderdale. The station is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. WSFL-TV's studios are located on East Las Olas Boulevard and Southeast 2nd Street in Fort Lauderdale (in a building shared with the formerly co-owned Sun-Sentinel newspaper); its transmitter is located between Northwest 210th and 207th Streets in Andover. On cable, the station is carried on Comcast Xfinity channels 11 (standard definition) and 435 (high definition).

The station first signed on the air on October 16, 1982 as WDZL. It was originally owned by Channel 39 Broadcasting Ltd. Operating as an independent station, the station maintained a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, off-network dramas, classic movies, a few older off-network sitcoms, and religious programs. Odyssey Partners, which would later evolve into Renaissance Broadcasting (and which had owned WTXX, now WCCT-TV, in Waterbury, Connecticut), owned an interest in WDZL.

In December 1984, Grant Broadcasting System signed on competing independent WBFS-TV (channel 33) with a stronger general entertainment lineup, and surpassed WDZL in the ratings immediately. Still, WDZL was profitable, especially with the large amount of barter cartoons that was available to the station. It was still running programs that other area stations passed on until the wave of affiliation switches in January 1989. When WCIX (channel 6, now WFOR-TV on channel 4) was sold to CBS and dropped most of its syndicated programs, Fox programming moved to WSVN (channel 7), which lost its NBC affiliation to WTVJ (channel 4, now on channel 6), which became an NBC-owned station at that time. Most of the syndicated programs dropped by WCIX, primarily cartoons and sitcoms, were acquired by WDZL, helping it to become a far stronger independent station by the early 1990s (WSVN acquired some of WCIX's cartoons to air on weekend mornings, along most of WCIX's movie packages, while WCIX retained some of its syndicated programs). In 1991, WDZL began branding its children's programming as the Fun Zone; the programming block was hosted by Lauren D. The station acquired the rights to Fox Kids after WSVN dropped the programming block in 1993.

In mid-January 1994, the station began airing the Action Pack programming block with a TekWar TV movie. The rating for the movie were 9.1/13, which was 225% more than November and more than any 2 hour movie from last year.

WDZL became a charter WB affiliate when the network debuted on January 11, 1995. In 1997, the Tribune Company acquired Renaissance Communications' six television stations. As Kids' WB programming expanded to three hours on weekdays, the station dropped Fox Kids (which moved to Home Shopping Network station WYHS (channel 69, now WAMI-TV). Channel 39 altered its call letters to WBZL (simply replacing the "D" with a "B") in 1998 to emphasize its affiliation with The WB. Throughout its affiliation with the network, the station was branded on-air as "WB 39". By that point, WBZL began airing more first-run talk and reality shows during the daytime hours, along with children's programming, and off-network sitcoms in the evenings. By 2005, it was the only remaining station in South Florida that still ran children's programs on weekday afternoons due to the presence of Kids' WB (which would discontinue its weekday afternoon block nationwide on December 30, 2005, leaving only a five-hour lineup on Saturday mornings).

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On the day of the announcement, Tribune Broadcasting signed a ten-year agreement to affiliate 16 of its WB affiliates, including WBZL, with The CW. However, it would not have been an upset had WBFS (which is owned by CBS Corporation subsidiary CBS Television Stations) been chosen as Miami's CW station. Representatives for the network were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations to become The CW's charter affiliates, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN stations both had relatively strong viewership. Throughout the summer, WBZL started using the CW logo in station promotions and also began referring to itself as "CW South Florida". On September 17, the station changed its call letters to WSFL-TV, to reference to its geographic location. WSFL became a charter CW affiliate when the network debuted the next day on September 18.

On July 10, 2013, Tribune announced plans to spin off its publishing division into a separate company. The split was finalized in 2014, and WSFL-TV remain with the Tribune Company (which retain all non-publishing assets, including the broadcasting, digital media and Media Services units), while its newspapers (including the Sun-Sentinel) became part of the similarly named Tribune Publishing Company.

On December 3, 2018, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire the assets of Tribune Media for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019. Reports preceding the purchase announcement stated that, as it did during the group's failed purchase by Sinclair, Fox Television Stations may seek to acquire certain Fox-affiliated stations owned by Tribune from the eventual buyer of that group, which could subject WSFL to being sold to Fox. However, on March 20, 2019, the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company announced it would purchase WSFL-TV from Nexstar upon consummation of the merger, as part of the company's sale of certain Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Scripps and Tegna Inc. in separate deals worth $1.32 billion. The acquisition would give WSFL-TV additional sister stations in nearby markets including Fort Myers (Fox affiliate WFTX-TV) and West Palm Beach (NBC affiliate WPTV-TV and Court TV affiliate WHDT). The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

WPLG presently produces 16 hours of locally produced newscasts each week for WSFL-TV (with 3 hours each on weekdays and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). The station also produces the public affairs program South Florida Voices which is aired on Sunday mornings at 6 a.m.

In 1997, NBC owned-and-operated station WTVJ and the Sun-Sentinel entered into a partnership to co-produce a nightly 10:00 p.m. newscast on WDZL, titled WB 39 News at 10. When the station became a CW affiliate, the newscast's title was changed accordingly to CW News at 10. On March 5, 2008, WTVJ began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; the 10:00 p.m. broadcast on WSFL was included in the upgrade.

On April 13, 2009, WSFL launched a weekday morning news program produced independently, which aired for four hours from 5:00 to 9:00 a.m.; the program was broadcast out of the Sun-Sentinel's former auditorium on the first floor of the Sun-Sentinel Building on Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale. The Morning Show was canceled on August 4, 2010 due to low ratings.

On January 2, 2012, WSFL-TV began airing a two-hour extension of WTVJ's weekday morning newscast starting at 7 a.m., which also competes with WSVN's morning newscast and WFOR-TV produced newscast on MyNetworkTV affiliate WBFS.

On September 9, 2013, WTVJ expanded the 10:00 weeknight newscast on WSFL-TV to one hour (the move was planned to maintain a lead-in for The Arsenio Hall Show; that show would be canceled in May, while the newscast remains at its full length). The newscast remains a half-hour on weekends.

On June 1, 2021, ABC affiliate WPLG took over production responsibilities for WSFL's newscasts, relocating production to WPLG's West Hallandale Beach Boulevard studios in Pembroke Park and utilizing channel 10's existing news department staff.