Construction
Channel 26 in Daytona Beach began to attract interest from potential operators as early as 1978, when Springfield Television announced its intentions to file for the channel as an independent station.[1] Springfield never filed, and the channel had no applications for it until Comark Television of Southwick, Massachusetts, applied for channel 26 in December 1979. Comark, a transmitter and antenna manufacturer, was making a foray into station ownership.[2]
Comark's filing triggered a stampede of competing applications,[3] seven in all by the time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated a comparative hearing in July 1981. Two consisted primarily of local ownership: Daytona Beach Television, headed by state senator Edgar Dunn, and Life Style Broadcasting, led by former Daytona Beach city commissioner Lee Cook. Two others had ownership interests in other Florida stations: Daytona Broadcasting Company—owned by the Kupris family, which owned a TV station in Panama City—and WTWV, Inc., owned by Frank Spain alongside WTVA in Tupelo, Mississippi, and CBS affiliate WTVX in Fort Pierce. This application, unlike the others, specified a CBS affiliate based in nearby New Smyrna Beach. The other three applicants were from out of state: Comark; Daytona Beach Family Television, primarily consisting of ownership interests from Nashville, Tennessee; and Metrovision, Inc., a Black-owned broadcasting firm from Stamford, Connecticut.[4]
Issues in the hearing primarily centered around comparative criteria such as integration of ownership and management as well as the technical question of finding a transmitter site that met a 205 mi distance requirement to WEVU in Naples, also on channel 26.[5] After the hearing, Metrovision dropped out because it felt pursuing the application would be too expensive, while WTWV and Comark cited disadvantages their firms held in the comparative field.[6]
In April 1983, FCC administrative law judge John M. Frysiak issued an initial decision favoring a merger of Daytona Beach Television and Daytona Beach Family Television for the license.[7] The losing contenders, Life Style Broadcasting and Daytona Broadcasting Company, challenged the ruling before the FCC review board.[8] The board overturned the initial decision and awarded the channel to Life Style because of its superior coverage proposal and more diverse ownership.[9] The proceeding languished until June 1986, when the parties reached a joint settlement agreement granting the construction permit to Life Style.[10]
WAYQ: Simulcast of WAYK
Life Style intended to construct the station by mid-1987,[11] but no action was taken until December 1987, when Life Style signed an affiliation agreement to simulcast WAYK (channel 56) in Melbourne and sold it to a partnership of Life Style and WAYK ownership known as Beach Television Partners. The combination of channels 26 and 56 was expected by management to create a large signal covering the full Orlando media market.[12] Tower construction began in April 1988; Volusia County granted a special exemption in spite of protests by pilots that visual flight rules aircraft traffic near the site had grown considerably since the original 1981 authorization.[13]
Channel 26 began broadcasting as WAYQ on September 12, 1988.[14] It served to rebroadcast nearly all of WAYK's programming; at the time, the station's programming specialty was sports, including syndicated college basketball and more than 200 baseball games a year.[15]
WNTO
In December 1992, James McCotter agreed to pay $35,000 for WAYQ's license. The tower site and property had been sold separately to the Union Camp Corporation, a prior owner, to satisfy a claim Union Camp held in the bankruptcy proceeding.[25] McCotter had previously owned the Sun Newspapers chain of weeklies, which shut down in 1990 under financial stress.[26]
McCotter rebuilt channel 26 on the same site in Pierson and returned it to the air in June 1996 as WNTO. The station's primary source of programming upon its return was National Empowerment Television, which aired conservative news and talk shows.[27] It also aired some programming from the America One network.[28] A particular highlight for Orlando-area viewers, beginning in 1998, were selected telecasts of the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team; these were the only games available to many Orlando households, as SportsChannel Florida was not carried locally.[29]
WVEN-TV: Univision for Central Florida
Meanwhile, in Orlando, W63BH was authorized as a construction permit in December 1988[35] and began broadcasting in July 1992 from the tower of WCPX-TV.[36] It was owned by Bahía Honda, Inc. At the time the permit was obtained, the owners included José Cancela, vice president and general manager of Miami Univision station WLTV, and Joaquín Blaya, the president of Univision. By 1992, Cancela and Blaya had both defected to rival network Telemundo; Univision made repeated requests of Cancela and Blaya to divest their ownership in W63BH and W61BL in Tampa, threatening bad industry press for Telemundo as a result of Bahía Honda's owners "preferring" Univision for their own stations.[37] W63BH offered a Spanish-language simulcast of WCPX's 6 p.m. newscast.[38]
WOTF-TV: UniMás, Grit and WAPA Orlando
On December 4, 2017, as part of a realignment affecting five of the six markets, the programming and call signs of WOTF and WVEN-TV were swapped: WOTF-TV and its UniMás programming moved to the Entravision-owned facility using virtual channel 26, while Univision's facility on virtual channel 43 became the new home of WVEN-TV.[50] Entravision continued to operate WVEN-TV on its new channel 43. After the Entravision agreement concluded at the end of 2021, Univision assumed control of WVEN and WVEA-TV in Tampa effective January 1, 2022.[51]
On February 2, 2026, it was announced that Entravision had reached an agreement with Hemisphere Media Group to launch WAPA Orlando. The channel airs the original programming of Puerto Rico's WAPA-TV as well as dedicated local morning and midday newscasts for Central Florida produced from San Juan. Entravision will manage sales, digital marketing, and Central Florida–market production. WAPA, in turn, received the ability to utilize the news resources of Entravision-owned stations in its coverage.[52]
