History
In 1952, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its four-year television applications freeze, WEAR (1230 AM) and WCOA (1370 AM) both filed for new stations on channel 3 at Pensacola.[1] WCOA dropped its bid in June 1953, allowing WEAR to be granted the permit; the withdrawal was half of an agreement by which WEAR dropped an application for channel 36 in Jacksonville to allow WJHP, sister station to WCOA, to get that channel unopposed.[2]
The station first signed on the air on January 13, 1954.[3] Initially, the station was a primary CBS affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliation. In 1955, WKRG-TV (channel 5) signed on as the CBS affiliate for the Mobile–Pensacola area, and WEAR became an exclusive ABC affiliate. In 1959, it was sold to Rollins Telecasting, which completed a construction project already in progress:[4] the completion of a new tower in Baldwin County.[5] Rollins was purchased by Heritage Communications, an operator of cable systems in 1986;[6] when Tele-Communications Inc. acquired the cable systems the next year, management carried out a leveraged buyout of the broadcast division to form Heritage Media.[7]
In October 1997, WEAR and the other Heritage stations were sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group just as the remainder of Heritage Media was merging with News Corporation (the then-parent company of Fox). This sale also protected former longtime NBC affiliate WALA-TV (channel 10) as the market's Fox outlet; otherwise WEAR would have been forced to switch its network affiliation to Fox. Sinclair prohibited its ABC affiliates, including WEAR, from airing a Nightline broadcast in 2004 that featured a segment displaying the names of those who died in the war in Iraq, because the company felt it was anti-war rhetoric against the invasion.[8][9][10][11][12]
In late 2006, Sinclair entered into negotiations with Mediacom, the main cable provider for parts of the Florida side of the market (including Santa Rosa County and Pensacola Beach). The two companies could not reach an agreement over retransmission fees. As a result, Mediacom pulled all of Sinclair's stations (including WEAR) from its systems on January 6, 2007. The dispute ended on February 2, when the two sides reached an agreement that restored WEAR to Mediacom systems. Upon the expiration of the 2007 agreement on January 1, 2010, Mediacom was prepared to drop the station once again from its systems. Sinclair agreed to a temporary extension until January 8 in order to allow the Bowl Championship Series college football games to be viewed on Sinclair's ABC and Fox affiliates over Mediacom. Eventually, a one-year agreement was reached which would keep Sinclair stations on the cable television provider until 2011.
In 2012, Newport Television sold five of its stations, including WPMI and WJTC, to Sinclair. However, since Sinclair already owns WEAR and WFGX, WPMI and WJTC were sold to Deerfield Media, while Sinclair operates the two stations under local marketing agreements. The sale created one of the few instances where two "Big Three" stations are operated by the same company. However, the two operations have remained separate operations aside from master control for WPMI and WJTC moving to WEAR's building in 2017, and weekend newscasts for WPMI originating out of WEAR beginning in April 2023.
On October 20, 2025, "NBC 15" relocated from WPMI 15.1 to WEAR 3.2, bringing the NBC affiliation and programming for NBC 15 completely under Sinclair's ownership. Roar relocated to WPMI 15.1, and WEAR 3.3 was deleted to make WEAR 3.2 available in high definition. The Charge! network relocated to WPMI 15.3, resulting in The Nest moving to a newly-created WPMI 15.4. The NBC 15 and UTV44 operation in Mobile will remain.
