As a Fox station
On December 18, 1993, Fox outbid CBS for the rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package beginning with the league's 1994 season.[2] Most of Fox's affiliates at the time were on the UHF band; seeking to affiliate with VHF stations to complement the new rights, Fox signed a long-term deal with New World Communications on May 23, 1994, to affiliate with twelve of the company's major network affiliates, effective that fall.[3]
WTVT affiliated with Fox on December 12, 1994, ending its 39-year affiliation with CBS. This resulted in a three-way affiliation swap that resulted in the market's second Fox affiliate, WFTS-TV (channel 28), affiliating with ABC as part of a deal between the station's owner, the E. W. Scripps Company and ABC that resulted in sister stations WMAR-TV in Baltimore and KNXV-TV in Phoenix joining the network; longtime ABC affiliate WTSP (channel 10), which was retained by Citicasters, became a CBS affiliate. The final CBS program to air on WTVT was the made-for-TV movie Reunion, which began at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on December 11, 1994. With the switch, WTVT became the third Tampa area station to have been affiliated with Fox. WTOG (channel 44) was the market's original affiliate from the network's launch in October 1986 until the affiliation moved to WFTS in 1988. The station chose not to renew the more expensive syndicated programs that it had run as a CBS affiliate, and instead began acquiring cheaper first-run syndicated talk and reality shows.
Albeit with a three-month interruption due to CBS losing the NFC rights (the games instead aired on WFTS for the first three months of Fox's NFC telecasts as a lame duck affiliate), the switch allowed WTVT to retain its status as the "home" station for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—a status it held since 1977, when the team moved to the NFC. Under the NFL's contract with Fox (and before it, CBS), WTVT normally airs most of the Bucs' games, including all road games against American Football Conference opponents. However, largely due to the Bucs' lack of success on the field for most of their first 20 years, the team's home games were almost always blacked out locally. This was especially true during the Bucs' darkest period in the 1980s and 1990s, when they had 12 consecutive 10-loss seasons; at one point, no Bucs home games were seen locally from 1982 to 1986—spanning portions of five seasons. Once the Buccaneers began to build a winning team in the late 1990s, along with a new look and the opening of Raymond James Stadium, local television blackouts decreased, thus allowing more games to be shown on WTVT. The blackout rules were lifted by the NFL in 2015 on an experimental basis, and have since been suspended indefinitely, meaning games are now shown on Channel 13 regardless of attendance. Through Fox's contract with Major League Baseball, the station has also aired select Tampa Bay Rays games since the team's inaugural season in 1998, including the team's 2008 and 2020 World Series appearances.
News Corporation bought New World outright in July 1996;[4] the purchase was finalized on January 22, 1997, making WTVT the first owned-and-operated station of a major network in the Tampa Bay area. Although New World no longer exists as a separate company, WTVT continues to use "New World Communications of Tampa Bay" as the copyright tag at the end of the station's newscasts. Shortly after the purchase was announced, the station changed its branding from "Channel 13" to "Fox 13"—retaining the numerical "13" logo it had used since 1989 as a CBS affiliate (the font for that number has since been utilized by sister station WFLD in Chicago upon its rebranding in 2012, as well as the "13" itself used by former sister station WHBQ-TV in Memphis and PBS member station KERA-TV in Dallas). Under Fox ownership, the station added more higher-profile syndicated shows and a few off-network sitcoms to its lineup.
In June 2009, WTVT interviewed late television pitchman Billy Mays shortly before his death. His interview, which was conducted at the Tampa International Airport, is believed to have been his final appearance on live television.[5]
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company, owner of WFTS-TV's affiliated network ABC, announced its intent to buy WTVT's parent company, 21st Century Fox, for $66.1 billion; the sale, which closed on March 20, 2019, excluded WTVT as well as the Fox network, the MyNetworkTV programming service, Fox News, Fox Sports 1 and the Fox Television Stations unit, which were all transferred to the newly-formed Fox Corporation.[6][7]
