| Callsign: | WVEA-TV |
| Location: | Tampa–St. Petersburg, Florida |
| Country: | United States |
| City: | Tampa, Florida |
| Digital: | 20 (UHF) |
| Virtual: | 50 |
| Owner: | TelevisaUnivision |
| Licensee: | UniMas Tampa LLC |
| Callsign Meaning: | "Vea" is Spanish for "I see" (present subjunctive) |
| Erp: | 1,000 kW |
| Haat: | 4210NaN0 |
| Facility Id: | 60559 |
| Coordinates: | 27.8476°N -82.2637°W |
| Licensing Authority: | FCC |
WVEA-TV (channel 50) is a television station licensed to Tampa, Florida, United States, broadcasting the Spanish-language Univision and UniMás networks to the Tampa Bay area. Owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision, WVEA-TV maintains studios in the Westlake Corporate Center office park (near SR 589) in Tampa, and its transmitter is located on an antenna farm in Riverview, Florida.
The station first signed on the air in 1988 as WBHS (a "-TV" suffix was added to the call letters in 1992), serving as the flagship station of the Home Shopping Network (HSN). The station was originally owned by HSN's broadcasting arm Silver King Broadcasting. HSN programming was supplemented with locally produced public affairs and human interest briefs for minutes each hour, which exceeded the number of hours independent stations were required to provide local programming (over 12 broadcast hours a week, counting repeats). The Sunday schedule was devoted to children's programming, including 1970s shows such as New Zoo Revue, to expose them to a younger audience.
In 1996, Barry Diller acquired the Home Shopping Network; two years later, HSN acquired USA Networks and renamed the broadcasting group as USA Broadcasting. Plans emerged in the late 1990s to convert WBHS-TV into a general entertainment independent station by 2002, mirroring the local programming-infused format that was already adopted by its stations in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas–Fort Worth and Miami; however, USA Broadcasting (owned by USA Networks) decided to sell its television stations in 2000, before any plans to change the station's format were made. The Walt Disney Company made a bid to acquire the group (which could have made a partnership with Scripps-owned WFTS-TV, which recently just became the new ABC affiliate for Tampa Bay over 5 years ago at the time), but was outbid by Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications. WBHS-TV remained with HSN until January 14, 2002, when it became a charter owned-and-operated station of Univision's secondary network TeleFutura (which was renamed UniMás in January 2013) and changed its call letters to WFTT.
On December 4, 2017, as part of a multi-market realignment, the programming and call signs of WFTT and sister station WVEA-TV were swapped: WFTT-TV and its UniMás programming moved to the Entravision-owned facility using digital channel 25 and virtual channel 62, while Univision's digital channel 47 and virtual channel 50 facility became the new home of WVEA-TV.[1]
On October 13, 2021, Univision announced it would take over operation of WVEA-TV, as well as Orlando Univision affiliate WVEN-TV, effective January 1, 2022, coinciding with the end of licensing agreements on December 31, 2021.[2]
In addition, even though WVEA-TV's public file shows them located at their former studios on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa (in a former Barnett Bank building west of Armenia Avenue), WVEA-TV moved their facilities to the Westlake Corporate Center office park almost 4miles north of the Tampa International Airport.[3] This was made possible due to the FCC's Main Studio Rule being repealed in 2019. As WVEA-TV's newscast operates from their Orlando sister station WVEN-TV, their new facility houses their advertising sales office and their news vehicles serving the Tampa Bay area.
WVEA-TV presently broadcasts five hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with one hour each weekday); the station does not broadcast any news programming on Saturdays or Sundays. The station's news department shares resources with Orlando sister station WVEN-TV. WVEA simulcast WVEN's news programming until 2013, when WVEA began producing its own newscasts under the title Noticias Tampa Bay. On November 2, 2015, production of WVEA's newscasts was transferred back to WVEN; under this arrangement, WVEA's early evening newscast is produced live to tape an hour before WVEN's live newscast.[4] In 2011, it produced five-minute news blocks on Facebook which ended when the news department relaunched. WVEN continues to produce sports and weather segments inserted into WVEA's newscasts.
The station's signal is multiplexed:
| 50.1 | WVEA-DT | Univision | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50.2 | Bounce | Bounce TV | ||
| 50.3 | getTV | GetTV | ||
| 50.4 | 16:9 | Mystery | Ion Mystery[6] [7] | |
| 50.5 | 4:3 | ShopLC | ||
| 50.6 | 16:9 | UNM-HD | UniMás | |
| 50.7 | 480i | NVSN | Nuestra Visión (soon) |
Until 2013, WVEA-TV carried the Spanish-language music video network ZUUS Latino[8] on its third digital subchannel.
WVEA-TV (as WFTT-TV) shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 50, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[9] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 47, using virtual channel 50.