is the
MyNetworkTV -affiliated
Television Station for the
Miami -
Fort Lauderdale, Florida television market. Licensed to Miami, the station broadcasts an analog signal on
UHF channel 33 and a digital signal on UHF channel 32. WBFS's transmitter is located in
Miramar and the station shares studios, with the area's
CBS affiliate
WFOR-TV , located on NW 18th Terrace in
Doral . WBFS is owned by the
CBS Corporation and is known on-air as '''''"My 33"'''''.
Its programming lineup consists of first-run syndicated talk shows, court shows, reality shows, local news, off-network sitcoms, movies, and MyNetworkTV primetime. It also runs children's programming from
4Kids TV on the weekends.
The station also airs affiliate
WTVX , MyNetworkTV affiliate
WTCN-CA , and
Azteca América affiliate
WWHB-CA . All of these stations are currently being divested to
Cerberus Capital Management pending
FCC approval.
WBFS-TV debuted on
December 1 ,
1984 as an independent station under the ownership of
Grant Broadcasting . Before then, the channel 33 frequency had been occupied by a low-power translator for independent station
WCIX whose main signal on channel 6 could not be received very well in
Broward County .
The station ran numerous off-network classic TV sitcoms from the 1950s, 60s and 70s along with a number of cartoons. It also ran some off-network drama shows and classic western and martial arts movies that were shown on Saturday afternoons.
WBFS soon made a name for itself in
South Florida for its slick on-air look. It billed itself "
Florida 's Super Station" (a moniker that
Tampa Bay 's
WTOG also gave itself around the same time) and frequently used
CGI graphics of near-network quality. WBFS' sister stations, WGBS-TV in
Philadelphia and
WGBO-TV in
Chicago , adopted a similar look.
Unfortunately, while the station was profitable, Grant overextended himself buying programming for his stations. After
Christmas in 1986, he filed
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy . The pressure came from his debt with
Viacom which owned the distribution rights for half of Grant's shows.
In January 1987, a deal was made to cut back the runs of the shows the stations owned and pay some reduced prices. WBFS continued to do well considering its problems and scored a major coup by becoming the on-air home of the brand-new
Miami Heat of the
NBA in 1988 as well as the first on-air home of the
Florida Marlins of
Major League Baseball and the
Florida Panthers of the
NHL in 1993. Still, in 1989, Grant Broadcasting was put into receivership due to the fact it could not get out of debt. Combined Broadcasting, a company consisting of executives from the program distributors that Grant owed, took over WBFS and its sister stations.
The company pumped a lot of money into WBFS and WGBS, but ran primarily barter programming on WGBO. In 1994, Combined sold WBFS and WGBS (now
WPSG ) to
Paramount Stations Group who sold its original Philadelphia station,
WTXF-TV , to
FOX . (WGBO went to
Univision , who entered the deal after its then-affiliate in Chicago,
WCIU-TV , refused to drop non-
Spanish shows, thus angering Univision.)
Under Paramount ownership, WBFS became a UPN
O&O station at the network's sign-on in January 1995. The station was then known on-air as ''UPN 33''. It had acquired more recent off-network sitcoms over the years. It began to add more first-run syndicated talk and reality shows. It began to cut back on children's programming from 1998 on. By 2002, the station was only running a morning kids block.
In 2000, Paramount's parent company, Viacom merged with
CBS , making WBFS a sister station to CBS O&O WFOR. As a result of the merge, WBFS moved into WFOR's studios. In an ironic twist, Viacom had been one of Grant's former creditors and was actually once the syndication arm of CBS. Soon after the merger, WBFS began to air newscasts produced by WFOR. When
WAMI submitted to
Telefutura , WBFS picked up a few shows including FOX Kids (which by then was only offered on Saturdays). Today WBFS still runs FOX's
4Kids TV which the area's FOX affiliate
WSVN does not run. UPN ended its kids block in the Fall of 2003.
Today, WBFS is owned and operated by
CBS Corporation , which was the result of the Viacom / CBS split.
Throughought the station's existence, WBFS has had its own website. This changed on
April 25 ,
2007 , when WBFS's official web address, "33mytv.com", began to redirect to a WBFS section on WFOR's website. The previous web address, "upn33.com", is listed on the MyNetworkTV local station list, although it also redirects to a WBFS section on WFOR's website.
Starting in June 2007, Beatriz Canals, WBFS's weeknight co-anchor, began co-anchoring on WFOR-TV's weeknight 5 and 11 p.m. newscasts. She took the place of Maggie Rodriguez who left for ''
The Saturday Early Show ''. This arrangement was temporary until Shannon Hori of
KTVT in
Dallas was named the permanent replacement of Maggie.
On
January 24 ,
2006 , the
WB and UPN networks announced that they would end broadcasting and merge. The newly combined network would be called , the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents
CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the
Warner Bros. unit of
Time Warner . The area's WB affiliate WBZL (now
WSFL ) was announced as becoming South Florida's
CW affiliate. This was after its owner,
Tribune Broadcasting , announced a new 10 year affiliation deal with the new network on most of its WB stations.
On
February 22 , 2006,
FOX announced that they would start up another new broadcast television network called . The new network, which is sister to FOX, is operated by
FOX Television Stations and its syndication division
Twentieth Television .
MyNetworkTV was created to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming independent. It was also created to compete against The CW. The network began broadcasting on
September 18 , 2006.
On
May 1 , 2006, CBS initially announced that WBFS, along with its
Boston sister station
WSBK-TV , would not seek the affiliation for MyNetworkTV. It is believed that CBS's initial decision to deny its larger UPN stations MyNetworkTV affiliation was in retaliation against FOX for refusing to affiliate any of their UPN affiliates with The CW. However, on
July 12 , it was announced that WBFS would become South
Florida 's MyNetworkTV affiliate. The network began broadcasting on
September 5 ,
2006 and at that point WBFS became known on-air as ''My 33''.
WBFS began airing a weekday morning newscast in the time slot formerly filled with children's programming in 2004. The weekday morning and daily 10 PM newscasts are produced by
WFOR-TV . WBFS uses WFOR's news helicopter known as "Chopper 4" but is rebranded for use on WBFS as "Chopper 33". WBFS also uses WFOR's regional
Weather Radar which is known as "Realtime Doppler 4".
- Anchors:
- ---Jorge Estevez
- ---Cynthia Demos
- Weather:
- ---Lisette Gonzalez
- Traffic:
- ---Mark Henry
- Reporter:
- ---Yusila Ramirez
- Anchor:
- ---Robb Hanrahan
- ---Jennifer Santiago
- Weather:
- ---Craig Setzer
- Sports:
- ---Jim Berry
- Anchor:
- ---Marybel Rodriguez
- Weather:
- ---Jeff Berardelli
- Sports:
- ---Prim Siripipat
''WBFS uses additional news personnel from WFOR, see the WFOR article for a complete listing''
