AVENTURA, FLA. — It’s official: After nearly 69 years as an ABC affiliate serving viewers from Deerfield Beach to Key West and all of the Bahamas, Berkshire Hathaway-controlled WPLG-10 in Miami is no longer linked with the network owned by The Walt Disney Co.
As of Monday morning, “LOCAL 10” is going all-in on its original and syndicated programming as a brand-new home for ABC programming has been launched by Sunbeam Television.
With billboards along Interstate 95 promoting the change, viewers will now need to tune to “ABC Miami” to see Good Morning America and other news programming offered by the network, ESPN-branded sports airing on the network, and all ABC prime-time programming.
With August 4 serving as the first day of “ABC Miami,” originating from WSVN-7.2 and leased rebroadcast partner WDFL-LD 18, those who rely on a MVPD or vMVPD have access. For Hotwire and Blue Stream customers, “ABC Miami” is on Channel 13. For those using dominant providers Comcast Xfinity and Breezeline (formerly Atlantic Broadband), or DirecTV, tuning to Channel 18 will yield “ABC Miami.”
As of Monday morning, a deal with Dish for carriage was still forthcoming. However, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and Fubo all offer “ABC Miami,” as does DirecTV Stream.
As previously reported, “ABC Miami” will rely on its sibling, branded as “South Florida’s News Station,” for local news programming. Simulcasts of Today in Florida from 5-7am, 7News at Noon, and 7 News at 5PM, 5:30PM, 6PM, and 11pm will be seen.
As Paul Magnes, who serves as co-President of Sunbeam Television Corp. and has been on RBR+TVBR’s Top Local TV Leaders rankings for his leadership of WSVN in Miami and both WHDH and WSBK in Boston, will now oversee two potentially large network affiliates in South Florida, WPLG President/CEO Bert Medina will now be forging a new path for the BH Media station. In March, he said, “Broadcast television stations across the country have announced massive layoffs in recent years. WPLG is proud we’ve not had layoffs, but it became clear that if we accepted the deal ABC was proposing, we too would have been forced to lay off employees in order to pay the hefty price the network was demanding … Our job is to serve this community with news and local programming, that’s why we have an FCC license. If we agreed to the ABC terms, that mission would have suffered.”
Yet, even with “thoughtful hyper-local” programming, WPLG has shared that “because WPLG will no longer be carrying ABC programming, several streaming services will stop streaming WPLG.”
Those services are DirecTV, Hulu Live, Fubo and YouTube TV.
For those impacted by the loss of WPLG’s signal on their service provider, WPLG is directing them to stream “LOCAL 10” via the free “Local10 Plus” app. It is accessible on Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Firestick, Android and Samsung Smart TV. Local 10 News is also accessible via the NewsOn local news app.
