Outlet profile

CBS12

U.S. local TV news, mainstream with a conservative-leaning corporate owner

Owned bySinclair, Inc. (formerly Sinclair Broadcast Group), a publicly traded U.S. broadcaster. It also owns the CW affiliate WTVX (channel 34) in the same market.

FundingCommercial advertising, including political ads, plus fees from cable and satellite companies that carry the station. Sinclair also receives CBS network affiliate arrangements.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The station signed on January 1, 1955, as WEAT-TV, an ABC affiliate owned by RKO General. It passed to Rex Rand in 1957 and to John D. MacArthur's Gardens Broadcasting in 1964. In 1973 it was sold to Photo Electronics, and in 1974 the call letters changed to WPEC, for Photo Electronics Corporation. It switched from ABC to CBS on January 1, 1989, after CBS bought Miami's WCIX and ABC and CBS affiliations shifted around the state. It later changed hands among several owners and is now part of Sinclair's portfolio. I could not confirm the exact dates of those later sales from the sources I could open. Sinclair has drawn criticism, mostly reported in 2017–2018, for requiring its local stations to air centrally produced 'must-run' conservative commentary, including segments by former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn. Critics such as Media Matters and PBS NewsHour described this as a partisan tilt on local news, while Sinclair has defended its programming. I did not find evidence of how often CBS12 itself airs such segments today, or any recent audit of its Trump-era coverage. A fair characterization is that its day-to-day local reporting (weather, crime, local government) is conventional, while the owner's corporate content leans right and could affect national-political segments.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-10-10; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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