WESH (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Daytona Beach, Florida, United States, serving the Orlando area as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside Clermont-licensed CW affiliate WKCF (channel 18). The two stations share studios on North Wymore Road in Eatonville; WESH's primary transmitter is located on Brown Road near Christmas, Florida, with additional transmitters in Orange City and Ocala.
WESH began broadcasting on June 11, 1956. The original permittee was W. Wright Esch, former owner of a Daytona Beach radio station. In its first year of operation, it was an independent station with a signal that mostly served the Daytona Beach area from facilities in the nearby town of Holly Hill. In 1957, the station began broadcasting at higher power from a tower near Orange City, becoming receivable in Orlando, and affiliated with NBC. After adding Orlando to its coverage area, it opened a second studio in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park. Cowles Communications acquired the station in 1965. During its ownership tenure, WESH endured a decade-long challenge to its broadcast license by a Daytona Beach–based group which protested the increasing shift of station operations to the Orlando area. The challenge became of national interest when an appeals court's verdict implied that existing licensees enjoyed less of an advantage in the renewal process. During this time, WESH typically rated second in Orlando-market news ratings.
Cowles sold WESH to H&C Communications in 1984. H&C built new studios for the station in the Daytona Beach and Orlando areas, including the present main studio in Eatonville. Pulitzer Publishing acquired WESH in 1993; news ratings declined during the first years of its ownership. Under news director Bill Bauman, the station deemphasized crime news and won national attention for doing so, but ratings success did not follow until after Pulitzer sold its broadcast stations to Hearst in 1998 and Orlando's traditional market leader, WFTV, struggled in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hearst acquired WKCF in 2006, creating a duopoly.
History Early years In 1952, channel 2 was allocated to Daytona Beach. The owners of two local radio stations applied for permission to use the channel. First was W. Wright Esch, through Telrad, Inc.; Esch owned WMFJ. He was shortly followed by WNDB, the radio station of the Daytona Beach Evening News and Morning Journal, which proposed a much higher-power station than Esch. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated the two applications for hearing in February 1954, but before the hearing began, WNDB withdrew, leaving Telrad unopposed. On July 8, 1954, Telrad obtained the channel 2 construction permit. Telrad planned to operate channel 2 as WMFJ-TV in studios shared with the radio station in Holly Hill and stated at the time that it hoped to have the TV station in operation within a year.
In May 1955, Esch announced the sale of a majority interest in WMFJ to Harold Kaye and E. J. Arnold, with Esch intending to focus his energies on building channel 2. It was the second time Esch had agreed to sell the radio station. In late 1954, Theodore Granik and William H. Cook contracted with Esch to buy WMFJ and the channel 2 permit. After the Kaye–Arnold sale of WMFJ was announced, they sued Esch. Original plans to build a tower near Orange City were set aside for the time being, and work began on a tower at the studio facility site in Holly Hill. At Holly Hill, the tower could be no higher than , while at Orange City it could be up to .
Esch announced in February 1956 that he was seeking to sell nearly all shares in Telrad to John H. Perry, Jr., and his company, WCOA Inc. Perry owned newspapers, radio stations, and one television station: WJHP-TV in Jacksonville. The FCC initially approved the sale on April 27, at which time Perry announced plans to open WESH-TV in June and his hopes to affiliate with NBC. WESH-TV began broadcasting on June 11, 1956. Esch was the first person seen on the new station, introducing Daytona Beach to television as he had to radio 21 years prior with WMFJ. Only one of its two planned studio cameras was on site; a camera and staff from WJHP-TV were seconded to Holly Hill to aid the startup. Negotiations with NBC were still ongoing but had yet to bear fruit. Most of the station's programming was filmed, with 10 percent consisting of live programs, among them newscasts, hosted movies, and a Western-themed children's show. After WESH went on the air, Florida courts ruled in favor of WESH and against Granik and Cook.
In February 1957, WESH revealed its plan for a tower at Orange City, which received final construction approval in June. It was held up by stations in Orlando, which believed that a site near Bunnell would provide additional service to unserved viewers than Orange City, which would bring WESH's signal into the Orlando area. WESH signed an affiliation agreement with NBC in July, ending speculation on whether WESH or the new Orlando station WLOF-TV (channel 9, now WFTV) would be given the affiliation, and announced it would begin work on the Orange City tower. At the time, there was only one network-affiliated TV station in Central Florida, WDBO-TV (channel 6, later WCPX-TV and now WKMG-TV), which was a primary CBS affiliate but aired some programs from NBC and ABC. Though WLOF-TV obtained the ABC affiliation, it was not on the air yet, and WESH signed for selected ABC programs. The network affiliation and new transmitter facility went into use on November 2. At the same time, Perry reallocated employees to WESH from WJHP-TV, which shut down on October 25 as a result of its struggles as an ultra high frequency station.
By 1960, WESH had opened a second studio in Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando. Network programming was received at Winter Park and microwaved to Orange City for transmission. A 1964 profile of the station in Variety described WESH's Winter Park studios as its "main studios".
Cowles ownership and license challenge In 1965, Cowles Communications, Inc. acquired WESH-TV from Perry Publications. In 1969, the Holly Hill studio was updated to allow the origination of local color programs from the Daytona Beach area.
A group of 24 local businessmen, mostly from Daytona Beach, named Central Florida Enterprises filed a competing application with WESH-TV's broadcast license renewal in January 1970. The group believed that a locally owned station would be more responsive to the needs of local residents than one owned by Cowles. Were it to win the license over Cowles, Central Florida Enterprises planned increased coverage of local politics and community issues, as well as an attempt to buy the existing WESH facilities. The commission accepted the application that April and designated WESH-TV's renewal and Central Florida Enterprises's application for comparative hearing in March 1971.
In the hearing designation order, two issues were specified: whether Cowles had moved the WESH-TV main studio without FCC approval and a mail fraud case involving other subsidiaries of Cowles. The mail fraud case involved five subsidiaries of Cowles that pleaded no contest to federal mail fraud charges in Iowa in early 1971, having sold magazines and books by mail order in ways that deceived consumers and disadvantaged franchisees. Hearings were held in Washington, D.C., and Daytona Beach in 1972. Central Florida Enterprises contended that Cowles had moved most WESH-TV operations to Winter Park, making it the de facto main studio and diminishing the role of the Holly Hill studio. Cross-examination turned up that Winter Park had more control rooms, staff engineers, and video tape machines. The FCC's Broadcast Bureau's recommendations reflected poorly on WESH-TV, suggesting a one-year probationary renewal instead of the then-standard three-year renewal and that Cowles needed to be monitored for FCC rule compliance. Cowles, meanwhile, suggested that Central Florida Enterprises lacked the necessary financial backing.
FCC examiner Chester F. Naumowicz rendered an initial decision in favor of renewing WESH-TV in December 1973, citing the company's "thoroughly acceptable" record of public service in contrast to the weaker credentials presented by Central Florida Enterprises. He believed this record protected the station, even though the mail fraud case had shown that the firm was "rife" with fraud. However, he denied an application by Cowles to move WESH's tower and said that the station should be required to move most operations back to Holly Hill. Central Florida Enterprises appealed the decision to the full commission, which was sharply divided and began reconsidering what had once seemed like a lock. The presence of two Black members in the Central Florida Enterprises consortium improved its standing as the FCC began to prefer minority ownership in broadcasting, while the main studio issue continued to weigh heavily on Cowles. In November 1975, Broadcasting magazine reported that FCC staff had been directed to draw up an order granting renewal of WESH-TV and another awarding the channel to Central Florida Enterprises, a practice seen by Television Digest as rare. Were the commission to have gone through with the latter, it would have been the second time that an incumbent licensee lost to a competitor in comparative hearing, the first being the 1972 Boston channel 5 case. In December, Television Digest reported that Central Florida Enterprises was "very close to wresting channel 2 from WESH-TV" as commissioners believed Naumowicz de-emphasized findings against Cowles. The commissioners voted 4–2 in favor of Cowles in December 1976. A majority of Robert E. Lee, Charlotte Reid, James H. Quello, and Abbott M. Washburn found WESH's past performance to be superior, stronger than Naumowicz's finding that it was "thoroughly acceptable". Richard E. Wiley, Glen O. Robinson, and Benjamin Hooks dissented. Wiley believed that "thoroughly acceptable" did not entitle Cowles to a renewal given that it owned multiple stations, even though he believed the license should be renewed, while Robinson believed an auction was better suited to choose from among multiple groups seeking a channel than long, expensive hearings. A 1977 clarification strengthened the finding in favor of Cowles. It was interpreted as a major win for incumbent broadcasters seeking a preference at license renewal time, because it held that merely "substantial", not only "superior", service provided protection from a license challenge like that made by Central Florida Enterprises.