The Scandalous Side of Fort Myers Broadcasting Company/Sun Broadcasting

[JRyan 694]

3 hours ago, Recovering Producer said:

Any Fort Myers only branding would alienate a large portion of the potential audience. Fort Myers isn’t the largest city in the DMA. Cape Coral is the largest city in the market by far. Lehigh Acres, which isn’t an incorporated city, also has more people than the city of Fort Myers. That said, there are large portions of unincorporated Lee County that have a Fort Myers mailing address. 

As for Fox Florida… if the domain name is available and no one else is branding that way, why not? Less is more. 10 letter domain name. Two words. Alliteration. Says what the product is, still a clear change and a clean slate from the Fox4 News brand the WINK/Sun McSchwartzel leadership team wants people to forget was a thing. 

When Nexstar acquired KRBK in 2018 and upon moving the station to KOLR/KOZL's studios, they changed its branding to Ozarks Fox.  It was a great decision, as the brand was used years ago in the KSFX era and seemed like a natural fit.

 

In this case, they dropped a longtime brand (Fox 4) in favor of this one.  The name itself doesn't really bother me much.  It's hard to simply negate a brand that's been in place for decades.   It's obvious that WINK management* doesn't have the most astute common sense as of lately (their handling of the Matt Devitt fiasco), so them dropping a well-established brand doesn't surprise me that much.

 

(*Disclaimer: I know that Sun Broadcasting holds the license for WFTX, but we all know that is in name only to get around potential legal issues with Fort Myers Broadcasting owning outright.)

 

Edited March 5 by JRyan

[TheRolyPoly 3509]

10 hours ago, MichiganNewsGraphicsJunkie said:

Again... why?!?! They barely cover a fraction of the state?!?! I would see this more for WOFL or heck even WSVN 

 

CBS Texas and FOX Carolina say hold my beer.

[MediaZone4K 2660]

On 3/5/2026 at 10:57 AM, Recovering Producer said:

Any Fort Myers only branding would alienate a large portion of the potential audience. Fort Myers isn’t the largest city in the DMA. Cape Coral is the largest city in the market by far. Lehigh Acres, which isn’t an incorporated city, also has more people than the city of Fort Myers. That said, there are large portions of unincorporated Lee County that have a Fort Myers mailing address. 

As for Fox Florida… if the domain name is available and no one else is branding that way, why not? Less is more. 10 letter domain name. Two words. Alliteration. Says what the product is, still a clear change and a clean slate from the Fox4 News brand the WINK/Sun McSchwartzel leadership team wants people to forget was a thing. 

Ahhh that would explain why most news branding just goes with Southwest Florida.

 

As @MichiganNewsGraphicsJunkie pointed out,  WXTF only covers a small fraction Florida.  IMO, a statewide branding feels off when the newscast doesn't cover a majority of the state.

20 hours ago, TheRolyPoly said:

 

CBS Texas and FOX Carolina say hold my beer.

Same with CBS Texas, they're just covering the Dallas Metroplex in a state with 20 DMAs. Arizona's Family, for example works as the state only has 4 DMA's, and Phoenix's market takes up most of the land area/population.

 

My question is, do they begin laying off some of the Fox 4 staff? Second, is it that adding FOX 4 to WINK and WXCW doesn't station ownership rules.

Edited March 6 by MediaZone4K

[Recovering Producer 410]

Fort Myers Broadcasting has sued Matt Devitt.

 

Link to lawsuit: https://jumpshare.com/share/PKW9HMFxwTst6zuRgw9g

 

As best as I can tell, his response has not been filed. 

[H-Town TV Fan 250]

On 3/5/2026 at 6:57 PM, MediaZone4K said:

Arizona's Family, for example works as the state only has 4 DMA's, and Phoenix's market takes up most of the land area/population.

Actually, Arizona has only 3 DMA's: Phoenix (#12), Tuscon (#65), and Yuma (#164).

[brianpr3 199]

And what does the jab about him going to the casino have to do with the lawsuit. 

[Greggo 384]

6 hours ago, brianpr3 said:

And what does the jab about him going to the casino have to do with the lawsuit. 

An attempt to disparage him 

[Recovering Producer 410]

6 hours ago, brianpr3 said:

And what does the jab about him going to the casino have to do with the lawsuit. 

 

Just from seeing the social media discourse: a lot of the narriative his supporters have used on social media is "he was fired for long dinner breaks to be with his wife and kids." So that's their attempt to refute/counter that. 

 

More importantly, for the plaintiff's side, filing a lawsuit, especially in a place like Florida where public records are easily accessible, is fundamentally the equivalent of the scene in Mean Girls where Regina George throws copies of the Burn Book down the hallway. It is out there. It has been said. Even if that part of the lawsuit isn't allowed to be part of a possible trial in the future, that information can't be put back in the tube.

 

As someone who worked at that station: It is a HUGE surprise the social media incident saying bad things about Publix in May 2025 wasn't the termination event. Publix LOVES television advertising, especially in local news. And you don't cause drama, needlessly, with an advertiser who generates that much revenue.

 

[l_miro 245]

15 hours ago, brianpr3 said:

And what does the jab about him going to the casino have to do with the lawsuit. 

 

Read the filing page 18, he was allegedly at an illegal gambling arcade. Screenshot from a Facebook message from Someone working at the casino messaged to tell him to stop coming every night because it looks like he has gambling addiction and people are noticing.

 

WINK having a stick up about the festive icons in the weather graphics is so funny. They tolerated his tardiness, complaints from staff having to pick up after him, for 2+ years but the festive weather icons mucking up the vibe of the graphs package broke them. Not the sketchy intern he brought in without telling anyone, who worked for 100 hours without pay

 

All he had to do was not post on FB acting like he was shocked at being fired, even though he literally signed a paper acknowledging if his antics continued they might terminate him. $10k down the drain to respond to this

 

[brianpr3 199]

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AttHkpkHS/

Stephen Clark chimes in 

Edited April 3 by brianpr3

[l_miro 245]

On 4/3/2026 at 11:52 AM, brianpr3 said:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AttHkpkHS/

Stephen Clark chimes in 

 

Chimed in without reading the lawsuit with the screenshots. I wonder if he's got reputation too, awful TV people stick up for each other

 

The sycophantic boomers in the comments are hilarious though

[JRyan 694]

10 hours ago, l_miro said:

 

Chimed in without reading the lawsuit with the screenshots. I wonder if he's got reputation too, awful TV people stick up for each other

 

The sycophantic boomers in the comments are hilarious though

 

There's a lot more than "boomers" that are upset with WINK.  Regardless of the truth, WINK handled this situation appallingly bad and the relationship that Matt Devitt had with the public was clearly underestimated.

 

In all likelihood, WINK will want to settle before it goes to trial.  Including immaterial claims about an alleged gambling problem is a new low I didn't expect a station like WINK to go to.  WINK has previously been a station I long regarded as one of the best independently owned stations in the country.  But sadly I cannot in good conscience continue to hold WINK in that regard at the present time.  They have been nothing short of tone-deaf with the public about their handling of Matt Devitt.  And acting like the public's outrage doesn't exist is not doing them any favors.  And their segment "WINK Listens"?  I strongly suggest cancelling that until they recommit themselves to actually follow through on listening - not to their ego but to the public who they claim to serve.

 

A competent judge (assuming impartiality truly dictates the matter) will see it is little more than WINK's attempt to smear Devitt using court documents.

[TheRolyPoly 3509]

It looks like there are more changes coming to WFTX and WXCW (this is after looking at various TV schedules, mainly from OnTVTonight, TV Passport, and Zap2it via Gracenote).

 

On the same day WINK brings back their 11am news on WFTX (they used to do one on WXCW some 15 years ago), WINK will transition all of their newscasts that have originated on WXCW since 2007 (except for Sunday mornings at 9am) to WFTX. This means that WFTX will be the exclusive home to WINK's 7am-12pm, 6:30-7, and 10-11pm newscasts, plus weekend mornings (6-9am Sat. and 10-11:30am Sun.) and 10pm.

 

It also looks like WXCW will transition to mainly an entertainment schedule (outside of Sunday mornings at 9am, as I mentioned) and will even include MyNetworkTV programming on weeknights from 10pm-12am after The CW's primetime programs, meaning it would become a dual CW/MNT affiliate.

 

 

[Yankees4life 599]

WINK handling of this WHOLE situation just comes off as typical Florida Man nonsense. 

[brianpr3 199]

Who is the new chief meteorologist now at wink? 

[ScottSchell 423]

25 minutes ago, brianpr3 said:

Who is the new chief meteorologist now at wink? 

As of now no one.

[brianpr3 199]

9 hours ago, ScottSchell said:

As of now no one.

And they got 2 former chiefs on their bench, Katie and was Trent one? 

[ScottSchell 423]

7 hours ago, brianpr3 said:

And they got 2 former chiefs on their bench, Katie and was Trent one? 

He was at WPLG from 2004-2017.

[Recovering Producer 410]

19 hours ago, brianpr3 said:

And they got 2 former chiefs on their bench, Katie and was Trent one? 

 

Based on the bios page, it appears Trent's tenure at WINK was rather short, and all references to any time there got scrubbed from his Facebook page. 

 

I have no idea if they know what they are doing with the title of chief meteorologist. If I was advising them on PR, I'd say the title isn't necessary right now and create their promotion and marketing campaign around the expertise of the entire weather team. The longer they wait to give someone the title of chief meteorologist, the less blowback they'll get from people on social media. And there is no need to open the door to relitigating that messiness in public/social media while all of that messiness is also in the process of moving towards being litigated by acutal lawyers in court.

[TheRolyPoly 3509]

On 4/23/2026 at 3:35 AM, TheRolyPoly said:

It looks like there are more changes coming to WFTX and WXCW (this is after looking at various TV schedules, mainly from OnTVTonight, TV Passport, and Zap2it via Gracenote).

 

On the same day WINK brings back their 11am news on WFTX (they used to do one on WXCW some 15 years ago), WINK will transition all of their newscasts that have originated on WXCW since 2007 (except for Sunday mornings at 9am) to WFTX. This means that WFTX will be the exclusive home to WINK's 7am-12pm, 6:30-7, and 10-11pm newscasts, plus weekend mornings (6-9am Sat. and 10-11:30am Sun.) and 10pm.

 

It also looks like WXCW will transition to mainly an entertainment schedule (outside of Sunday mornings at 9am, as I mentioned) and will even include MyNetworkTV programming on weeknights from 10pm-12am after The CW's primetime programs, meaning it would become a dual CW/MNT affiliate.

 

 

 

This video on the 'Gram has confirmed it all.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXkw40AkV4y/?igsh=MTV4MXIwczNoNHRyZQ==

[brianpr3 199]

I guess with Kellie Burns retiring at NBC (will never call it the new name) Lois is the senior female news anchor in the area? 

[Recovering Producer 410]

1 hour ago, brianpr3 said:

I guess with Kellie Burns retiring at NBC (will never call it the new name) Lois is the senior female news anchor in the area? 

That’s been the case for a long time. Lois arrived at WINK a couple years before Kellie started at WBBH. Longest serving overall on-air TV news person in the market for a while too.

[newsman123 142]

18 minutes ago, Recovering Producer said:

That’s been the case for a long time. Lois arrived at WINK a couple years before Kellie started at WBBH. Longest serving overall on-air TV news person in the market for a while too.

Yup. KB is certainly a legend in that market. But I remember when I worked at Waterman years ago, I was told Lois had the highest q score in the market, and was considered the most popular anchor. 

[brianpr3 199]

Matt has filed a response to the lawsuit 

[Recovering Producer 410]

Response is here: https://jumpshare.com/share/nuAG0KuJGA8cfHdvfx0M

 

I'm not smart enough to know which case is in better standing legally and in terms of what could happen if heard by a jury. The realist in me says if there isn't some out of court settlement, by the time this case gets scheduled for a trial his noncompete would likely be expired - making a lot of elements of both cases moot.

 

Only guaranteed winner: lawyers getting billable hours.