WEAR-TV
WEAR-TV is a television station licensed to Pensacola, Florida, United States, serving northwest Florida and southwest Alabama as an affiliate of ABC and NBC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Fort Walton Beach–licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WFGX ; Sinclair also provides certain services to Mobile, Alabama–licensed WPMI-TV and Pensacola-licensed independent station WJTC under a local marketing agreement with Deerfield Media.
WEAR-TV and WFGX share studios—which also house master control and some internal operations for WPMI-TV and WJTC—on Mobile Highway in unincorporated Escambia County, Florida ; WEAR-TV's transmitter is located in unincorporated Baldwin County, Alabama. Weekday newscasts and any remaining operations for "NBC 15" that were once part of WPMI-TV prior to October 20, 2025, remain in Mobile at the studios of WPMI and WJTC.
Although WEAR-TV's call letters represent both the words "wear" and "ear", the station spells out its calls as "W-E-A-R", rather than any word.
History
In 1952, when the Federal Communications Commission lifted its four-year television applications freeze, WEAR and WCOA both filed for new stations on channel 3 at Pensacola. WCOA dropped its bid in June 1953, allowing WEAR to be granted the permit; the withdrawal was half of an agreement by which WEAR dropped an application for channel 36 in Jacksonville to allow WJHP, sister station to WCOA, to get that channel unopposed.The station first signed on the air on January 13, 1954. Initially, the station was a primary CBS affiliate with a secondary ABC affiliation. In 1955, WKRG-TV signed on as the CBS affiliate for the Mobile–Pensacola area, and WEAR became an exclusive ABC affiliate. In 1959, it was sold to Rollins Telecasting, which completed a construction project already in progress: the completion of a new tower in Baldwin County. Rollins was purchased by Heritage Communications, an operator of cable systems in 1986; when Tele-Communications Inc. acquired the cable systems the next year, management carried out a leveraged buyout of the broadcast division to form Heritage Media.
In October 1997, WEAR and the other Heritage stations were sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group just as the remainder of Heritage Media was merging with News Corporation. This sale also protected former longtime NBC affiliate WALA-TV as the market's Fox outlet; otherwise WEAR would have been forced to switch its network affiliation to Fox. Sinclair prohibited its ABC affiliates, including WEAR, from airing a Nightline broadcast in 2004 that featured a segment displaying the names of those who died in the war in Iraq, because the company felt it was anti-war rhetoric against the invasion.
In late 2006, Sinclair entered into negotiations with Mediacom, the main cable provider for parts of the Florida side of the market. The two companies could not reach an agreement over retransmission fees. As a result, Mediacom pulled all of Sinclair's stations from its systems on January 6, 2007. The dispute ended on February 2, when the two sides reached an agreement that restored WEAR to Mediacom systems. Upon the expiration of the 2007 agreement on January 1, 2010, Mediacom was prepared to drop the station once again from its systems. Sinclair agreed to a temporary extension until January 8 in order to allow the Bowl Championship Series college football games to be viewed on Sinclair's ABC and Fox affiliates over Mediacom. Eventually, a one-year agreement was reached which would keep Sinclair stations on the cable television provider until 2011.
In 2012, Newport Television sold five of its stations, including WPMI and WJTC, to Sinclair. However, since Sinclair already owns WEAR and WFGX, WPMI and WJTC were sold to Deerfield Media, while Sinclair operates the two stations under local marketing agreements. The sale created one of the few instances where two "Big Three" stations are operated by the same company. However, the two operations have remained separate operations aside from master control for WPMI and WJTC moving to WEAR's building in 2017, and weekend newscasts for WPMI originating out of WEAR beginning in April 2023.
On October 20, 2025, "NBC 15" relocated from WPMI 15.1 to WEAR 3.2, bringing the NBC affiliation and programming for NBC 15 completely under Sinclair's ownership. Roar relocated to WPMI 15.1, and WEAR 3.3 was deleted to make WEAR 3.2 available in high definition. The Charge! network relocated to WPMI 15.3, resulting in The Nest moving to a newly-created WPMI 15.4. The NBC 15 and UTV44 operation in Mobile will remain.
News operation
WEAR-TV presently broadcasts hours of local newscasts each week. In addition, the station produces an additional hours of newscasts weekly for WFGX. This totals 39 hours of newscasts on a weekly basis between the two stations; in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output among all broadcast television stations in the Mobile–Pensacola market.Since WEAR is the only major-network station licensed on the Florida side of the market, the station's newscasts tend to focus more on Pensacola. It does, however, operate a bureau on Dauphin Street in downtown Mobile. Because of WEAR's then-hour-long 10 p.m. newscast, it was one of the last ABC affiliates to continue to air the network's late night programming on a half-hour tape delay, starting at 11 p.m. The additional half-hour of the 10 p.m. broadcast began as Channel 3 News Extra, but has since evolved into an extension of the 10 p.m. newscast.
The station launched a 4 p.m. newscast in December 2007. On September 7, 2008, WEAR-TV was the first station in the Mobile–Pensacola market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; field video remained pillarboxed for almost three years, until widescreen and eventually high definition video began supplementing the newscasts in 2011. On July 15, 2013, the weekday edition of WEAR's morning newscast, 3 in the Morning expanded by a half-hour, moving its start time to 4:30 a.m., putting them in competition with WALA's already existing 4:30 a.m. newscast.
On August 12, 2013, WEAR launched a new half-hour, weeknight-only newscast at 9 p.m. on sister station WFGX. The newscast airs in direct competition with WALA's long-established, dominant, and hour-long 9 p.m. newscast. This marked the first time that newscasts have aired on WFGX since it shut down its in-house news department in 1998 after two years. This newscast was canceled in the fall of 2021 when Sinclair launched the evening editions of The National News Desk across their secondary stations.
In April 2023, after the downsizing of WPMI's operations in Mobile, weekend newscasts began to be produced out of WEAR for NBC 15 as either a straight simulcast or pre-recorded if it interferes with the air time of WEAR. Reporters and on-air staffers from WEAR supplement NBC 15's coverage and have filled in for staffers if they are not available.
On September 29, 2025, WEAR launched The Morning Current, a 7–8 a.m. extension of WEAR's morning news on sister station WFGX.
Notable former on-air staff
- Steve Berthiaume – sports anchor
- Mark Curtis – anchor/reporter
Technical information
Subchannels
The station's signal is multiplexed:| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
| 3.1 | 720p | 16:9 | WEAR | ABC |
| 3.2 | 1080i | 16:9 | NBC | NBC |
| 44.2 | 480i | 16:9 | Rewind | Rewind TV |
| 44.3 | 480i | 16:9 | TCN | True Crime Network |
WEAR formerly carried The Tube on its second digital subchannel until early 2007, when it was replaced with a standard definition feed of the station's main channel, which lasted until around 2010. In 2011, The Country Network began occupying the second subchannel, after the network moved from sister station WFGX.