initially, wpbf had a small news department as it did not plan to launch one until after it received the abc affiliation. after being purchased by paxson communications, the station added additional newscasts to its schedule. for a long time they struggled with ratings in their own market, which is attributable to wplg's very strong over-the-air signal in palm beach county and its availability on comcast throughout the area. however with hearst's traditional hard news focus on their stations soon instituted within wpbf's news operation, wpbf eventually became a spirited second place news operation, and wpbf usually outranks wpec currently in most timeslots (nbc affiliate wptv has been well dominant in the market for years).