Ft. Myers station rebrands as ‘Fox Florida,’ merges news operations with WINK

WFTX, the Fox affiliate serving the Ft. Myers/Naples, Florida, market, has rebranded as “Fox Florida” after E.W. Scripps Company sold the station and its standalone news operation was shuttered. 

WFTX was officially sold to Sun Broadcasting March 2, 2026. WFTX is managed via a shared services agreement by Fort Myers Broadcasting Company, which also owns and runs CBS affiliate WINK. Fort Myers Broadcasting also provides services to CW affiliate WXCW as well as WUVF-LD, the market’s Univision station.

Along with the rebranding came a simple updated logo featuring the Fox wordmark, with “Florida” below in all-caps Futura with generous character spacing.

In addition to the branding change, WFTX also began carrying WINK’s newscasts the morning of March 3, 2026. 

Multiple sources indicated that the WFTX broadcast facility was essentially “shut down” or “closed,” which included an unspecified number of layoffs. 

Meanwhile, the WFTX fox4now.com domain remains active, but the lead story on the site’s homepage is dated March 2, 2026. Though some content, such as weather, appears to have been updated since then, it was not clear if that was done manually or via automated backend processes.

Social media accounts have also remained untouched and it is unclear how those will be handled moving forward.

It appears, at least for the time being, that the “Fox Florida” branding is largely just being used to refer to the station itself and not any newscasts being carried on the channel. Those are all appearing using the “WINK News” branding and WINK’s graphics package.

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Prior to the sale, WFTX used the Fox wordmark alongside a “4” inside of a circle, which was often colored red. The words “Southwest Florida” also appeared under the Fox logo in select lockups.

The WFTX deal is part of a broader restructuring for Scripps. WRTV in Indianapolis is pending sale to Circle City Broadcasting, which operates WISH and WNDY in the same market. It’s also selling CourtTV and swapping stations in other markets.

Many of these swaps are designed to help bolster their new owners’ presence in the same market or region, which can often lead to significant cost savings as operations are combined. 

“These new stations will allow Scripps to expand upon our local sports and news strategies in key growth geographies for us,” said Scripps President and CEO Adam Symson in a July 2025 announcement concerning five swaps with Gray Media. “The resulting efficiencies will allow us to further invest in our connection to our communities, offering even richer coverage of these neighborhoods and regions.”

In some markets these combos are expected to be accomplished with true duopolies or triopolies where all the stations involved are owned outright by the same company, unlike the SSA arrangement at WFTX.