It was started by the consolidation of two newspapers by the Tampa Publishing Company, whose vice president was W. B. Henderson, a leading businessperson in Tampa.
[1] The newspaper was an early leader in broadcasting, first putting WDAE 1250 AM on the air in 1922 (now on 620 AM).
Also in the late 1940s, the company applied for a broadcast television station license and was denied.
After the Tampa Tribune stopped publishing its Tampa Times edition in 1982, it continued to hold the rights on the name, leading to a lawsuit filed by Media General, owner of the Tampa Tribune, against the St. Petersburg Times.
[5] The two companies reached an agreement in 2006, by which the Media General keep its exclusive right to use of Tampa Times for another five years; the window expired in 2011, and on January 1, 2012, the St. Petersburg Times was renamed the Tampa Bay Times.