WESH (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Daytona Beach, Florida, United States, serving the Orlando area as an affiliate of NBC.
The station's original transmitter tower was only 300 feet (91 m) high, which was tiny even by 1950s' standards, and limited channel 2's signal coverage to Volusia County.
Cowles later moved its headquarters to Daytona Beach, and built a satellite studio on Minnesota Avenue in Winter Park.
Cowles exited broadcasting in 1984 and sold two of its stations, WESH and Des Moines' KCCI, to Houston-based H&C Communications, owned by the publishers of the Houston Post, the Hobby family.
Under H&C ownership, WESH closed its original Holly Hill studio in 1989, and relocated its operations to a temporary studio facility on Ridgewood Avenue (US 1), near International Speedway Boulevard (US 92) in Daytona Beach, which was eventually sold later, but the station maintains its Volusia County news bureau and a microwave tower at that facility.
The station's primary operations then moved to a brand new studio in Winter Park in 1991, located on Wymore Road, alongside Interstate 4, equipped with "Super Doppler 2" atop the STL tower and a helipad.
The Hobbys decided to liquidate H&C in 1992; after an attempt to sell its entire TV station group to Young Broadcasting fell through,[6] the company accepted an offer by Pulitzer Publishing to buy WESH and KCCI for $165 million in 1993.
This acquisition was completed on August 31, 2006; resulting in Orlando's third commercial television station duopoly (alongside Cox-owned WFTV and WRDQ, and Fox-owned WOFL and WRBW).
[8] The substitution of WBRE in place of WESH lasted until July 19, 2012, when a new carriage deal was reached between Hearst and Time Warner.
WESH also produces a nightly weather forecast segment for its Tampa sister independent station WMOR-TV titled the Bikini Cast.
That mini-resurgence was short-lived, however, as WFTV regained its dominance during the November 2009 sweeps period, while WESH retreated back to third (behind WKMG), except on weeknights.
WESH was one of many NBC affiliates across the country that benefitted from the network coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics during the February sweeps ratings period: Its late-night newscast beat WFTV's by a small margin.
In mid-January 2018, WESH became the first Hearst-owned station to unveil an updated version of its standardized graphics package that is optimized for the full 16:9 letterboxed format.