WPBF (channel 25) is a television station licensed to Tequesta, Florida, United States, serving the West Palm Beach area as an affiliate of ABC.

[2] The field thinned to six before an administrative law judge gave the initial nod to Martin Telecommunications in July 1986, citing its ownership by a Hispanic woman, Betty Heisler, and its proposal to air closed captioning on all of its news programs.

[5] By the summer of 1988, negotiations were nearly being concluded on the former RCA site in Palm Beach Gardens, but no programming plans had been made public, nor had the tower been constructed.

[5] However, Phipps and Potamkin began buying programming with an eye to making the new WPBF the second independent station in the West Palm Beach market.

[9] WTVX was seen as being in the lead, with its established operation, but it was not based in West Palm Beach, the largest city in the media market; WFLX had solid ratings and viewership even into Broward County, though it had no news department; but WPBF was cited by media as a "dark horse" and by WPTV's general manager as a "sleeper" because of its proposed technical facilities and the track record of Phipps in running WCTV, one of the most successful television stations in the country.

[14] Bob Morford, the news director for WTVX, felt that "ABC is apparently under the impression that it's better to sign on a new station in Palm Beach" than align with an outlet in Fort Pierce.

Between July and October 1991, WPBF dismissed more than 30 percent of its staff, and Capital Cities/ABC forgave $500,000 (equivalent to $1.1 million in 2023[11]) in affiliation fees that the station had pledged to pay its network.

The buyer was Clearwater-based Paxson Communications Corporation, which at the time owned radio stations in several major cities across the state but no television properties.

[25] Paxson also supported the purchase of WTVX out of bankruptcy court by Whitehead Media in 1995, providing financing and assuming control over operations via a local marketing agreement.

[26] Paxson's increasing business interests focusing on infomercial programming—the seeds for what became Ion Television—and radio in Florida led the company to sell the West Palm Beach station.

[31] Newscasts started on the station's second day of broadcasting,[32] originating came from a room intended for use as a prop closet until the actual newsroom could be finished.

[31] The local newscasts from WPBF debuted in third place in the ratings behind the two other West Palm Beach stations; the newly independent WTVX shuttered its news department in August 1989.

[41] In the mid-2000s, the station finally found a formula that improved its ratings, one centered around weather: forecasts were moved to the lead story in each WPBF newscast.

[43] The steady climb made WPBF a solid contender for second alongside WPEC by 2014, though both stations still trailed longtime market leader WPTV.

[45] The next year, the station debuted a 10 p.m. newscast on its Me-TV subchannel, lengthened its noon news to an hour, and launched a weekly public affairs show, On the Record.

[53] As part of the SAFER Act, WPBF kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.