WTTA (channel 38) is a television station licensed to St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, serving as the Tampa Bay area's local outlet for The CW.

The transmitting antenna was mounted on top of the north tower of WSUN which was modified to hold it without exceeding the original 502-foot (153 m) AGL height.

The transmitter building still contains a ladder which descends into a bomb shelter below the bay water as 620 was the original CONELRAD station for the area.

The original towers, each located on pilings in Tampa Bay deteriorated with the salt water and sea bird roosting residues and were replaced with new shorter towers on the original pilings in the early 2000s, eliminating the final traces of channel 38 at the 620 kHz transmitting plant.

The winner, decided in 1985, was Bay Television, an entity affiliated with the Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group; the competing applicants included Oak Television of Tampa Bay, a subsidiary of the company behind the ONTV subscription TV service; Home TV, Inc.; and Suncoast 38, a group owned by Clint Murchison.

[4] WTTA affiliated in September 1990 with the Star Television Network, which offered a mix of older programming and infomercials.

On December 12, 1994, Fox programming moved from WFTS-TV (channel 28) to WTVT as part of a group deal with its then-owners, New World Communications.

Upon the changeover, WTVT chose not to carry the network's children's program block, Fox Kids, which was picked up by WTTA instead.

Bay Television could also be considered a shell corporation used for the purpose of circumventing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership rules.

[14][15] Sinclair then announced WTTA would be the market's MyNetworkTV affiliate; the station rebranded as "MyTV Tampa Bay" the week before that network's September 5, 2006, debut.

The show moved to Ion Television owned-and-operated station WXPX-TV (channel 66) in November 2007, after WTTA imposed new restrictions regarding live programming.

In April 2014, WTTA and the Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer club announced a marketing and broadcast partnership.

On August 20, 2014, Sinclair announced that it would sell WTTA, along with WHTM in Harrisburg (which Sinclair, on behalf of Allbritton is planning on to divest) KXRM-TV and KXTU-LD in Colorado Springs, to Media General in a swap for WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island, WLUK-TV and WCWF in Green Bay, and WTGS in Savannah, Georgia.

[28] Nexstar Media Group announced on June 14, 2023, that WTTA would take over the CW affiliation for the Tampa market on September 1, with MyNetworkTV shifting to the same time slot on the same day to the recently-acquired WSNN-LD (channel 39), though WTTA continues to retain a second run of the lineup as part of its late night schedule.

Original personnel included news anchors Peter Bernard and Katie Coronado with weather from meteorologists Mace Michaels or Leigh Spann.

Initially, the news updates, which debuted eleven days before Media General's acquisition of WTTA, were produced by former sister station WPEC in West Palm Beach.

On April 5, 2020, WFLA expanded into Spanish-language news coverage with the addition of a half-hour 9 p.m. newscast airing weeknights entitled Noticias Tampa Hoy on WTTA.

[33] On February 2, 2009, Sinclair told cable and satellite television providers via e-mail that regardless of the exact mandatory switchover date to digital-only broadcasting for full-power stations (which Congress rescheduled for June 12 days later), the station would shut down its analog signal on the original transition date of February 17.