{"id":141381,"date":"2026-02-03T00:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/141381\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T00:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T00:42:16","slug":"an-iconic-puerto-rican-tv-brand-comes-to-orlando","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/141381\/","title":{"rendered":"An Iconic Puerto Rican TV Brand Comes To Orlando"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret to anyone in the U.S. Hispanic market that Orlando has become a hub for Puerto Ricans who have left the island for the mainland over the last 25 years. Today, the Boricua\u00a0community extends to Kissimmee-St. Cloud area to the south all the way to Sanford, to the northeast. The growth has led to an explosion of Spanish-language broadcast media choices, as Central Florida is now second only to New York in its Puerto Rican population.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0Entravision Communications\u00a0seeks to speak to locals of Puerto Rican heritage by bringing a brand from home to an over-the-air channel that once housed a UniM\u00e1s affiliate. It\u2019s thanks to a fresh partnership with\u00a0Hemisphere Media Group.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Alan Sokol-led group that owns\u00a0WAPA Television\u00a0and heritage radio stations\u00a0WKAQ-AM & FM\u00a0in San Juan, in addition to a collection of cable television stations distributed across Latin America and the U.S., has agreed to an arrangement that sees the launch of \u201cWAPA Orlando.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewers can tune to\u00a0WOTF-26,\u00a0a Daytona Beach-licensed facility with a tower between De Land and Sanford, as of today to take in programming found on Channel 4 across Puerto Rico. WOTF is largely distributed across the Orlando DMA by MVPDs; the market includes fast-growing Brevard County and such communities as Melbourne.<\/p>\n

To be clear, WAPA Orlando will be a unique take on the WAPA brand, which includes the WAPA Am\u00e9rica MVPD-distributed channel. \u201cThe station will be programmed for Central Florida\u2019s Latino population, with a particular focus on the region\u2019s large and rapidly growing Puerto Rican community,\u201d Hemisphere said in a statement.<\/p>\n

A newscast focused on Orlando\u2019s Puerto Rico community is in the mix, produced in San Juan for WOTF viewers. At launch, two daily locally-produced newscasts\u2014morning and midday\u2014will air on WOTF. There are plans to expand to evening and late-night editions over time, Hemisphere says.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Entravision-owned stations will serve as correspondent hubs, adding to the WAPA Orlando news coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited to bring WAPA\u2019s world class news and entertainment content and programming expertise to Orlando, which is often referred to as Puerto Rico\u2019s \u201879th municipality\u2019,\u201d joked Sokol, HMG\u2019s President\/CEO.\u00a0\u201cBy combining WAPA\u2019s trusted programming and journalism with Entravision\u2019s broadcast infrastructure and market expertise, we are creating a compelling and completely unique local service custom made for the Orlando Hispanic community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe launch of WAPA Orlando reinforces our commitment to delivering relevant, community-focused media in key Latino markets,\u201d said Entravision President\/Chief Operating Officer Jeffery Liberman. \u201cThis strategic collaboration leverages the complementary strengths of trusted brands to better serve our audiences, distributors, and advertisers throughout Central Florida. Our expertise in local media and news programming will be instrumental in driving WAPA Orlando\u2019s growth, especially as we develop and manage its new standalone digital platform to connect with the\u00a0Orlando Latino\u00a0audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partnership will also see Entravision manage and develop the digital platform and strategy for WAPA Orlando, with Entravision handling sales and production needs in Orlando.<\/p>\n

For nearly five years, WOTF has been the home of digital multicast network Grit. From 2017-2021, it was the home of UniM\u00e1s, a Spanish-language television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. Before that, it was the home of the main Univision network. Today, that can be seen on O&O WVEN-TV in Orlando.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s no secret to anyone in the U.S. Hispanic market that Orlando has become a hub for Puerto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[68514,68515,139,141,140,68653,68649,68650,68651,68652],"class_list":["post-141381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-entravision","tag-hemisphere-media-group","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-tv-cable-news","tag-tv2","tag-unimas","tag-wapa","tag-wotf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}