WVEC

WVEC (channel 13) is a television station licensed to Hampton, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of ABC. The station is owned by Tegna Inc. and maintains studios on Woodis Avenue in Norfolk; its transmitter is located near Driver in Suffolk.

WVEC began broadcasting on UHF channel 15 on September 19, 1953, from studios in Hampton. It was the second television station in Hampton Roads and broke the monopoly on television programming and affiliations held by WTAR-TV (now WTKR), which broadcast on a VHF channel. The station was originally an NBC affiliate; NBC provided pre-launch support to the new station, at a time when UHF stations could only be seen by viewers with specially fitted converters. The station was a modestly successful second-place outlet until 1957, when Hampton Roads gained a second VHF station: WAVY-TV (channel 10) in Portsmouth, originally the ABC affiliate. WVEC-TV lost viewers and some NBC programs to the new VHF station, which could be seen in all homes. It was successful in encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to allocate a third VHF channel, channel 13, to Hampton Roads. It merged with the other applicants for the channel, and WVEC-TV moved to channel 13 on November 13, 1959. It simultaneously opened its current Norfolk studio and switched to a full-time ABC affiliation. The channel 15 facilities were then used for educational television by WHRO-TV, which began in 1961.

The station's limited local news efforts gradually expanded in the 1970s and in the 1980s after Corinthian Broadcasting and the A. H. Belo Corporation in turn acquired channel 13. The bulk of station operations shifted to Norfolk, and after WTKR experienced a collapse in its news ratings in the mid-1980s, WAVY and WVEC began contending for first place in the market. In partnership with Cox Communications and The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, WVEC launched a local cable news channel, Local News on Cable, in 1997; it operated until 2010 and for most of that time featured an original 10 p.m. local newscast co-produced with The Virginian-Pilot. Belo sold the station to the Gannett Company, predecessor to Tegna, in 2013. Tegna's proposed sale to Nexstar Media Group would bring it under common ownership with WAVY-TV and Fox affiliate WVBT.