WTWC-TV (channel 40) is a television station in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, affiliated with NBC and Fox. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios on Deerlake South in unincorporated Leon County, Florida, northwest of Bradfordville (with a Tallahassee postal address), and its transmitter is located in unincorporated Thomas County, Georgia, southeast of Metcalfe, along the Florida state line.

Sinclair also provides some engineering functions for Bainbridge, Georgia–licensed Heroes & Icons outlet WTLH, channel 49 (owned by New Age Media) and CW affiliate WTLF, channel 24 (owned by MPS Media and operated by New Age Media under a local marketing agreement (LMA)) and programs the latter station. Master control and some internal operations for WTLH and WTLF are based at WTWC-TV's studios.

WTWC-TV was the third commercial television station built in Tallahassee, debuting in April 1983. Technical and financial battles dominated its first 13 years on air, including a malfunction with the station's tower that contributed to a four-year-long bankruptcy proceeding in the 1990s. It has made two attempts at producing local newscasts, neither of which lasted more than a few years. It has not produced any longform newscasts at all since 2000. In 2015, the Fox affiliation moved from WTLH to a subchannel of WTWC-TV, still called "Fox 49". The Fox subchannel has newscasts produced by the region's CBS affiliate, WCTV.

Vencap Communications of Chattanooga, Tennessee, made an application in August 1980 to build a new television station on channel 40 in Tallahassee, which would be the region's third commercial outlet. Their bid attracted three competitors: JGM, Inc. and Holt-Robinson Television, which both proposed commercial independent stations, as well as Octagon Corporation, proposing a rebroadcaster of its WMBB-TV, then the NBC affiliate in Panama City.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) selected Holt-Robinson in early 1982. The company obtained an affiliation with NBC; after weather foiled a scheduled October startup, Holt-Robinson planned a launch date of January 30, 1983, coinciding with NBC's telecast of Super Bowl XVII. However, that plan was dashed during construction of the station's tower. In designing the 800-foot (240 m) mast, the contractor failed to account for the construction crane necessary to hoist the 1.7-short-ton (1.5 t) antenna into place, and the tower twisted when the antenna was being mounted. To fix the damage, the top 40 feet (12 m) of the tower had to be replaced.

This work was completed by April, and WTWC-TV finally made its debut on April 21, 1983, using a temporary antenna. Tallahassee's original station, WCTV, switched from NBC to CBS in 1959; since then, viewers had depended on Panama City's WJHG-TV (before 1982, WMBB) and WALB-TV in Albany, Georgia, for NBC programs. Holt-Robinson then sued the tower manufacturer for defective work and commissioned a new tower 80 feet (24 m) away. The station was forced to sign off on the afternoon of October 6 to lower the temporary antenna and re-tune it. It returned to the air the following morning, forcing viewers to watch the Major League Baseball League Championship Series on cable via other stations. The tower problems were later credited by Holt-Robinson as having prevented it from going forward with plans to build a second station in Marshall, Texas, although the FCC determined that the delay to the Marshall station was a result of "internal business decisions made by Holt-Robinson".

Holt-Robinson's financial condition was tested during its time running WTWC-TV. It not only had to contend with long-dominant CBS affiliate WCTV, the only commercial VHF station in the market, and ABC affiliate WECA-TV (channel 27, now WTXL-TV) but also with Albany's WALB and Panama City's WJHG. For some time, Tallahassee's cable system continued to carry WALB and WJHG in addition to WTWC. It placed the three stations on adjacent channels, fragmenting NBC network viewership. WALB continued to outrate WTWC in part because local cable viewers stopped tuning for NBC programming once they landed there, leading WTXL general manager Mark Keown to conclude channel 40 caught "a rotten break" from the channel placement. In 1986, the company had to agree to payment plans with a group of 11 program syndicators and faced trouble finding lenders, though the firm was able to refinance. There were other problems, most notably in 1988 when the FCC ordered the station to provide reports on its affirmative action program. The station's condition was such that its call letters were said to mean "We're Tallahassee's Worst Channel".

In a sign of what was to come, in August 1991, Paramount Television sued WTWC-TV for broadcasting Cheers after having the rights revoked for nonpayment. The next year, Holt-Robinson and WTWC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; they had been forced to do so because one of the company's lenders, Greyhound Television, had asked in federal court for the appointment of a receiver, and the station owed some $600,000 to program producers and news services. Bankruptcy proceedings for Holt-Robinson and Holt-owned properties in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, stretched on for more than two years; in the latter, WTWC-TV was cited as a drain on Holt's finances.