Fox News to commandeer Tampa Bay History Center for GOP Convention?

"We can't confirm who our tenant is going to be," says Manny Leto, the Center's director of marketing. Leto did admit that "we have had interest from a national news outlet," but says details wouldn't be available until January, and advised us to contact the 2012 Host Committee.


Which we did yesterday, but have not received any response yet.


CL has been informed that the news outlet intends to take over the facility from August 15 through September 1 (the convention itself runs from August 27-30). During that time the museum would be closed to the public. We're told that part of the compensation that the unnamed tenant would provide would be to pay the salaries of those employees at the museum.

Tampa Bay History Center is sure to host a broadcast outlet for the Republican National Convention
  • Tampa Bay History Center is sure to host a broadcast outlet for the Republican National Convention

Among the 40,000 or so folks who we're told we'll be descending upon Tampa Bay for the four day Republican National Convention next August will be 10,000-15,000 reporters.

From the broadcast and cable news side, those folks are going to want to rent out locations ideally as close to the St. Pete (soon to be Tampa Bay) Times Forum as possible, and therefore an ideal location would be it's next door neighbor to the immediate east, the Tampa Bay History Center.

We generally refrain from reporting on stories without full confirmation - but we here at CL hear that the prospective tenant is Fox News.

However, like so many things involved with the convention when digging for facts this early out, mum's the word right now.

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