WFDC-DT, virtual channel 14 (UHF digital channel 15), is a Univision owned-and-operated television station licensed to Arlington, Virginia, United States and serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The station is owned by Univision Communications and managed by Entravision Communications; this makes WFDC a sister station to Silver Spring, Maryland-licensed LATV affiliate WJAL (channel 68) and Washington-licensed low-power, Class A UniMás affiliate WMDO-CD (channel 47). WFDC and WMDO-CD share studios located in Washington, and WFDC's transmitter is located in the Tenleytown section of Washington's northwest quadrant.
On cable, the station is carried on Comcast Xfinity channel 14 in the Washington area and on channel 11 in Baltimore (the latter market's NBC affiliate, WBAL-TV, broadcasts over-the-air on channel 11, but is carried on channel 21 due to signal issues).
History
Prior history of channel 14 in Washington
Channel 14 first signed on as WOOK on March 6, 1963 as the first television station in the country aimed at the African-American demographic. WOOK's claim to fame was their teen-oriented dance show called Teenarama, which featured big-name acts such as James Brown and Marvin Gaye. In 1969, the station changed its call letters, to WFAN-TV (the WFAN call letters are now used on a radio station at 660 AM in New York City). From 1968 to 1972, channel 14 was the sister station to WMET (channel 24) in Baltimore, Maryland. Both stations were owned by United Broadcasting.
On February 12, 1972, channel 14 went dark after accumulating financial difficulties. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, channel 14 was used to relay public channel 53 WNVT to the Washington, D.C. market, and occasionally served as a low-power Univision affiliate.
WFDC station history
A new station on channel 14 signed on as WTMW on August 3, 1993; the call letters came from the initials of the station's owner, Theodore M. White. From 1997 to May 1999, WTMW aired programming from America's Store, a discount shopping channel operated by the Home Shopping Network.
In May 1999, WTMW began airing the new Military Channel (not related to the cable channel of the same name owned by Discovery Communications, which is now the American Heroes Channel). After the Military Channel stopped broadcasting one month later, channel 14 aired programming from the Panda Shopping Network. Channel 14 became an affiliate of the American Independent Network in December 1999, which primarily broadcast reruns of old sitcoms and infomercials. The channel changed affiliations again in January 2001, when it became an affiliate of the Renaissance Network.
None of these formats were financially viable and in November 2001, Theodore M. White sold the station to Univision Communications and its call letters were changed to WFDC. Univision already had a Washington affiliate on channel 47, WMDO-CA (that station's owner, Entravision Communications, would take over WFDC through a local marketing agreement), so WFDC instead became one of the first flagship stations of their new network TeleFutura. The network was created to directly compete with Telemundo for the Latino American demographic, since Univision is more Mexican-oriented. Telefutura first broadcast on January 14, 2002 and channel 14 has done better financially since then.
On January 1, 2006, WFDC and WMDO swapped network affiliations: WFDC affiliated with Univision, while WMDO took the TeleFutura affiliation.
On April 3, 2014, Katz Broadcasting announced plans to multicast Grit and Escape on WFDC's DT3 and DT4 subchannels. The two networks began broadcasting on August 18, 2014. Escape was replaced by Katz's Bounce TV on September 30, 2017.
Digital television
Digital channels
The station's digital channel is multiplexed:
Like all of the DC-area Mobile DTV broadcasters, WFDC-DT commenced ATSC-M/H broadcasting on February 27, 2011. WFDC-DT also has a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 14.1, labelled "Univision", with two encrypted video feeds of E! (14.2) and the Food Network (14.3), broadcasting at 5.5 Mbit/s. This is tied with WDCA-TV for the highest bit rate of any DC-area television station mobile feed.
WFDC does not carry WMDO-CD on a subchannel due to separate legal ownership; although WFDC is managed by Entravision, the license is held by Univision. In 2001, Entravision purchased WJAL (channel 68) for the sole purpose of moving it from Hagerstown, Maryland to Silver Spring to take over as a full-market UniMás affiliate, although they were unsuccessful several times. WJAL was eventually able to relocate to Silver Spring as a result of the 2016â€"17 television spectrum reallocation, although it currently airs LATV instead.
Analog-to-digital conversion
WFDC shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 14, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 15. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 14.
News operation
After switching from TeleFutura to Univision, the station continued its news department. It broadcast 6 hours of news on weekdays and 2 hours of news on the weekends. On September 30, 2012, Buenos DÃas DC, the first Spanish morning news show in the Washington market, debuted. The show was produced by Silvana Quiroz, who is also the anchor sharing cameras with co-anchor Nestor Bravo. The morning news magazine ran from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. On April 19, 2014, a weekend newscast debuted at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. and ran through October 2015 and was similar to the weekday schedule. On March 1, 2014, the Univision Washington team was replaced. Anchor Mario Sol and Sports Anchor Oscar Burgos were laid-off. Maria Rosa Lucchini, the 6 p.m. anchor, was promoted to White House correspondent; months later, she resigned. Claudia Uceda, the 11 p.m. anchor, was switched to reporter, and months later, resigned to work as a freelancer for the Univision network. Tsi-Tsi-Ki Félix replaced the entire team, leaving only Fanny Gutierrez, who at the time was on maternity leave, and months later, resigned from her duties. Edwin Pitti, who was hired as a reporter, was promoted to White House correspondent.
In late December 2015, Entravision cancelled the morning newscasts of all of its stations in the United States (including Buenos DÃas DC). The last show aired December 7, 2015. [1]
References
External links
- WFDC-DT / WMDO-CD website
- Univision website
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WFDC
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WFDC-DT
