WHDF
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| Florence/Huntsville/Decatur, Alabama | |
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| Branding | The Valley's CW |
| Channels | Digital: 14 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | The CW |
| Owner | Lockwood Broadcast Group (Huntsville TV, LLC) |
| First air date | October 28, 1957 |
| Call letters' meaning | Huntsville Decatur Florence[1] |
| Former callsigns | WOWL-TV (1957–2000) |
| Former channel number(s) | 15 (UHF analog, 1957–2009) |
| Former affiliations | NBC (1957–2000) UPN (2000–2006) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 431 m |
| Facility ID | 65128 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°0′5.7″N 87°8′3.9″W / 35.001583°N 87.134417°W |
| Website | www.thevalleyscw.tv |
WHDF is The CW affiliate in northern Alabama, airing on channel 15. WHDF is under the ownership of Lockwood Broadcasting.
WHDF's studios are located in Florence, and the station maintains a Huntsville sales office on Andrew Jackson Way, in the Five Points neighborhood. The station's transmitter is located southeast of Minor Hill, Tennessee, just 500 yards (450 m) north of the Alabama state line.
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[edit] History
The station began on October 28, 1957 as WOWL-TV, based in Florence. The station was owned by Richard "Dick" Biddle. Up until late 1999, that station broadcast NBC programs to northwestern Alabama and portions of southern middle Tennessee and northeastern Mississippi; it carried also some popular CBS shows like the soap opera As the World Turns.
WOWL-TV always faced competing NBC affiliates in Huntsville or Decatur, whose signals reached much of its broadcast area; however, it retained viewership in the Shoals region (Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia and areas known as "The Shoals" recently and referred to as "The Quad Cities" years ago) by offering local newscasts, which for most of the station's 40-plus years were the only TV newscasts concerned with that area only. In 2004 Lockwood Broadcast Group acquired the UPN affiliate in Huntsville Alabama - WHDF. With the merger of the WB and UPN on January 24, 2006 - WHDF joined the new network of the CW and called themselves The Valley’s CW.[2]
Lockwood Broadcast Group's Broadcast Operation Service Solution provides content delivery and back-office function from Lockwood's Richmond, Virginia Operation Headquarters. Completed in 2007, the "hub" facility has remotely operated WHDF since that year. The state-of-the-art system employs an IP-based delivery method of HD broadcast, using proprietary ACT-L3 codec to convey a signal stream with technical accuracy and aesthetic clarity. Lockwood utilizes advanced IP-centric, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS)-based solutions to build its private IP cloud.[3]
In September 2006, both UPN and The WB television network ceased operations. A single new network, The CW, replaced those two struggling entities. WHDF, the UPN affiliate, was granted the northern Alabama affiliation rights for the new network earlier that year, and rebranded as The Valley's CW at Midnight on July 27, 2006. (The former WB affiliate, meanwhile, became WAMY-TV, affiliated with My Network TV.)
Local employees at WHDF's Florence and Huntsville facilities total less than ten as of census business statistics in 2010.
[edit] Post-analog shutdown
WHDF ended programming on its analog signal, on UHF channel 15, on June 12, 2009, as part of the DTV transition in the United States [4], and remained on its pre-transition digital channel 14 [5] PSIP is used to display WHDF's virtual channel as 15.
[edit] Previous Logos
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1965
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1978
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2000
[edit] References
- ^ Nelson, Bob (2008-10-18). "Call Letter Origins". The Broadcast Archive. http://nelson.oldradio.com/origins.call-list.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
- ^ http://www.lockwoodbroadcast.com/index.php/content/AboutUs/
- ^ http://www.lockwoodbroadcast.com/
- ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
- ^ CDBS Print
[edit] External links
- www.thevalleyscw.tv
- Query the FCC's TV station database for WHDF
- BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WHDF-TV
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