WHDF

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WHDF
Huntsville/Decatur
Branding	The Valley's CW
Channels	15 (UHF) analog, 14 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	The CW (2006-Present)
Owner	Lockwood Broadcasting
Founded
Call letters meaning	W Huntsville Decatur Florence
Former callsigns	WOWL-TV
Former affiliations	UPN (1999-2006) NBC (late 1950s-1999)
Website	www.thevalleyscw.tv

WHDF is The CW affiliate in northern Alabama, airing on channel 15. WHDF is under the ownership of Lockwood Broadcasting.

[edit] History

The station began in the late 1950s as WOWL-TV, licensed to Florence, Alabama. Up until 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 by offering local newscasts, which for most of the station's 40-plus years were the only TV newscasts concerned with that area only. However, channel 15 lost much of that advantage when the Huntsville stations began opening news bureaus in the Shoals in the 1980s or so. That factor probably played the decisive role in influencing WOWL-TV's local owners to sell to outside interests, who decided to redirect the signal and the coverage area eastward, toward the growing Huntsville-Decatur market, and abandon NBC in favor of the then-upstart UPN. Despite the change, some daytime religious programs, most notably those produced by local Churches of Christ, aired on WOWL-TV continue on WHDF today.

WHDF's studios are located in Florence, and the station maintains a Huntsville sales office on Andrew Jackson Way, near the Five Points neighborhood. The station's transmitter is located in Minor Hill, Tennessee, just several miles north of the Alabama state line.

In September 2006, both UPN and The WB television network ceased operations. A single new network, The CW, replaced those two struggling entities. WHDF 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.

[edit] WHDF logos

UPN WHDF logo (1999-2003)	WHDF Blue logo from 2003	Former logo (2004-2006)	The original WHDF CW logo that was introduced on the launch of The CW Huntsville website and would had been the logo that would had debuted of the launch of The CW. This was never used on-air.
WHDF's second CW Huntsville logo, introduced after the CW revealed its final logo. This also was never used on-air.	Final draft of "The Valley's CW" logo. This logo currently appears as the station's bug.

[edit] External links

• www.thevalleyscw.tv
• CW Huntsville WHDF Homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WHDF