| Arlington, Virginia-Washington, D.C. | |
|---|---|
| Branding | Univision Washington D.C. |
| Channels | Digital: 15 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Univision |
| Owner | Univision Communications, Inc. (managed by Entravision Communications Corporation) (TeleFutura D.C., LLC) |
| First air date | August 3, 1993 |
| Call letters' meaning | TeleFutura District of Columbia (after its previous affiliation) |
| Sister station(s) | WMDO-CA |
| Former callsigns | WTMW (1993-2001) WFDC (2001-2003) WFDC-TV (2004-2009) |
| Former channel number(s) | Analog: 14 (UHF, 1993-2009) |
| Former affiliations | independent (1993-1997) America's Store (1997-1999) Military Channel (1999) Panda Shopping Network (1999) AIN (1999-2001) Renaissance Network (2001-2002) TeleFutura (2002-2005) |
| Transmitter power | 325 kW |
| Height | 173 m |
| Facility ID | 69532 |
| Website | tvwfdc.com |
WFDC-DT is a full-powered Univision affiliate licensed to Arlington, Virginia in the Washington, D.C. market. Located on virtual channel 14 (digital channel 15) the station's transmitter is located on WRC-TV's tower.
Channel 14 first signed on as WOOK on March 6, 1963 as the first 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 the radio station in New York City on the 660 kHz AM frequency (formerly WNBC-AM).
From 1968-1972, channel 14 was the sister station to WMET channel 24 in Baltimore, MD. 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, DC market, and occasionally served as a low-power Univision affiliate.
A new station on channel 14 signed on as WTMW on August 3, 1993; the call letters came from the initials of the owner Theodore M. White. From 1997 to May 1999, WTMW aired programming from America's Store, a discount shopping channel from Home Shopping Network.
In May 1999, WTMW began airing the new Military Channel (not related to the subsequent channel of the same name owned by Discovery). 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 flipped 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 the call letters were changed to WFDC. Univision already had a Washington affiliate on channel 47 (WMDO; that station's owner, Entravision Communications, would take over WFDC through a local marketing agreement) so WFDC Channel 14 became one of the first flagship stations of their new network TeleFutura. The network was created to directly compete with Telemundo for the Latin-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 networks: WFDC began broadcasting Univision and WMDO began broadcasting Telefutura.
WFDC is now broadcasting on channel 14.1, however, viewers in large portions of Howard County and Anne Arundel County, Maryland now report the inability to view WFDC's broadcasts, as opposed to when WFDC had its analog signal. Additionally, it is unknown why WFDC's management refuses to broadcast its sister station's signal WMDO Telefutura on channel 14.2. WMDO-CA did start transmitting a digital signal on VHF-8 in the summer of 2009, however, the signal is also barely viewable within the Washington, DC city limits, and not viewable in the outer suburbs.
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.[1][2]
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