WHFT-TV

WHFT-TV, channel 45, is a television station located in Miami, Florida, United States, owned and operated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a Christian broadcasting ministry based in Santa Ana, California. WHFT maintains studio and transmitter facilities located at the Lake Trinity Estates complex^[2] on Pembroke Road in Hollywood, Florida.^[3]

History

The station first signed on the air in 1975 as WFCB-TV; it originally operated as a religious independent station that was owned by Florida Christian Television. The station aired programming for about five hours a day, running a few local church services, bible instruction programs, and programs from nationally known television evangelists. Florida Christian Television's owners were unable to keep the station solvent, so they put the station up for sale in early 1976, with a request to sell it to a Christian ministry.

LeSEA Broadcasting acquired the station in July 1976. The station's call letters were changed to WHFT-TV (standing for "World Harvest Florida Television"). Initially, the station's schedule expanded to about eight hours a day with the addition of more Christian programming, much of it added by LeSEA, along with televangelist programs such as The 700 Club. WHFT expanded its programming to about 18 hours a day in late August 1976. At that point, the station started carrying family-oriented general entertainment programming from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 to 7:00 p.m. weekdays and Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Sundays were reserved for religious programming). However, the station's conservative programming policies kept WHFT from making much headway against the market's dominant independent, WCIX (channel 6, now WFOR-TV on channel 4). Secular programs broadcast by the station at this time included Leave It to Beaver, The Little Rascals, Looney Tunes and Popeye animated shorts, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, the live-action sitcom version of Dennis the Menace, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Brady Bunch.

The station was profitable at this time; however in 1980, the Trinity Broadcasting Network made a substantial offer to LeSEA to purchase WHFT; LeSEA agreed to the deal and sold the station to TBN. On July 25, 1980, the intellectual local unit of WHFT was shut down; the station's entire secular program inventory was sold to other stations (some eventually moved to WDZL (channel 39, now WSFL-TV) and WBFS-TV (channel 33), while others never found any takers among Miami's television stations), the station switched to a national feed of TBN. Some of the religious programs that had aired on WHFT-TV under LeSEA ownership remained on the station as TBN had also carried these programs; other programs such as the PTL Club and The 700 Club were removed (however, TBN would acquire the rights to air The 700 Club a few years later).

Digital television

This station's digital signal, like most other full-service TBN owned-and-operated stations, carries five different TBN-run networks.

TBN-owned full-power stations permanently ceased analog transmissions on April 16, 2009.

WHFT-TV terminated its analog signal, on UHF channel 45, on that date.^[4] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 46. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display WHFT-TV's virtual channel as 45.

References

External links

• TBN official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WHFT
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WHFT-TV
• (WHFT program listings during its LeSEA ownership)