WFDC station history
In 1985, the channel 14 allocation was awarded to Theodore M. White's Urban Broadcasting Corporation. The plan was to enter the market of general independent stations, dominated by WTTG (channel 5) and WDCA (channel 20) and soon to be joined by WFTY (channel 50); Milton Grant, who founded WDCA, consulted White on programming acquisition. Although the station claimed to the Washington Post it was aiming to start operations in the spring of 1986, legal wrangling continued among competing applicants delayed sign-on.[7]
It was a further seven years before WTMW signed on April 3, 1993, as a Home Shopping Network (HSN) affiliate.[8][9] Barry Diller's Silver King Broadcasting, predecessor to HSN's broadcasting arm, USA Broadcasting, had taken a 45% stake in the station in 1989 in order to keep it afloat.[10][11] Urban Broadcasting filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy less than two years later, on July 3, 1995.[12]
As part of WTMW's plan to emerge from bankruptcy, it agreed to begin broadcasting HSN's secondary network America's Store in 1997. A further dispute arose over this agreement. WTMW was originally licensed with an effective radiated power of 2,880 kilowatts. While testing its signal before sign-on, it was discovered that WTMW caused interference to local land mobile radio operations, and the filters required to reduce out-of-band transmissions necessitated a permanent reduction in power to 2,541 kW. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted WTMW authorization to sign on with 1,440 kW, half of the original power. There were further issues with the transmitting equipment due to failed klystrons; bankruptcy proceedings revealed WTMW broadcast for a "substantial amount of time" at just 360 kW, or one-eighth of the original power. HSN's agreement with WTMW required it to broadcast at its full authorized power to receive compensation from the network; over HSN's objections that Urban Broadcasting was not capable of remedying the transmitter issues, the court found that it was and allowed the agreement to stand. After emerging from bankruptcy, WTMW claimed that its interpretation of the contract set the power requirement at 1,271 kW (i.e., half of 2,541), and not 1,440 kW, which triggered another lawsuit with HSN over which was correct.[12][13]
The lawsuits over the affiliation contract were decided in HSN's favor, and on May 10, 1999, White removed America's Store programming due to non-payment and began broadcasting the Military Channel without warning. Irate viewers flooded local cable companies, who were not aware of the change themselves, with phone calls.[14] The Military Channel, similar in programming but unrelated to Discovery Communications' later cable channel of the same name, had broadcast to just one million cable homes since 1993, but underwent aggressive expansion through satellite carriage and leased access to cable networks starting in 1998. When this did not deliver viewers, the network spent most of 1999 beset by financial trouble; WTMW was its only documented over-the-air affiliate. After several deals to rescue its operations fell through, the Military Channel went dark for good in July.[15] WTMW left the network early on June 12. White said to the Post that the military programming was deeply unpopular, and "people seemed to want shopping back on our channel." Shopping returned by way of the cable-based Panda Shopping Network, which had been newly acquired by pay-per-view operator TVN Entertainment Corporation.[16][17]
WTMW became an affiliate of the American Independent Network, which primarily broadcast reruns of old sitcoms and infomercials, on December 20 of the same year.[18] Without the fixed income from its HSN affiliation, however, Urban Broadcasting filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy again in August 2000.[10] Concurrently in December, Univision Communications bought all of USA Broadcasting's over-the-air stations including its 45% stake in WTMW.[19]
After two years with AIN, WTMW switched to the locally-based "Renaissance Network" around its launch on January 15, 2001, which provided the same general-entertainment format mixed with current affairs and politics programming with conservative viewpoints.[20] This was short-lived, as Univision Communications purchased WTMW outright along with the rest of Urban Broadcasting's assets in an April 2001 bankruptcy auction.[10][13] Univision already had an established Washington affiliate, Entravision Communications' WMDO-CA, so the rechristened WFDC instead became a charter affiliate of Univision's new secondary network TeleFutura, now known as UniMás, on January 14, 2002.[21]
This arrangement presented the obvious deficiency of Univision's primary network remaining on a low-power station that was not subject to must-carry rules. On January 1, 2006, Univision Communications entered into a 16-year joint sales agreement (JSA) with Entravision, in which Entravision agreed to cede the market's Univision affiliation to WFDC in return for taking over its operation and advertising sales. WMDO-CA switched networks to TeleFutura on the same day. WMDO-CD and WFDC were to remain with their respective networks until the agreement's expiration on December 31, 2021. The Univision affiliation continued on WFDC at the agreement's expiration; UniMás moved to WFDC's fourth digital subchannel on the same day after WMDO-CD lost transmitting facilities and went silent.[22][23]
