WSFL-TV
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WSFL-TV | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Miami / Fort Lauderdale, Florida | |
| Branding | CW South Florida |
| Channels | Analog: 39 (UHF) Digital: 19 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | The CW |
| Owner | Tribune Company (Channel 39, Inc.) |
| First air date | October 16, 1982 |
| Call letters’ meaning | South FLorida |
| Former callsigns | WDZL (1982-1998) WBZL (1998-2006) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1982-1995) The WB (1995-2006) The Tube (on DT2, 2006-2007) |
| Transmitter Power | 5,000 kW (analog) 1,000 kW (digital) |
| Height | 276 m (analog) 239 m (digital) |
| Facility ID | 10203 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Website | wsfltv.sun-sentinel.com |
WSFL-TV, channel 39, is the CW-affiliated television station for South Florida, licensed to Miami. Its transmitter is located in Miramar. Owned by Tribune Broadcasting, the station has studios on Lee Street in Hollywood. WSFL can be seen on Comcast and DirecTV channel 39. On Dish Network, it is located on channel 8834. In addition to CW primetime, the station airs off-network sitcoms and cartoons from Kids' WB. There are also first run syndicated talk, court, and reality shows.
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[edit] History
Channel 39 signed on as WDZL-TV on October 16, 1982. It was owned by Channel 39 Broadcasting Ltd. As an independent station, it aired a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, off-network dramas, old movies, a few old off-network sitcoms, and religious shows. Michael Finkelstein of "Odyssey Partners", who owned WTXX in Waterbury, Connecticut, owned an interest in WDZL. In 1984, WBFS-TV (owned by Grant Broadcasting System II) signed on with a stronger general entertainment lineup and surpassed WDZL in the ratings immediately. Still, WDZL was profitable especially with the huge amount of barter cartoons available to the station.
WDZL was still running shows other stations passed up until the wave of affiliation switches in 1989. By then, the station was owned by Renaissance Communications which was also headed by Michael Finkelstein. When WCIX (now WFOR-TV) was sold to CBS and dropped most of its syndicated shows, Fox programming moved to WSVN. The rest of the programming dropped from WCIX moved to WDZL. By the early-1990s, WDZL had become a far stronger independent station. It acquired Fox Kids programming from WSVN in 1993. WDZL became a charter WB affiliate on January 11, 1995.
In 1997, the Tribune Company acquired the six television station group that was owned by Renaissance Communications. Kids' WB programming on WDZL expanded to 3 hours on weekdays and the station dropped Fox Kids (which moved to Home Shopping Network station WYHS (now WAMI-TV). WDZL changed its call letters to WBZL in 1998 to emphasize its affiliation with The WB. By then, WBZL began airing more first-run talk and reality shows during the day along with children programming and off-network sitcoms in the evenings. By 2005, it was the only remaining station to run children's shows weekday afternoons with Kids' WB (a practice which ended on January 6, 2006).
On January 24, 2006, The WB and UPN announced they would end broadcasting and merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of its soon-to-be corporate parents: CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. Tribune announced that most of its WB affiliates, including WBZL, would become affiliated with The CW. It would not have been an upset had WBFS been chosen, however. CW officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations for their new network and South Florida was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN stations were both relatively strong. Also, WBFS is owned by CBS.
Throughout the summer, WBZL started using their CW logo for local television ads and also began referring to itself as CW South Florida. On September 17, WBZL changed its call letters to the current WSFL-TV to remove the reference to the no-longer-existent WB in its calls and genericize them to its geographic location. The next day, The CW debuted on WSFL. Starting in 2006, the station aired The Tube, a 24-hour music video channel, on its second digital subchannel as well as Comcast digital cable channel 224. It was dropped on October 1, 2007, when the network closed due to low advertising sales. WSFL and co-owned newspaper the Sun-Sentinel will combine their operations. The station will move into the newspaper's offices on East Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.
[edit] Newscast
In 1997, NBC affiliate WTVJ and the Sun-Sentinel began to co-produce a nightly 10 o'clock newscast on WSFL known as WB 39 News at 10. It was and continues to be broadcasted from WTVJ's facilities at Peacock Plaza in Miramar. Although WSFL's website features news video from the 10 P.M. broadcast, Sun-Sentinel online does as well. The WTVJ news on WSFL is a similar operation to: WCAU (NBC) and WPHL-TV (MyNetworkTV) in Philadelphia as well as KNSD (NBC) and KSWB (The CW) in San Diego. When the station became a CW affiliate, the news title changed.
In addition, WSFL airs a public affairs program, South Florida Voices, on Sundays mornings at 6. The show is hosted by Deborah Ally. On March 5, 2008, WSFL began broadcasting the 10 o'clock news in high definition when WTVJ made the upgrade. It has been announced that the station will co-produce with the Sun-Sentinel a weekday morning newscast. Slated to begin airing in January of 2009, it will air out of the newspaper's newsroom from 5 to 9 A.M.
[edit] News team
CW News at 10 (10 to 10:30 P.M.)
Weeknights
- Anchor:
- Julia Yarbough
- Weather:
- Paul Deanno
- Sports:
- Joe Rose
Weekends
- Anchor:
- Joel Connable
- Weather:
- John Gerard
- Sports:
- Andrea Brode
WSFL uses additional news personnel from WTVJ. See that article for a complete listing.
[edit] External links
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