WAFF (TV)
 
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Huntsville/Decatur, Alabama United States |
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| Branding | WAFF 48 (general) WAFF 48 News (newscasts) |
| Slogan |
Your First Alert Station We Track Storms (weather) |
| Channels |
Digital: 48 (UHF) Virtual: 48 (PSIP) |
| Subchannels | 48.1 NBC 48.2 Bounce TV 48.3 GritTV |
| Owner |
Raycom Media (WAFF License Subsidiary, LLC) |
| First air date | July 4, 1954 |
| Call letters' meaning |
American Families' Finest (the old slogan of the former owner AFLAC) |
| Former callsigns | WMSL-TV (1954–1975) WYUR-TV (1975–1978) |
| Former channel number(s) | 23 (UHF analog, 1954–1968) 48 (UHF analog, 1968–2009) |
| Former affiliations |
Primary: NBC (1954–1968) ABC (1968–1977) Secondary: ABC (1954–1959) CBS (1954–1963) DuMont (1954–1955) |
| Transmitter power | 48 kW |
| Height | 576 metres (1,890 ft) |
| Facility ID | 591 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 34°42′36.3″N 86°32′5.1″W / 34.710083°N 86.534750°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | waff.com |
WAFF is the NBC television network affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama. Owned by Raycom Media, the station broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 48 (mapped as virtual channel 48.1 via PSIP) and serves the northern portion of Alabama and several counties in southern Tennessee. It is based from its studios on Memorial Parkway (U.S. Highway 431) in Huntsville, and its transmitter is located south of Monte Sano State Park.
The station first began broadcasting from studios and transmitters in Decatur (30 miles / 50 km west of Huntsville) on July 4, 1954, as WMSL-TV, channel 23. It was owned by Frank Whisenant, a Decatur businessman who also owned WMSL radio (AM 1400, now WWTM). WMSL originally carried programming from all four networks of the time - NBC, CBS, ABC and the DuMont Network - but was a primary NBC affiliate. It lost the DuMont Network when that one began closing down in 1955; it lost ABC when WAAY-TV started in Huntsville in 1959 as an ABC affiliate; and, finally, lost CBS when WHNT-TV began transmitting as a CBS affiliate in 1963.
During the late 1950s, WMSL was also affiliated briefly with the NTA Film Network.
Until the early 1960s, Decatur was the largest city in the viewing area, and it was centrally located - thus making it a good location for the Tennessee Valley region's first TV station. However, when Huntsville became the region's largest city due to the exponential growth of U.S. Army Missile Command and NASA installations, Whisenant decided to move WMSL-TV there as well; it was the only major station in the market licensed in Decatur. However, because the station's original channel assignment, channel 23, was too close in frequency to the area's Alabama Educational Television outlet, WHIQ (channel 25), the F.C.C. ordered WMSL-TV to move to channel 48 as a condition on its permit to relocate its city of license. The move to a higher UHF frequency was highly unusual for that time; during the 1960s especially, many UHF stations that had started operations on channels above 40 or so were able to move to lower allocations per FCC action.
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Wikipedia