WHDF
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Florence/Huntsville/Decatur, Alabama United States |
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|---|---|
| City | Florence |
| Branding | The Valley's CW |
| Channels |
Digital: 14 (UHF) Virtual: 15 () |
| Affiliations | The CW (2006–present) |
| Owner |
Lockwood Broadcast Group (Huntsville TV, LLC) |
| First air date | October 28, 1957 |
| Call letters' meaning |
Huntsville Decatur Florence |
| Former callsigns | WOWL-TV (1957–1999) |
| Former channel number(s) | 15 (UHF analog, 1957–2009) |
| Former affiliations |
NBC (1957–1999) UPN (1999–2006) |
| Transmitter power | 1000 kW |
| Height | 431 m |
| Facility ID | 65128 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°0′5.7″N 87°8′3.9″W / 35.001583°N 87.134417°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | www.thevalleyscw.tv |
WHDF is The CW-affiliated television station for the Tennessee Valley area of North Alabama. Licensed to Florence, the station broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 14 from a transmitter located southeast of Minor Hill, Tennessee, just 500 yards (450 m) north of the Alabama state line. Owned by Lockwood Broadcast Group, WHDF maintains studios on Cypress Mill Road in Florence, with a Huntsville sales office on Andrew Jackson Way, in the Five Points neighborhood.
The station began on October 28, 1957 as WOWL-TV, based in Florence. The station was owned by Richard "Dick" Biddle. Up until late 1999, that station broadcast NBC programs to northwestern Alabama and portions of southern middle Tennessee and northeastern Mississippi; it carried also some popular CBS shows like the soap opera As the World Turns.
WOWL-TV always faced competing NBC affiliates in Huntsville or Decatur or even Tupelo (WTVA), whose signals reached much of its broadcast area. However, it retained viewership in the Shoals region (Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia and areas known as "The Shoals" recently and referred to as "The Quad Cities" years ago) by offering local newscasts, which for most of the station's 40-plus years were the only TV newscasts concerned specifically with northwestern Alabama. Over time, though, with the Huntsville stations expanding news bureaus of their own into the Shoals, WOWL lost much of its traditional advantage in that regard. Put together with NBC's ratings declines of the 1990s, the owners opted to sell to outside interests, who swapped network affiliation to the upstart United Paramount Network (UPN) in the fall of 1999; shortly before that, on July 19, the call letters where changed to the current WHDF. and moved the transmitter and tower to Giles County, Tennessee. The relocation was undertaken in order to re-position the station to serve the entire Huntsville-Decatur-Florence market, not just northwestern Alabama as in the past.
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