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WOTF-DT, channel 43, is the UniMás owned-and-operated television station serving Orlando, Florida, United States and is licensed to Melbourne. The station is owned by Univision Communications, WOTF is operated by Entravision Communications through a local marketing agreement with Univision affiliate WVEN-TV (channel 26). The two stations share studios located in Altamonte Springs, and its transmitter is located in Christmas.

Digital television

WOTF's digital signal transmits on channel 43.

Digital channel

Analog-to-digital conversion

WOTF shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 43, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 20 to its former analog-era channel 43.

History

The station began operation on July 5, 1982 as an independent station under the callsign WMOD. It was owned by Press Broadcasting, and programmed a general entertainment format with an emphasis on movies and drama series, along with some game shows. Shows broadcast by the station in its early years included among others Ironside, Bonanza, Soap, One Day At A Time, The Joker's Wild and Tic Tac Dough. In 1984, WMOD became a more traditional independent station, and added sitcoms (such as The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Lucy Show, All in the Family, The Odd Couple and The Honeymooners) and cartoons (such as Inspector Gadget, Superfriends and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe).

Being licensed to Melbourne placed the station at a disadvantage, as its transmitter was located 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Orlando due to [[Federal Communications Commission rules at the time that required a station's transmitter to be located within 15 miles (24 km) of its city of license, with the signal reached Orlando with only grade B coverage and no signal at all was receiveable in Daytona Beach. As a result, the station received low ratings despite decent programming.

Soon afterwards, the FCC allocated a commercial license to Clermont, a western suburb of Orlando, on UHF channel 68. Press applied for the license in 1985, and received it in March 1986. The plan was for Press Broadcasting to sell off WMOD to the Home Shopping Network at the same time as the company's new station on channel 68 was built and signed on the air. In the meantime, WMOD agreed to affiliate with the HSN on a part-time basis. Initially in October 1986, WMOD began carrying Home Shopping Network programming during the overnight hours. In January 1987, HSN programming was expanded to the midday hours and by the summer of 1987, the network occupied 18 hours of WMOD's daily schedule. General entertainment programming continued to run on the station evenings from 5 to 11 p.m.

The station still was unable to move its programming unit of general entertainment shows to channel 68 by the fall. Financial constraints also prevented them from moving forward. In order to finish building the new station, in January 1988, WMOD's channel 43 signal was sold to Home Shopping Network affiliate company, Blackstar Broadcasting. That February, it began to run HSN full-time (except for a few hours of religious and public affairs shows on Sunday mornings), and changed its call letters to WBSF. Its cartoons and other barter shows moved to WAYK (channel 56, now WOPX-TV), another Melbourne station with an even weaker signal than channel 43 had. Other existing programming was dropped and moved in November 1988 to the newly-built WKCF (channel 68, which relocated to channel 18 in 1992).

When the FCC relaxed ownership restrictions for television stations in 1996, Blackstar sold its stations, including WBSF, to HSN. Barry Diller, owner of the USA Network, bought the Home Shopping Network soon afterwards, and a new plan for WBSF emerged. Channel 43 was to become a general entertainment independent station once again by 2002, along with other stations that were owned by USA Broadcasting. That plan, however, did not materialize, as WBSF and the other USA Broadcasting stations were sold to Univision Communications in 2001. The sale was finalized in January 2002, and the station became an affiliate of TeleFutura under the new callsign of WOTF (the WBSF calls have since been reassigned to a CW affiliate in Bay City, Michigan). In May 2010, the station began broadcasting its network programming in 1080i high definition.

References

1. RabbitEars TV Query for WOTF
2. "DTV Tentative Channel Designations for the First and Second Rounds" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-03-24.

External links

• Template:TVQ
• Template:BIA

v t e TelevisaUnivision
Corporate directors	Daniel Alegre
U.S. television networks	Broadcast Univision UniMás Cable Galavisión TUDN Univision Tlnovelas TeleHit TeleHit Música Bandamax
Mexican television networks	Las Estrellas Canal 5 Nu9ve TUDN N+ Foro (operated by Tritón Comunicaciones)
International networks	Las Estrellas Europe Latin America Univision Canada (licensed) Latin America TUDN Tlnovelas TeleHit TeleHit Música TLN Network bitMe Bandamax De Película De Película Clásico Golden Golden Edge Golden Premier
Uforia Audio Network	Stations KAMA-FM KBBT KBRG KDXX KESS-FM KHOT-FM KHOV-FM KLJA KLNO KLNV KLQB KLQV KLTN KLVE KMYO KOMR KOVE-FM KQBU-FM KQMR KRCD KRCV KROM KSCA KSOL KSQL KVBH KVVF KVVZ WAMR-FM WOJO WPPN WRTO-FM WVIV-FM WXNY-FM Radio networks TUDN Radio
Univision Television Group	Univision owned and/or operated stations KABE-CD KAKW-DT KCEC KDTV-DT KEZT-CD KFTV-DT KLUZ-TV KMEX-DT KTVW-DT KUTH-DT KUVE-DT KUVN-DT KUVS-DT KWEX-DT KXLN-DT WFDC-DT WGBO-DT WLTV-DT WQHS-DT WUNI WUVC-DT WUVG-DT WUVP-DT WVEA-TV WVEN-TV WXTV-DT UniMás owned and/or operated stations KBTF-CD KFPH-DT KFSF-DT KTFF-DT KFTH-DT KTFK-DT KTFO-CD KFTR-DT KFTU-DT KNIC-DT KCOR-CD KSTR-DT WAMI-DT WFPA-CD WFUT-DT WRCF-CD WTNC-LD WXFT-DT Quest, True Crime Network, and/or Ion Mystery affiliated stations KUVI-DT KXLK-CD WFTY-DT WMGM-TV WWJE-DT Other television stations WSTE-DT (Spanish Independent)
Studios	Televisa Studios Videocine W Studios Pantelion Films
Univision Online	Noticias Univision Fusion Media Group
Other holdings	ViX Entravision Communications (10%)
Defunct/former assets	Blim TV Prende TV El Rey Network Fusion TV Gizmodo Media Group Gawker Media Univision Music Group
TelevisaUnivision owns these stations, which are licensed to and operated by Entravision Communications under local marketing agreements.

• UniMás network affiliates
• Spanish-language television stations in Florida
• Channel 43 digital TV stations in the United States
• Channel 43 virtual TV stations in the United States
• Television channels and stations established in 1982
• Television stations in Florida