WKCF - History

History

WKCF's intellectual unit began operation in July 1982 on UHF channel 43 as WMOD and was licensed to Melbourne. It was owned by Press Broadcasting and programmed a general entertainment format with an emphasis on movies and drama along with some game shows. In 1984, it became a more traditional Independent. Being licensed to Melbourne placed WMOD at a disadvantage. Its transmitter was located located 33 miles (50 km) southeast of Orlando. It only reached the city itself with a Grade B signal and did not reach Daytona Beach at all. As a result, the station received low ratings despite decent programming.

In late-1984, the Federal Communications Commission (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 company planned to sell WMOD to the Home Shopping Network at the same time that the new analog channel 68 went on-the-air. In the meantime, the station agreed to affiliate with the Home Shopping Network on a part-time basis starting with several hours overnight in the fall of 1986. Press sold more and more of this channel's broadcast day to HSN in order to raise money to move forward with building channel 68. HSN programming occupied eighteen hours a day of WMOD's schedule by the Summer of 1987. General entertainment continued running from 5 until 11 p.m. The station still was unable to move its programming unit of general entertainment to channel 68 by the fall due to technical and financial constraints.

In January 1988 to finish building the new station, Press sold WMOD was sold to Blackstar Broadcasting (an HSN affiliate). That February, it began to run HSN full time (except for a few hours of religious and public affairs shows Sunday mornings) and changed its call letters to WBSF. Its barter cartoons and other barter shows moved to WAYK (now WOPX-TV). Finally, UHF channel 68 went on-the-air as WKCF in November 1988. It originally aired an analog signal from studios at a strip mall in Winter Park. The channel's early programming lineup consisted mostly of shows that had previously been seen on WMOD until January. The shows were originally a blend of cartoons, classic sitcoms, recent sitcoms, older movies, and drama shows. The station provided a city-grade signal to Orlando and a Grade B signal to Daytona Beach and Melbourne. WKCF was branded on-air as "TV 68".

The station eventually moved from the strip mall to facilities in a multi-floor office building also in Winter Park. Press Broadcasting wanted to move WKCF's transmitter to the Christmas/Bithlo tower farm in order to improve its signal in the other two major cities in the market, Daytona Beach and Melbourne. However the company soon discovered that as long as WKCF transmitted on channel 68, it could not move its transmitter to Bithlo and still reach Clermont with a city-grade signal. In 1991, Press Broadcasting approached Brevard Community College about swapping channels with its educational station, WRES. Under this plan, both stations would move their transmitters to Bithlo. At the time, WRES was a relatively low-powered station serving the immediate Brevard County area on UHF channel 18. However if that station moved to Bithlo, it would be able to boost its power to the maximum five million watts. The college agreed and the FCC approved the swap. As a result in 1992, WKCF moved to channel 18 which was re-classified as a commercial license and WRES moved to channel 68 as well as adopting the call sign WBCC. After the switch, WKCF re-branded itself as "TV 18".

Soon after moving to channel 18, WKCF started producing a kids club program called The Buckaroo Club hosted by Ranger Bob. Despite low ratings, it seemed most people in Central Florida knew who Ranger Bob was. The show was on-the-air from 1992 until 1994. A reunion program was aired on WKCF in 2004. Another move that put the station on the map was partnering up with the Orlando Magic and broadcasting many of their road games. It gradually added some home games as well. This was right around the time Shaquille O'Neal put the Magic on the map. In 1994, the station was re-branded as "18 WKCF". The station joined The WB on January 11, 1995 as a charter affiliate. A year after the network affiliation was in place, the station rebranded itself as "WB 18". For most of The WB's eleven-year run, WKCF was consistently the network's top affiliate and was even the fourth-highest rated station in Central Florida.

In 1998, the studios of WKCF were moved to Lake Mary into a building that Press Broadcasting had built on an empty lot right next to the main competition, WOFL. The station was sold to Emmis Communications in 1998 for $200 million. As the station focused more on its network commitments, it did not renew its contract with the Orlando Magic in 1999. The games then went to WRBW. From 2001 until 2005, the WKCF studios in Lake Mary served as the home of Emmis with centralcasting. Using Florical Automation, the company was responsible for master control operations for several Emmis owned Fox and WB affiliates in the Southeastern United States. These stations included WVUE in New Orleans, Louisiana, WALA-TV and WBPG (now WFNA) in Mobile, Alabama, and WFTX in Fort Myers. From WKCF's facilities, Emmis maintained broadcast capabilities during several major hurricanes impacts on several of its stations including Katrina (affecting WVUE), Ivan (affecting WALA), and Charley (affecting WFTX and WKCF). The Emmis model was later discontinued as the company sold off the stations.

On January 24, 2006, UPN and The WB announced that they would cease broadcasting and merge. The new combined network would be called The CW. The letters would represent the first initial of its corporate parents, CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. On March 1, Emmis officials confirmed that WKCF would affiliate with The CW. This channel had been the obvious choice as Orlando's CW affiliate in any case. Network officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates, and as mentioned, WKCF had been The WB's strongest affiliate for virtually all of the network's run. On May 8, Emmis announced the sale of WKCF to what was then known as Hearst-Argyle Television for $217.5 million. The sale was finalized on August 31. This created the third duopoly in the Orlando market joining WFTV/WRDQ and WOFL/WRBW. As part of the move, WKCF moved its operations to WESH's facilities in Winter Park. It may now take on the responsibility of airing NBC programs when WESH is not able to so such as in a news-related emergency.

Until October 2008, WKCF was the only Hearst-owned station whose web site was not powered by Internet Broadcasting. That changed when Hearst and Internet Broadcasting created a separate page for the station within WESH's web address. On January 22, 2009, a tube in WKCF's analog transmitter failed forcing the station to transmit its analog signal at a reduced three megawatts power (which was sixty percent of its authorized five megawatt ERP) under special temporary authority from the FCC. The station had applied to cease analog transmissions on the original February 17, 2009 but its application was rejected by the FCC. WKCF like most other Hearst-owned stations, continued to broadcast regular programming on its analog signal until June 12. On that day, it discontinued regular programming on its analog signal and became one of three Orlando-area stations (along with WKMG-TV and WOFL) to participate in the analog nightlight program which lasted until July 12.