WLFL - History

History

The analog UHF channel 22 allotment was in planning stages as early as 1976 as a Christian-themed station with mostly Christian programs and some secular family shows. It would be operated by L.L. "Buddy" Leathers and his Carolina Christian Communications, a broadcasting company whose flagship was WGGS in Greenville, South Carolina. Carolina Christian had several construction permits in the Carolinas. This station's permit was bought out by Family Television in 1980 with the intention to sign-on in late-September 1981. However, those plans were scuttled due to technical problems and bad weather.

It finally went on-the-air as WLFL-TV (Light For Living) at 2 in the afternoon on December 18, 1981 with the movie Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing as its inaugural program following a day of test patterns. It was the Triangle's first full-market Independent outlet. Another earlier station with the same format, WKFT-TV (now WUVC), had signed-on a few months before but did not have an adequate signal to most of the market at the time. WLFL was a typical UHF Independent running cartoons, dramas, westerns, old sitcoms, and old movies in addition to religious programming. While licensed to Raleigh, its studios were initially at 2410 Broad Street in Durham (the same building where WTVD set up shop in 1954) with its master control facility located with the transmission and tower facility near Apex.

In 1985, WLFL was purchased by the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group. The company upgraded the station's programming until it was actually the third-highest rated station in the Triangle area. A year later, TVX moved WLFL into new studios on Front Street in Raleigh just inside the Beltline/I-440. On October 6, 1986, it became a charter affiliate of Fox along with all other TVX stations. The station also replaced its original 1,000-foot (300 m) tower and one megawatt ERP transmission facility with a new 1,700-foot (520 m) tower and five megawatt visual, 500 kW aural ERP transmission antenna. TVX sold-off most of its medium market stations in 1988 following its purchase of Taft Broadcasting's Independent stations and Fox affiliates. It held onto WLFL until its merger with Paramount Pictures in 1991 after which the group was renamed Paramount Stations Group. By this time, it was one of the strongest Fox affiliates in the country. In 1993, the station dropped the -TV suffix from its call sign.

Paramount sold WLFL to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1994 and entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with WRDC the following year. That station was owned by Glencairn Broadcasting a separate entity the Smith family (who owned Sinclair) had a majority stake in thus creating a duopoly in the market even before Sinclair purchased WRDC outright in 2001. While WLFL was the senior partner in the deal, it vacated its Front Street studios that year and moved to WRDC's new facility in the nearby Highwoods office complex. WNCN-TV, which acquired the market's NBC affiliation from WRDC in 1995, moved into WLFL's old studios at the same time. In 1996, Fox announced it would not renew its contract with this station when it got involved in a dispute with Sinclair over programming issues during the 10 p.m. slot. Even though Fox later relented, it still managed to seek a new affiliation with WRAZ in 1998 leaving WLFL to pick up programming from The WB.

On January 24, 2006, CBS and TimeWarner announced that they would merge UPN and The WB to form "The CW". On February 22, News Corporation announced it would start up another new network called MyNetworkTV. This service, which would be a sister network to Fox, would be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division 20th Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB stations, not mentioned as becoming CW affiliates, another option besides becoming Independent. It was also created to compete against The CW. It was initially seen as a foregone conclusion WLFL would be The CW's Triangle affiliate. It was by far the stronger of the two stations in Sinclair's Triangle duopoly and network officials were on record as favoring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations. However, when the new network announced its first group of stations outside the core group of Tribune Company and CBS Corporation-owned stations, WLFL was not on the list. In February, WRDC was announced as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It was not until May 2 when Sinclair agreed to affiliate all of its former WB affiliates, not joining MyNetworkTV (including WLFL), with The CW.

As a CW affiliate, WLFL airs the CW4Kids/Toonzai/Vortexx children's programming block two hours earlier than most other Eastern Time Zone affiliates of the network, from 5 to 10 a.m.

Sinclair was involved in a retransmission dispute with Time Warner Cable whose original carriage agreement ended on December 31, 2010. The issue involved fees the cable provider was willing to pay for programming on WLFL and WRDC. Negotiations between the two parties were extended for another two weeks and were set to expire on January 15, 2011 if an agreement could not reached. Any blackout would, in effect, limit access for both WLFL and WRDC to a number of cable households within the market. However, both stations are also available through satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network along with AT&T's U-Verse service.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Fox agreed to a five-year affiliation agreement extension for the group's 19 Fox-affiliated stations until 2017. This includes an option, exercisable between July 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, for Fox parent News Corporation to buy a combination of six Sinclair-owned stations (two CW/MyNetworkTV duopolies and two standalone MyNetworkTV affiliates) in three out of four markets; WLFL and WRDC are included in the Fox purchase option, along with Sinclair stations in Cincinnati (WSTR-TV), Norfolk (WTVZ) and Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY).