History
Before becoming a separate entity, WNYF was a repeater for ABC affiliate WWTI with the call sign W28BC. During that time, WWTI and WWNY had secondary affiliations with Fox. WWNY's secondary affiliation was for National Football League games during the years CBS did not have broadcasting rights of the league. When that network acquired the rights to the American Football Conference, WWTI then aired NFL from Fox, in addition to ABC's Monday Night Football (now on fellow Disney network ESPN).
In 2001, United Communications Corporation and WWNY entered into an agreement with Smith Broadcasting to make W28BC and repeater station W25AB in Watertown separate full-time Fox affiliates. W28BC changed its call letters to WNYF-LP when the Watertown station changed its call letters to WNYF-CA signifying its upgrade to Class A status. WNYF-LP's low-powered analog signal on UHF channel 28 aired from a transmitter on NY 420 in Massena.
An agreement with Time Warner Cable in Fall 2001 placed the station on channel 2. After a year of joint operation of WNYF by Smith Broadcasting and United Communications, the latter took complete ownership and made it a full sister to WWNY. Until September 18, 2006 when UPN shut down and merged with The WB to form The CW, WNYF also ran some programming from the network as a secondary affiliate.
On August 25, 2008, WNYF-CA received Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval to begin its own high definition digital broadcasts as WNYF-CD on UHF channel 35 after WWNY-DT returned to its former analog position on VHF channel 7 (which happened February 17, 2009). On September 14, WNYF-CD signed-on using WWNY-DT's existing UHF antenna structure. The change represented the first time WNYF was available over-the-air in high definition.
On June 30, 2009, United Communications applied to the FCC for a digital version of WNYF-LP on UHF channel 18. This allocation was formerly used for WNPI-DT's analog signal. It was approved for construction on June 8, 2010. Now known as WNYF-LD, it features Fox as well as a simulcast of WWNY on a second digital subchannel. This helps St Lawrence County viewers who had experienced difficulty receiving WWNY's digital signal after that station transitioned to digital-only broadcasts.
On December 16, 2010, WNYF began to be seen on Time Warner Cable systems in the Burlington, Vermont/Plattsburgh, New York market after the provider dropped that area's affiliate WFFF-TV because of an ongoing retransmission dispute. The dispute was eventually resolved and the home station was added back to the system.
Read more about this topic: WNYF-CD
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