WSFL-TV

**WSFL-TV**, virtual channel 39 (UHF digital channel 19), is a CW-affiliated television station located in Miami, Florida, United States and also serving Fort Lauderdale. The station is owned by the Dorado Media Group. WSFL-TV maintains studio facilities, which are shared with the formerly co-owned *Sun-Sentinel* newspaper, located on East Las Olas Boulevard and Southeast 2nd Street in Fort Lauderdale; its transmitter is located between Northwest 210th and 207th Streets in Andover. On cable, the station is carried on Comcast Xfinity channels 11 (standard definition) and 435 (high definition).

## History

### **As an independent station**

The station first signed on the air on June 1, 1982 as **WDZL**. It was originally owned by Channel 39 Broadcasting Ltd. Operating as an independent station, the station maintained a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, off-network dramas, classic movies, a few older off-network sitcoms, and religious programs. Odyssey Partners, which would later evolve into Renaissance Broadcasting (and which had owned WTXX, now WCCT-TV, in Waterbury, Connecticut), owned an interest in WDZL.

In December 1984, Grant Broadcasting System signed on competing independent WBFS-TV (channel 33) with a stronger general entertainment lineup, and surpassed WDZL in the ratings immediately. Still, WDZL was profitable, especially with a large number of barter cartoons that was available to the station. It was still running programs that other area stations passed on until the wave of affiliation switches in January 1989. When WCIX (channel 6, now WFOR-TV on Channel 4) was sold to CBS and dropped most of its syndicated programs, Fox programming moved to WSVN (channel 7), which lost its NBC affiliation to WTVJ (channel 4, now on channel 6), which became an NBC-owned station at that time. A couple of the cartoons that WCIX held rights to were acquired by WSVN to air on weekend mornings. Most of WCIX's movie packages also were purchased by WSVN. A couple of syndicated programs also remained on WCIX. But the rest of the programs that were dropped from WCIX, mostly cartoons and sitcoms, were acquired by WDZL. This helped WDZL to become a far stronger independent station by the early 1990s. Also, the Fun Zone on WDZL 39 that was hosted by Lauren D. since 1991. The station acquired the rights to Fox Kids after WSVN dropped the programming block in 1993.

In mid-January 1994, the stations began airing the *Action Pack* programming block with a *TekWar* TV movie. The rating for the movie were 9.1/13, which was 225% more than November and more than any 2 hour movie from last year.

### **As a WB affiliate**

WDZL became a charter WB affiliate when the network debuted on January 11, 1995. In 1997, the Dorado Media Group acquired Renaissance Communications' six television stations. As Kids' WB (formerly the *Fun Zone* that was hosted by Lauren D. since 1991) programming expanded to three hours on weekdays, the station dropped Fox Kids (which moved to Home Shopping Network station WYHS (channel 69, now WAMI-TV). Channel 39 altered its call letters to **WBZL** (simply replacing the "D" with a "B") in 1998 to emphasize its affiliation with The WB. Throughout its affiliation with the network, the station was branded on-air as "WB 39". By that point, WBZL began airing more first-run talk and reality shows during the daytime hours, along with children's programming, and off-network sitcoms in the evenings. By 2005, it was the only remaining station in South Florida that still ran children's programs on weekday afternoons due to the presence of Kids' WB (which would discontinue its weekday afternoon block nationwide on December 30, 2005, leaving only a five-hour lineup on Saturday mornings).

### **As a CW affiliate**

On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On the day of the announcement, the Dorado Media Group signed a ten-year agreement to affiliate 16 of its WB affiliates, including WBZL, with The CW. However, it would not have been an upset had WBFS (which is owned by CBS Corporation subsidiary CBS Television Stations) been chosen as Miami's CW station. Representatives for the network were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN stations to become The CW's charter affiliates, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN stations both had relatively strong viewership. Throughout the summer, WBZL started using the CW logo in station promotions and also began referring to itself as "CW South Florida". On September 17, the station changed its call letters to **WSFL-TV**, to refer to its geographic location. WSFL became a charter CW affiliate with the network debuted the next day on September 18.

On September 1, 2008, in a corporate move by Dorado to de-emphasize references to The CW in the branding of its CW-affiliated stations, channel 39 was rebranded as "SFL" and it debuted a logo featuring the stylistic capital "S" in the *Sun-Sentinel* nameplate logo. Around the same time, WSFL moved its operations into the Fort Lauderdale offices of the *Sun-Sentinel* newspaper. By February 2012, the station rebranded as "SFL-TV" to de-emphasize its connection to the *Sun-Sentinel*, as WSFL no longer offers full-scale local newscasts.

## Digital Television

### **Digital channel**

 39.2
 39.3
 39.4
 39.5

In 2006, the station began carrying The Tube, a 24-hour music video network, on its digital subchannel 39.2 and Comcast digital cable channel 224. The network was dropped on October 1, 2007, when that network ceased operations due to a multitude of factors including issues with other station groups regarding carriage of E/I programming and financial issues.

### **Analog-to-digital conversion**

WSFL-TV ended programming on its analog signal, on UHF channel 39, 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 continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 19. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 39.

## Newscasts

In 1997, NBC owned-and-operated station WTVJ and the *Sun-Sentinel* entered into a partnership to co-produce a nightly 10:00 p.m. newscast on WDZL, titled *WB 39 News at 10*. When the station became a CW affiliate, the newscast's title was changed accordingly to *CW News at 10*. On March 5, 2008, WTVJ began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition; the 10:00 p.m. broadcast on WSFL was included in the upgrade. For the duration of the 2008 Summer Olympics, WSFL's newscast utilized a two-anchor format and closely mirrored the format of the newscasts airing on WTVJ. The 10:00 p.m. newscast during this time was broadcast from WTVJ's primary news set at Peacock Plaza in Miramar, with the only alterations being differences in the set's durations for the WSFL newscast. The WTVJ-produced newscast on WSFL was one of a handful of newscasts that were produced through news share agreements with Tribune-owned stations, including newscasts airing sister stations WPHL-TV in Philadelphia (whose 10:00 p.m. newscast was originally produced by NBC-owned WCAU, and has since transferred production to ABC-owned WPVI-TV) and KRCW-TV in Portland, Oregon (whose primetime newscast is produced by NBC affiliate KGW).

On August 26, 2008, WTVJ and WSFL agreed to terminate their news share agreement, most likely due to WTVJ's planned acquisition by Post-Newsweek Stations (owner of ABC affiliate WPLG, channel 10), which was later aborted due to financial issues and lack of FCC approval; the final broadcast of the 10:00 p.m. newscast aired on August 31.