WUDL-LD

WUDL-LD is a low-powered television station in Detroit, Michigan. The station broadcasts on digital channel 47 at 2.7 kW with a northerly-aimed directional antenna (to protect adjacent-channel WMNT-CD in Toledo, Ohio), from a tower located at the Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit. The signal can be seen throughout the city of Detroit, its suburbs and the nearby Windsor area.

History

The station initially signed on sometime in the early 1980s as a SIN affiliate owned by Washington, DC-based Los Cerezos Television, first with the calls K66BV, later switched to W66BV. The station folded in the early-1990s. Shortly after its closedown, the transmitter and license was sold to the Trinity Broadcasting Network, in which, shortly afterward, returned to the air as a full-time repeater of TBN's national feed.

In February 2006, the station was granted a construction permit to begin converting operations to digital television. Upon completion, the station would become a digital repeater of TBN, broadcasting all five TBN services at 19.7 kW (though later signed-on at 2.7 kW). The station was also approved for relocation to channel 47 – this is due to channels 52 to 69 being phased out of television broadcasting.

At some point on the evening of November 9, 2009, the analog signal of W66BV had gone dark entirely, showing only static. The station's analog feed has been on the air intermittently since that date. TBN has since notified the Federal Communications Commission that W66BV had ceased operations March 25, 2010 due to declining support, which has been attributed to the digital transition.^[1] However, on May 12, 2010, the repeater has since resumed broadcasting for about a month, before going silent again. During the analog era, the station had broadcast on UHF 66 with an effective radiated power of 19.7 kW, though it now broadcasts on UHF 47 with an effective radiated power of just 2.7 kW (with a construction permit to increase to 10 kW).

W66BV converted its signal to digital on channel 47, and broadcast all five of TBN's subchannel networks on its signal, all delivered directly from TBN's national satellite feed; on January 7, 2011, it changed its callsign to W47DL-D. The TBN Enlace USA service on subchannel 47.5 would become the only aerial non-English channel in the Detroit / Windsor area, following WUDT-LD's switch from Univision to Daystar Television Network in 2009, and the closedown of Windsor's Radio-Canada outlet CBEFT in 2012. Although it carried all five of TBN's networks, they were placed in a different order than most TBN affiliates such as KTBN and WJEB. Strangely, when W47DL converted to digital, the PSIP didn't show as the former physical channel 66, but as the new physical channel 47.

Neither Comcast Detroit, Bright House Livonia nor Cogeco Windsor had W47DL-D in their line-ups, though both systems offered the national feed, seen part-time on Comcast channel 70 from 2 pm to 2 am (shared with The Inspiration Network), and full-time on digital channel 290; and on Bright House digital channel 116.

Some TBN repeaters, including W47DL-D, use Dish Network equipment to pick up the signal off of Dish Network's satellites, instead of a free-to-air source, which TBN has. This occasionally led to technical problems—for about 10 days since the early morning of June 12, 2009, W66BV has broadcast an error screen relating to needing a new smart card to view the station, and to contact Dish Network, rendering the station off the air until the problem was taken care of. At some point on Monday, June 22, the problem was taken care of, and the TBN feed returned to W66BV.

Following financial problems that led to the closedown and sale of many of its repeaters to other parties in 2010, W47DL-D was one of the few TBN translators that remained in service under TBN ownership.^[2]

On April 13, 2012, TBN sold 36 of its translators, including W47DL-D, to Regal Media, a broadcasting group headed by George Cooney, the CEO of the EUE/Screen Gems studios.^[3] The sale would later be approved by the FCC. Under Regal, the station continued to air TBN programming.

W47DL-D has applied to move to UHF 19 and increase power from 2.7 kW to 15 kW on July 23, 2012.

On February 10, 2015, Regal Media sold W47DL-D to King Forward, Inc. (with management/operation of the station listed as Bella Spectra Corporation) who re-listed the station as a direct repeater of KTBN-TV (as opposed to being a "satellator", or satellite-fed translator, as it was before).^[4][5] As part of the sale, King Forward also applied for a silent Special Temporary Authority, replacing programming on all five subchannels with a transitioning slide announcing that the channel is available for rent. 47.2 was later re-allocated as an audio-less test broadcast of the Ethiopian television network ESAT.

On May 4, 2015, the station changed its call-sign to WUDL-LD. Broadcasts on the new UHF 19 frequency began as early as February 27, 2016, expanding the coverage area into parts of nearby inner-city suburbs such as Wyandotte and Melvindale.

Digital television

None of WUDL's subchannels transmit electronic programming guide (EPG) information. However, closed captioning is transmitted on all subchannels except for 19.1 and 19.4.

See also

• Media in Detroit

References

External links

• Query the FCC's TV station database for WUDL-LD