WDCA is the Washington, D.C. area's UPN affiliate station and it's located on channel 20 (digital channel 35). It's transmitter is located in Bethesda, Maryland. WDCA is the sister station to Fox owned-and-operated WTTG (channel 5), and one-half of a duopoly owned by Fox Television Stations Group, a subsidiary of the News Corporation.
History
WDCA signed on as an independent station on April 20, 1966, owned by The Superior Tube Company. It was Washington's second independent station, nearly 20 years younger than its future sister station WTTG. Milton Grant, who previously worked at WTTG, bought the station in the early 1970s. WTTG had stronger programming, but WDCA had a decent lineup of cartoons, old off network sitcoms, old movies, sports, off network dramas and religious shows. The station was not all that profitable in the 70's.
In 1979 Grant Broadcasting sold WDCA to Taft Broadcasting. In the 1970s and 1980s, WDCA's claim to fame was Dick Dyszel, who played monster movie host Count Gore DeVol, kid's show host Captain 20 and served as the station's announcer.
Under Taft WDCA became very profitable. They also gained higher ratings, but still trailed WTTG. It also became a regional superstation, appearing on cable television systems throughout Maryland and Virginia and as far south as Charlotte, North Carolina. It still appears on several Virginia cable systems. In 1988, Taft sold most of its stations. Their Big Three network affiliates were sold to Great American Broadcasting, while WDCA and its other independent and Fox stations would be sold to TVX (which at the time owned several medium market Fox affiliates). TVX shortly after sold most of its medium market stations.
In mid-1989, in a group deal TVX was sold to Paramount Pictures. On January 16, 1995, WDCA became a charter UPN O&O Stations. On October 29, 2001, Paramount's parent company, Viacom, traded WDCA to Fox Television Stations Group along with KTXH in Houston in return for KBHK in San Francisco. This was because KBHK was owned by Newscorp thru a buyout of Chris-Craft Industries, and the original Fox affiliate, Cox Enterprises-owned KTVU, has a long-term commitment to the network. This station tradeoff also created three duopolies: San Francisco - CBS Corporation's KPIX and KBHK, Houston - Newscorp's KRIV and KTXH and Washington, DC - WTTG and WDCA.
Today, WDCA is the broadcast outlet for the Washington Nationals baseball team. It runs cartoons, off network sitcoms, reality and talk shows and sports in addition to UPN programming.
On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW, the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger would take effect on-the-air in September 2006. Current The WB O&O station WBDC was announced as the CW's Washington affiliate.
On January 25, 2006, Fox Broadcast Stations announced that they were removing all UPN branding from the UPN O&O stations that they own, outside of network programming. As a result, WDCA changed its on-air identity from UPN20 to DCA 20. The other Fox-owned UPN affiliates made similar modifications to their branding.
On February 22, 2006, Fox announced that WDCA will be part of a new primetime network called My Network TV to launch September 5, 2006. My Network TV will be operated by Fox Television Stations, Inc. and Twentieth Television.
Above: WDCA's previous logo, used from 2001 to January 2006.
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External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDCA under GFDL
