WZDC-CD (channel 44) is a Class A television station in Washington, D.C., broadcasting the Spanish-language

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by Comcast. It provides content nationally with pr ...

network. It is owned and operated by

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primar ...

's Telemundo Station Group alongside

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

outlet

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A Telemundo outlet WZDC-CD (channel 44 ...

(channel 4). WZDC-CD and WRC-TV share studios and transmitter facilities on Nebraska Avenue in the

Tenleytown Tenleytown is a historic neighborhood in Northwest, Washington, D.C. History In 1790, locals began calling the neighborhood "Tennally's Town" after area tavern owner John Tennally. Over time, the spelling has evolved and by the 19th century th ...

neighborhood of northwest Washington. Despite WZDC-CD legally holding a low-power Class A license, it transmits using sister station WRC-TV's full-power spectrum. This ensures complete reception across the Washington, D.C. television market. WZDC-CD also hosts the

master control Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. It is distinct from a production control room (PCR) in television studios where the activities such as swi ...

for

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

WRTD-CD WRTD-CD, virtual channel 54 (UHF digital channel 15), is a Class A Telemundo owned-and-operated television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. The station is owned by the Telemundo Station Group subsidiary of NBCUnivers ...

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Sout ...

, along with its

public file A public file (or public inspection file) is a collection of documents required by a broadcasting authority to be maintained by all broadcast stations under its jurisdiction. Such a file is required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) i ...

link on WZDC's website.

History

WZDC-CD signed on as W64BW on UHF channel 64 in April 1994, as the Telemundo affiliate in the Washington market. On December 1, 1995, the call letters were changed to WZGS-LP, reflecting the station's ownership, ZGS Broadcasting. On June 27, 2000, the call letters were changed to WZDC-LP. On June 3, 2002, the station began producing

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Am ...

local newscasts at 6 and 11 p.m. weeknights. On April 10, 2007, WZDC-LP moved to channel 25, as channel 64 was to be removed from television broadcasting as a result of the 2009 digital television transition. The station received class-A status in September 2008, changing callsigns to WZDC-CA to match. An application to build a new digital signal on channel 26 was dismissed in the same month. WZDC eventually received permission to

flash-cut A flash cut, also called a flash cutover, is an immediate change in a complex system, with no phase-in period. In the United States, some telephone area codes were split or overlaid immediately, rather than being phased in with a permissive d ...

to digital on channel 25 in March 2011, and became WZDC-CD in doing so that September. In the 2016–17

incentive auction The 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction, officially known as Auction 1001, allocated approximately 100 MHz of the United States Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum formerly allocated to UHF television in the 600 MHz band. The sp ...

, WZDC-CD received $66,182,037 to leave the air, though it indicated that it would maintain over-the-air coverage by entering into a post-auction channel sharing agreement. On September 6, 2017,

internally announced that it would launch a Telemundo

owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an affiliate ...

based out of

(channel 4) in December; a Telemundo spokesperson stated that the sale of WZDC's spectrum "gave us the ability to take back the Telemundo affiliation for this market," without elaborating. Subsequently, on December 4, 2017, NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group announced its purchase of ZGS' 13 television stations, including WZDC-CD. As a result of the common ownership, WZDC-CD then entered into a channel-sharing agreement with WRC-TV, under which it ended broadcasts over its own signal on channel 25 and moved to WRC-TV's signal on channel 48. NBCUniversal assumed the operations of WZDC on January 1, 2018 through a

local marketing agreement In North American broadcasting, a local marketing agreement (LMA), or local management agreement, is a contract in which one company agrees to operate a radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it is a sort of lease or tim ...

. The channel-sharing agreement with WRC-TV took effect on March 7, 2018, at which time WZDC shut off its own signal. As the channel-share went into effect, WZDC's virtual channel number of 25 presented an issue. Virtual channel 25 is already in use by Hagerstown's

WDVM-TV WDVM-TV (channel 25) is an independent television station licensed to Hagerstown, Maryland, United States, serving the Washington, D.C. television market. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside CW owned-and-operated station WDCW (cha ...

, which covers much of the western part of the Washington market and overlaps the signal of WRC-TV. The PSIP standard resolves virtual channel conflicts by assigning the new station a virtual channel number equal to the existing station's physical channel number. As WDVM-TV broadcast over physical channel 26 at the time, the rule would assign WZDC-CD virtual channel 26. However,

WETA-TV WETA-TV (channel 26) is the primary PBS member television station in Washington, D.C. Owned by the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association, it is a sister station to NPR member WETA (90.9 FM). The two outlets share stud ...

already uses virtual channel 26 in the market, and there is no further remedy prescribed in the PSIP standard. NBC proposed as a second option virtual channel 64, corresponding to WZDC-CD's original analog channel. This introduces another conflict with WDPB, which overlaps the eastern portion of WRC-TV's coverage area. In this case, the same rule assigned virtual channel 44, which was available.

Local programming

WZDC broadcasts 10 hours of locally produced newscasts each week, at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. on weekdays, along with morning cut-ins during ''

Hoy Día ''Hoy Día'' (''Today'') is an American Spanish-language morning television show broadcast by Telemundo. The show is broadcast from Telemundo Center in Miami, and is hosted by Adamari López, Penelope Menchaca, Andrea Meza, Lisette Eduardo, an ...

''. Until the 2023 shift of

MLS Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...

regional rights to

Apple TV+ Apple TV+ is an American subscription streaming service owned and operated by Apple Inc. Launched on November 1, 2019, it offers a selection of original production film and television series called Apple Originals. The service was announced ...

, the station carried D.C. United games in Spanish on its TeleXitos subchannel, in tandem with English coverage on

NBC Sports Washington NBC Sports Washington is an American regional sports network owned by Ted Leonsis's Monumental Sports & Entertainment, and operates as an affiliate of NBC Sports Regional Networks. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, the channel broadcasts reg ...

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...

References

External links

*
Telemundo website
{{Major U.S. TV O-O Stations Telemundo Station Group Low-power television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1993 1993 establishments in Washington, D.C. ZDC-CD TeleXitos affiliates