WDME-CD (channel 48) is a low-power,

Class A television station The class A television service is a system for regulating some low-power television (LPTV) stations in the United States. Class A stations are denoted by the broadcast callsign suffix "-CA" (analog) or "-CD" (digital), although very many analog - ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, airing programming from the classic television network

MeTV MeTV, an acronym for Memorable Entertainment Television, is an American broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. Marketed as "The Definitive Destination for Classic TV", the network airs a variety of classic television progra ...

Owned and operated 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 ...

by network parent

Weigel Broadcasting Weigel Broadcasting Co. is an American television broadcasting company based in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV (Channel 26), at 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown, Chicago, Greektown neighborhood. It cur ...

, the station maintains a transmitter in

Ward Circle Ward Circle is a traffic circle at the intersection of Nebraska and Massachusetts Avenues in Northwest, Washington, D.C. The circle, totaling , is owned and administered by the National Park Service through its Rock Creek Park unit. On three s ...

in Washington's northwest quadrant.

History

The station signed on for the first time on September 29, 1989, as W48AZ in

Winchester, Virginia Winchester is the northwesternmost Administrative divisions of Virginia#Independent cities, independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It is the county seat of Frederick County, Virginia, Frederi ...

, a relay of the original WAZT-LP in Woodstock (then W10AZ, now

WDCO-CD WDCO-CD (channel 10) is a low-power, Class A television station licensed to Woodstock, Virginia, United States, serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with programming from the digital multicast network Roar. Owned and operated by S ...

). The WAZT network offered some programming from

Cornerstone A cornerstone (or foundation stone or setting stone) is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry Foundation (engineering), foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entir ...

and other religious networks, but it generally did not show them in-pattern with those networks, and it also broadcast some

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

syndicated programming Broadcast syndication is the practice of content owners leasing the right to broadcast their content to other television stations or radio stations, without having an official broadcast network to air it on. It is common in the United States whe ...

and classic television shows. W48AZ changed its callsign to WAZW-LP on August 20, 1999. The station gained Class A status on December 26, 2000, becoming WAZW-CA. Ruarch sold the WAZT stations to JLA Media & Publications (no relation to

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

affiliate

WJLA-TV WJLA-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Washington, D.C., affiliated with ABC. It is one of two flagship stations of Sinclair Broadcast Group (alongside dual Fox/MyNetworkTV affiliate WBFF hannel 45in Baltimore), and is also sister ...

, channel 7) in 2006. Jones Broadcasting acquired the stations out of

Chapter 7 bankruptcy Chapter 7 of Title 11 U.S. Code is the bankruptcy code that governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. This is in contrast to bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and Chapter 13, which govern the process of ''re ...

in 2011. Jones Broadcasting sold the group of stations to Venture Technologies Group in December 2013. Venture immediately began moving WAZT and its sister stations to the far larger Washington, D.C. television market. After spending most of its time as a religious broadcaster branded as simply "WAZT", the station and its relays changed to the branding "Faith Television Network" under Venture's ownership. WAZT-CD's callsign was changed to WDCO-CD on October 11, 2017. On the same day, Winchester repeater WAZW-CD became WAZT-CD. On January 24, 2018, Faith Television Network announced it would cease broadcasting. All four remaining stations in the network became full-time affiliates of

Jewelry Television Jewelry Television is an American television network specializing in the sale of jewelry. On-air and online, the network is mainly branded by its jtv initials in small caps, lower-case letters. It has an estimated reach of more than 80 million ...

on January 31. On June 25, 2020, Venture Technologies Group filed an agreement with the FCC to sell WDCO-CD and WIAV-CD to

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair, Inc., doing business as Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb o ...

(owner of WJLA-TV) for $8.5 million. The sale was completed on October 15,Consummation Notice
/ref> making them Sinclair's second and third properties in the Washington market, alongside WJLA-TV. On the same day, WDCO-CD and WIAV-CD flipped to Sinclair's TBD multicast network, simulcasting WJLA-TV's fourth digital subchannel in

1080i In high-definition television (HDTV) and video display technology, 1080i is a video display format with 1080 lines of vertical resolution and Interlaced video, interlaced scanning method. This format was once a standard in HDTV. It was particular ...

full

high definition High definition or HD may refer to: Visual technologies *Blu-ray Disc, the universal optical High Definition disc format *HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format *HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tap ...

. WAZT-CD was not included in the sale and continued to air Jewelry TV programming. It was later sold to

in September 2021 for $3 million. On April 21, 2022, the station's callsign changed to WDME-CD.

Subchannels

The station's 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— ...

References

External links

MeTV official website
{{Weigel Broadcasting 1989 establishments in Virginia Catchy Comedy affiliates DME-CD MeTV affiliates MeTV Toons affiliates Story Television affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1989 Weigel Broadcasting