WZDC-CD (channel 44) is a

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 ...

, serving as the market's outlet for the Spanish-language network

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 a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...

. It is

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 ...

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and Trade name, doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and Show business, entertainment conglomerate (comp ...

Telemundo Station Group Telemundo Station Group is the division of NBCUniversal Owned TV Stations (NBCUniversal), a subsidiary of Comcast that oversees their Telemundo owned-and-operated television stations and the TeleXitos network. The NBC owned-and-operated station ...

alongside

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

outlet

WRC-TV WRC-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Washington, D.C., serving as the market's NBC outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Class A television service, Class A Telemundo outlet W ...

(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., 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 evolve ...

neighborhood of

northwest Washington Northwest (NW or N.W.) is the northwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and is located north of the National Mall and west of North Capitol Street. It is the largest of the four quadrants of the city (NW, NE, S ...

. 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 A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television and radio station offerings, and may also incl ...

. 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 swit ...

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 (channel 54) is a Class A television station licensed to Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, serving as the Research Triangle area's outlet for the Spanish-language network Telemundo. The station is owned and operated by the Telemund ...

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most populous city in the state (after Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte) ...

, 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) ...

link on WZDC's website.

History

The station 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 ZGS Communications, also referred to as the ZGS Group or ZGS Broadcasting, was a television and radio station operator in the United States, based in Arlington, Virginia. The company operated 11 stations: 10 television stations and one radio statio ...

. 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 languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

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 di ...

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 network af ...

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

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 corporation, company agrees to operate a radio station, radio or television station owned by another party. In essence, it ...

. 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 Hagerstown is a city in Washington County, Maryland, United States, and its county seat. The population was 43,527 at the 2020 census. Hagerstown ranks as Maryland's sixth-most populous incorporated city and is the most populous city in the ...

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 (chan ...

, which covers much of the western part of the Washington market and overlaps the signal of WRC-TV. The

PSIP The Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) is the MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group, a video and audio industry group) and privately defined program-specific information originally defined by General Instrument for the DigiCipher 2 system ...

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 stu ...

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 Penélope Menchaca, Andrea Meza, Lisette Eduardo, Danilo Carrera, ...

''. Until the 2023 shift of

MLS Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanctioned by the United ...

regional rights to

Apple TV+ Apple TV+ is an American subscription over-the-top streaming service owned by Apple. The service launched on November 1, 2019, and it offers a selection of original production film and television series called Apple Originals. The service w ...

, the station carried

D.C. United D.C. United is an American professional soccer club based in Washington, D.C. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. Domestically, the club has won four MLS Cups (league championships), four Supp ...

games in Spanish on its TeleXitos subchannel, in tandem with English coverage on

NBC Sports Washington Monumental Sports Network, formerly NBC Sports Washington, is an American regional sports network owned by Ted Leonsis through Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sport ...

Subchannels

References

External links

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