The Decatur years (1954–1969)

WAFF is northern Alabama's oldest television station. The station first began broadcasting from studios and transmitters in Decatur (30 miles (48 km) west of Huntsville) on July 4, 1954, as WMSL-TV, channel 23. It was owned by Frank Whisenant, a Decatur businessman whose company, Tennessee Valley Radio & Television Corporation,^[2] also owned WMSL radio (AM 1400, now WWTM). Both stations took their calls from Mutual Savings Life Insurance Company, who founded WMSL radio in 1935.

WMSL-TV originally carried programming from all four networks of the time—NBC, CBS, ABC and the DuMont Network—but was a primary NBC affiliate. It lost the DuMont Network when that one began closing down in 1955; it lost ABC when WAAY-TV started in Huntsville in 1959 as an ABC affiliate; and, finally, lost CBS when WHNT-TV began transmitting as a CBS affiliate in 1963.

During the late 1950s, WMSL was also affiliated briefly with the NTA Film Network.^[3]

Until the early 1960s, Decatur was the largest city in the viewing area, and it was centrally located—thus making it a good location for the region's first TV station. However, when Huntsville became the region's largest city due to the exponential growth of U.S. Army Missile Command and NASA installations, Whisenant decided to move WMSL-TV there as well; it was the only major station in the market licensed in Decatur. Whisenant applied to change WMSL-TV's city of license to Huntsville as well, even though the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had changed its regulations so it could have kept its license in Decatur. However, because the station's original channel assignment, channel 23, was too close in frequency to the area's Alabama Educational Television outlet, WHIQ (channel 25), the FCC required WMSL-TV to move to channel 48 as a condition on its permit to relocate its city of license. The move to a higher UHF frequency was highly unusual for that time, especially during the 1960s, when the All-Channel Receiver Act had only recently been passed. Many UHF stations that had started operations on channels above 40 or so were able to move to lower allocations per FCC action, or even to VHF.

WMSL-TV began broadcasting on channel 48 in January 1969, while simulcasting on channel 23 for several days afterwards. Some weeks later, Whisenant closed the station's studios in Decatur when the new studios opened in Huntsville. In the meantime, Whisenant sold WMSL radio to Clete Quick, another Decatur businessman.

Early years in Huntsville (1969–1974)

On September 1, 1967, about 16 months before moving to Huntsville, WMSL-TV had to begin sharing the NBC affiliation for North Alabama with WAAY-TV (meaning the market had no local ABC affiliate for a year; the network was available only on out-of-market stations in Birmingham, Nashville, and Chattanooga that were carried by area cable systems). Still, the new channel 48, which took over WAAY-TV's old ABC affiliation when its NBC contract expired in September 1968, made persistent efforts to serve its greatly expanded viewing area, which now included most of the Shoals region of northwestern Alabama.

Call sign and ownership changes

In October 1974, Whisenant sold the station to Vermont-based International Television Corporation,^[4] which renamed the station WYUR-TV on March 9, 1975. Despite more aggressive attempts to promote its newscast, WYUR's ratings were far behind WAAY and WHNT. Then, on June 6, 1978, AFLAC, then known by its full name of American Family Life Assurance Company, bought the station, re-christening it WAFF after its slogan of the time, "American Families Finest". Some months earlier, on December 11, 1977, WAAY decided to return to ABC, as that network had become the nation's most popular, in prime time programming especially; in turn, this left channel 48 returning with the then-less-desirable NBC affiliation. AFLAC did not immediately turn the corner with WAFF; the station kept fine-tuning its newscasts and acquiring some nationally popular syndicated programs, but very little seemed to work.

Still, the station pressed forward; around 1980 or 1981 a new tower was constructed on the south end of Monte Sano, adjacent to the station's studios. The tower measured some 1,476 feet (450 m) in height and was constructed in an effort to provide better reception to viewers across northern Alabama and southern middle Tennessee. The weather forecaster at the time, Glenn Bracken, held a coloring contest for schoolchildren across the viewing area, whereby they could depict their scenes of the new "tall tower" and incorporate WAFF's marketing message "New Tall Tower Means More Picture Power" and have their drawing and name presented during the nightly weather forecast (which usually took place on a balcony outside the news studio's doors). Also, during this period, WAFF began airing promotional spots showing various scenes of its news personalities interacting with residents of its viewing area, along with its news helicopter, "Sky48," to a song titled "We're Your Kind of People."

1982 studio fire and aftermath

On the evening of March 24, 1982, the station's building, situated on Monte Sano to overlook Huntsville proper, caught fire and burned. Local firefighters found the fire hydrant at the end of the driveway had yet to be connected to the water main and the water pressure of nearby hydrants were low; this situation would later prompt competitor WHNT to relocate to downtown Huntsville, some years later. It was a few days when WAFF began broadcasting through the auspices of local cable companies, who provided NBC programming feeds from WSMV-TV in Nashville (which later became a sister station of WAFF) and WVTM-TV in Birmingham, both of which were available in their own rights on many northern Alabama cable systems prior to 1990. Eventually, WAFF would rebuild at a new location, occupying a former jewelry store on North Memorial Parkway, some miles away from Monte Sano; microwave links connected the studios to the transmitter and tower. The fire would also prompt Huntsville city officials to repair the water pressure situation and build a new fire station atop Monte Sano, which sits directly across from WAAY's studios.^[5]

Recent history (1980s–present)

Logo used from 1996 to January 2014

The disaster may have proved to be a blessing in disguise, as AFLAC began investing money in developing talent and production facilities, enabling WAFF to start making a serious ratings impact for the first time since the early 1970s. Not only did the station benefit from the renewed popularity of NBC in the mid-1980s, but its acquisitions of highly popular syndicated shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jeopardy!, and Wheel of Fortune made it a hit with viewers in the Tennessee Valley region. Since that time, the station has experienced continued success.

AFLAC sold WAFF, along with its other broadcasting properties, to Raycom Media of Montgomery, Alabama in 1996, making it a soon-to-be sister station to Montgomery's WSFA, which became the flagship of the said company in the next decade.

Sale to Gray Television

On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced it had reached an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets (consisting of Raycom's 63 existing owned-and/or-operated television stations, including WAFF), and Gray's 93 television stations) under Gray's corporate umbrella. The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion—in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom—resulted in WAFF gaining a new sister station in an adjacent market, including CBS affiliate WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee as well as its sister station WBXX-TV (while separating it from WTNZ).^[6][7][8][9] The sale was approved on December 20,^[10] and was completed on January 2, 2019.^[11][12]

Raycom News Network and Raycom Weather Network

WAFF is part of the Raycom News Network, a system designed to rapidly share information among a group of four Raycom-owned stations and websites serving the state of Alabama. A regional network has developed among Columbus/Phenix City's WTVM, Montgomery's WSFA, and Birmingham's WBRC in which stations share information, equipment such as satellite trucks or even reporters' stories. Between them, these four stations cover the state of Alabama. The four stations also comprise the Raycom Weather Network and the Raycom Alabama Weather Blog, where meteorologists from all four stations post forecasts and storm reports, as well as live feeds from all of the cameras that the four stations operate. The site also has live feeds of the radars of WTVM, WSFA, WBRC and WAFF. The only ex-Raycom station in Alabama (which is no longer a sister station of WAFF) not participating in the arrangement is WDFX-TV in the Dothan area, which formerly received its news programming from WSFA.

Subchannels

The station's signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WAFF shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 48, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.^[17][18] It, according to an FCC filing, was to relocate to channel 48 and increase power. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 49 to channel 48; there also was an increase in transmitter height in December 2011.^[19] The accompanying planned increase in transmitter power, however, was considerably reduced. This resulted in the station broadcasting at 48 kW ERP instead of the originally planned 356 kW ERP.