WDCA

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WDCA
Washington, DC
Branding	My 20
Slogan	Get it On 20!
Channels	20 (UHF) analog, 35 (UHF) digital
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	Fox Television Stations Group
Founded	April 20, 1966
Call letters meaning	Washington, District of Columbia Area ("DCA" is also the airport code for Ronald Reagan National Airport)
Former affiliations	Independent (1966-1995), UPN (1995-2006)
Transmitter Power	3980 kW/235 m (analog) 500 kW/254 m (digital)
Website	wdca.com

WDCA, channel 20 (digital channel 35), is the Washington, D.C. area's MyNetworkTV owned and operated station, with transmitter facilities 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.

On February 22, 2006, Fox announced that WDCA will be part of a new primetime network called My Network TV, which was launched on September 5, 2006. My Network TV is operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television.

[edit] History

WDCA signed on as an independent station on April 20, 1966, owned by the Capitol Broadcasting Corporation. It was Washington's second independent station, nearly 20 years younger than its future sister station WTTG. Milton Grant, who previously worked at WTTG, was President of Capitol Broadcasting, and thus was WDCA's founding general manager. Grant would sell channel 20 three years later to the Superior Tube Company. During this early period, WTTG had stronger programming, but WDCA had a decent lineup of its own. However, the station was not all that profitable.

In 1979 Superior Tube sold WDCA to the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Taft Broadcasting. In the 1970s and 1980s, WDCA's best-known personality was Dick Dyszel, who played "Bozo", horror movie host "Count Gore de Vol", kids show host "Captain 20", and also served as the station's announcer. The station was also home to "Petey Greene's Washington," an Emmy award-winning show featuring the witicisms and observations of Ralph "Petey" Greene, civil-rights activist and native Washingtonian.

Under Taft's stewardship, channel 20 became very profitable. As Taft upgraded the programming, WDCA gained higher ratings, but still trailed WTTG overall. Channel 20 also became a regional superstation, appearing on cable television systems throughout Maryland and Virginia, ranging as far south as Charlotte, North Carolina and as far north as Pennsylvania. In February 1987 Taft sold WDCA, and its other independent and Fox stations, to the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group. The Taft purchase created a debt load for TVX, and the sale of their smaller-market stations did not fully reduce the debt. In mid-1989, TVX sold a minority interest in its company to Paramount Pictures. Two years later, in 1991, Paramount bought TVX's remaining shares and became full owner of the stations, which were renamed the Paramount Stations Group. Viacom purchased the group as part of its acquisition of Paramount Pictures in 1993.

On January 16, 1995, WDCA became a charter affiliate of the United Paramount Network, which was originally co-owned by Viacom and Chris-Craft Industries. On October 29, 2001, Viacom traded WDCA to Fox Television Stations (along with KTXH in Houston) in return for KBHK-TV in San Francisco. This station tradeoff also created the first television duopoly in the Washington market. Fox integrated the operations of both WDCA and WTTG into one, with WDCA moving into WTTG's Wisconsin Avenue facility.

In mid-summer 1995, WDCA experimented with a ten o'clock newscast to compete with WTTG. UPN 20 News at 10 was a half-hour nightly newscast produced by, and featuring on-air talent from, Allbritton Communications' News Channel 8. The newscast was discontinued in the summer of 1996. In October 2006, this station aired the first half-hour of WTTG's 10 PM newscast under the name of FOX 5 News at 10 Special Edition, while co-owned WTTG aired Fox Sports' coverage of the 2006 Major League Baseball postseason.

Today, channel 20 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 My Network TV programming.

On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced they would merge into a new network 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 will take effect in September 2006, and current WB station WDCW (formerly WBDC) was announced as the CW's Washington affiliate. Fox-owned UPN stations, like WDCA, were not included in the CW's affiliate lineup.

The following day, on January 25, 2006, Fox announced that they were removing all UPN-related references from the UPN stations that they own, outside of network programming. As a result, WDCA changed its on-air identity from UPN 20 to DCA 20. The other Fox-owned UPN affiliates made similar modifications to their branding.

On May 5, 2006, WDCA changed its branding from "DCA 20" to "my 20"; an indication that WDCA is beginning the transition to My Network TV]. On June 2, 2006, WDCA debuted a new network bug, inspired by the My Network TV logo, and the station is now gradually phasing out the use of the UPN typeface and red and white color scheme in promos in favor of the various shades of blue of My Network TV. The UPN affiliation ended August 31, 2006.

WDCA's digital TV (channel 35) signal had been very weak, due to a problem with the city in constructing a new transmitter tower, but around August 10, 2006, it was operating at full power, receivable in the suburbs.

[edit] Logos

WDCA logo under Superior Tube ownership, used throughout the 1970s.	WDCA's 1985 logo using the Taft Broadcasting copyright.	WDCA station ID, circa summer 1998.	WDCA's previous logo from the late 1990s as it appeared on its website.
WDCA's previous logo, from the early 2000s.	WDCA's previous logo, used from 2002 to January 2006.	WDCA's DCA20 logo, used from January to May 2006.	WDCA's first my20 logo, used from May to June 2006.
Current logo.

[edit] External links

• WDCA Website
• MyNetworkTV Website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WDCA