Fiktiv USA - WJLA-TV

WJLA-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 7, is an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to the American capital city of Washington, D.C. Owned by the Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, it is sister to Woodstock, Virginia-licensed low-powered, Class A TBD owned-and-operated station WDCO-CD (channel 10) and local cable channel WJLA 24/7 News. WJLA-TV's studios are located on Wilson Boulevard in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia, and its transmitter is located in the Tenleytown neighborhood of northwest Washington.

The District of Columbia's third television station began broadcasting on October 3, 1947 as WTVW, owned by the Washington Star, along with WMAL radio (630 AM, and 107.3 FM, now WSOM). It was the first high-band VHF television station (channels 7-13) in the United States. A few months later, the station changed its call letters to WMAL-TV after its radio sisters. WMAL radio had been an affiliate of the NBC Blue Network since 1933, and remained with the network after it was spun off by NBC and evolved into ABC. However, channel 7 started as a CBS station since ABC had not yet established its television network. When ABC launched on television in 1948, WMAL-TV became ABC's third primary affiliate; the station continued to carry some CBS programming until WOIC (channel 9, now WUSA) signed on in 1949. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.

In 1975, Houston businessman Joe Allbritton, the owner of the now-defunct Washington-based Riggs Bank, purchased a controlling interest in the Star's media properties, which by that time also included WLVA radio and WLVA-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia; and WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina. As a condition of the purchase, Allbritton was given three years to break up the Washington newspaper/broadcast combination, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was seeking to prohibit under the tightening of its concentration of media ownership policy. WMAL-TV was separated first from its radio sisters when ABC purchased WMAL radio in March 1977. As FCC regulations at the time prevented separately-owned stations from sharing the same call sign, WMAL-TV became WJLA-TV, after Allbritton's initials. In April 1977, Allbritton negotiated a deal to trade the station to Combined Communications Corporation in return for KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, but called off the deal due to last-minute complications despite receiving FCC approval. Allbritton instead sold the Washington Star to Time Inc. in January 1978 (the paper would shut down in 1981), and retained WJLA-TV and the Lynchburg and Charleston television stations for what would eventually become Allbritton Communications.

Rumors abounded from the mid-1990s onward that ABC might buy WJLA-TV, effectively reuniting it with its former radio sisters. Indeed, in the summer of 1998, ABC's corporate parent The Walt Disney Company discussed a possible acquisition of Allbritton Communications, but a sale agreement failed to materialize. Even so, WJLA remained an ABC affiliate under Allbritton's ownership because the company had an exclusive affiliation deal with the network. After WJZ-TV in Baltimore switched to CBS in 1995, WJLA-TV became ABC's longest-tenured television affiliate.

In August 2002, Allbritton merged News Channel 8 with WJLA-TV's news department. The unified entity moved into an office complex in the Rosslyn section of Arlington. News Channel 8 was originally based in Springfield, Virginia.

As of July 2008, WJLA-TV had an independent weather channel, Weather Now, under meteorologist Doug Hill. Until July 28, 2008, WJLA-TV offered Local Point TV on 7.2 featuring five-minute video segments created by area residents. Abby Fenton, the station's Director of Community Relations said in an interview with Broadcasting & Cable media industry magazine that "the station likes the 'Local Point' programming and is pondering where else it might fit". Retro Television Network ("Retro TV") replaced Local Point TV.

In late October 2008, WJLA-TV began simulcasting on local low-powered station WWTD-LP; the station continued to broadcast an analog feed of WJLA-TV after the digital transition. In late July 2009, WJLA-TV dropped its locally produced "WeatherNow" channel for The Local AccuWeather Channel on its second subchannel under the "Doug Hill's WeatherNow" brand. On March 13, 2012, WJLA-TV dropped the Local AccuWeather Channel in favor of forecasts from their own meteorologists. With that, the name of the channel was slightly changed to "ABC7's WeatherNow".

WJLA-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 39 to VHF channel 7 for post-transition operations. While 90% of the station's viewers received WJLA-TV's signal via cable or satellite, many of the over-the-air viewers had problems after the final transition. Some needed to rescan, and others needed a VHF antenna. WJLA-TV applied on August 29, 2009 for special authorization by the FCC to increase its effective radiated power (ERP) to 52 kW. The power increase was put into effect on September 18, 2009. WJLA-TV already ran 30 kW of ERP, which was higher than the other three VHF stations in the area: WUSA (12.6 kW), WBAL-TV (5 kW), and WJZ-TV (28.8 kW) (post transition power levels).

On May 1, 2012, WJLA-TV announced it would add the Disney/ABC-owned Live Well Network to digital subchannel 7.3 on July 1, 2012, replacing RTV. WJLA-TV began carrying MeTV, a competing classic digital broadcast TV network on March 1, 2013 on WJLA-TV's second subchannel, replacing WeatherNow.

On May 1, 2013, reports surfaced that Allbritton was planning to sell its television stations so it could put more of its focus on running its political website Politico. Allbritton announced nearly three months later that it would sell all of its stations to Sinclair Broadcast Group for $985 million. After nearly a year of delays, the deal was approved by the FCC on July 24, 2014. The deal was finalized on August 1, 2014.

The station's second digital subchannel was an initial but secondary affiliate of the American Sports Network with its first broadcast on August 30, 2014. The station switched its subchannels over to Sinclair's owned digital networks, Charge! on .2, Comet on .3 and TBD on .4. WJLA-TV rebranded NewsChannel 8 as WJLA 24/7 News on Tuesday July 24, aligning it further with the call letters of its broadcast station, WJLA-TV.

Since 1970, WMAL-TV/WJLA-TV has used a variation of the Circle 7 logo, which has long been primarily associated with ABC affiliates located on Channel 7. From 1970 to 2001, WMAL-TV/WJLA-TV used its own version of the logo, with the "7" modified to accommodate the circle. In 1984, it saw a minor update with rounded ends on the "7" being modified to use sharp, straight edges, like the logo later used by Australia's Seven Network. This version of the logo was probably the longest continuously used numeric logo in Washington's television history. The only real modification came in 1998, after it began calling itself "ABC 7" on-air and added the ABC logo to the left side. In 2001, WJLA-TV adopted the standard version of the "Circle 7" logo, refueling speculation that ABC would purchase the station, a deal that would never come to pass. WJLA-TV is the largest ABC affiliate to use the Circle 7 that is not an ABC owned-and-operated station. In addition, sister station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, has used the standard Circle 7 since the 1960s, longer than all WJLA-TV versions combined.

Beginning in September 1984, WJLA-TV became the Washington-area affiliate for Atlantic Coast Conference football and men's basketball along a syndicated network that was operated by Jefferson-Pilot Communications and eventually jointly produced with Raycom Sports. These games later moved to WDCA (channel 20).

In the 2014 season, WJLA-TV began to air additional college football games through Sinclair's American Sports Network.

In 2015, D.C. United of Major League Soccer reached a new multi-year deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group to broadcast all of the team's regionally televised matches on WJLA-TV, succeeding CSN Mid-Atlantic. The station shares the over-the-air broadcast rights with MyNetworkTV affiliate WDCA.

WJLA-TV presently broadcasts a total of 35 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6½ hours each weekday; and one hour on Saturdays and 1½ hours on Sundays). The station has the largest news team in the Washington area, which includes around 40 on-air staff members. As the flagship station of the Allbritton Communications station group, WJLA-TV provided all news reports for the Allbritton station group via its news-gathering service.

Prior to 2001, WJLA-TV's newscasts had long placed third in the market's news ratings, behind WUSA and NBC-owned WRC-TV. The station hired Maureen Bunyan, former longtime anchor at WUSA, and in 2003, former CNN anchor Leon Harris joined the station as an anchor. In 2004, WJLA-TV hired Bunyan's former anchor desk partner, Gordon Peterson; and reunited the two as anchors for the 6:00 p.m. newscast. These personnel moves, combined with WUSA's recent ratings troubles, led to a resurgence in the ratings. In the May 2010 sweeps, it placed number one at 5:00 p.m. in total viewers, and in the 25–54 demo.

WJLA-TV became the second television station in the Washington, D.C. market (behind WUSA) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition on December 8, 2008. The upgrade included the introduction of a new on-air graphics package as well as minor changes made to the news desk for better viewing quality with high definition. Field reports and promotions for WJLA-TV's newscasts continued to be broadcast in standard definition until the end of March 2013, when the station upgraded to HD field cameras for field shots and some news promotions.

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WDCO-CD, virtual channel 10 (UHF digital channel 24), is a low-powered, Class A TBD owned-and-operated television station licensed to Woodstock, Virginia, United States and serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Owned by the Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, it is sister to Washington-licensed ABC affiliate WJLA-TV (channel 7) and local cable channel WJLA 24/7 News. WDCO-CD's transmitter is located in Ward Circle in Washington's northwest quadrant.

Co-owned and co-located WIAV-CD, virtual channel 58 (UHF digital channel 30), licensed to Washington, relays WDCO-CD's TBD programming in the new ATSC 3.0 broadcasting standard.

The station has operated since October 1985, when it was put on the air as a religious independent station by Ruarch Associates, LLC (its original calls were W10AZ, with the WAZT calls, introduced in 1994, apparently being derived from it), and once had a radio sister station, WAZR (93.7 FM; that station is now owned by iHeartMedia with a contemporary format).

The WAZT network offered some programming from Cornerstone and other religious networks, but it generally did not show them in-pattern with those networks, and it also broadcast some secular syndicated programming and classic television shows.

WAZT once broadcast a local newscast at 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday (entitled News 10), but this was discontinued on December 26, 2005. In January 2006, WAZT began airing CBN's NewsWatch program.

Ruarch sold WAZT to JLA Media & Publications (no relation to WJLA-TV) in 2006. Jones Broadcasting acquired the station out of Chapter 7 bankruptcy 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. At the time, WAZT transmitted from a hill near Toms Brook, Virginia. After agreeing to purchase the WAZT network, Venture obtained a construction permit to move the station's analog signal to the WZRV tower near Front Royal, Virginia. Later in 2014, it filed for a digital signal at a new transmitter site near The Plains, Virginia, which signed on in March 2015. Venture also purchased Washington-based WIAV-CD in 2014, which expanded the network's footprint into the city proper.

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 on January 31.

As a result of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s 2016–17 spectrum reallocation incentive auction, channels 24 and 30 – occupied by WNVC and WNVT, respectively – became available in the Washington market in 2018. WDCO-CD applied to take over WNVC's channel 24 facilities at its tower in Merrifield, Virginia, which would place it firmly in the Washington market, while WIAV-CD applied to move to channel 30. After WNVC was unable to find a channel-sharing partner and went off the air, it sold the tower and transmitter building. Left without a transmission site, WDCO-CD moved to temporary low-powered facilities shared with WIAV-CD at the WRC-TV (channel 4) tower in northwest Washington, and reapplied to permanently build there.

The new WAZT-CD has since relocated from Winchester to Blue Ridge Mountain in extreme southern Jefferson County, West Virginia, near the Virginia–West Virginia state line but also within the Washington market. An application to move to a tower outside Leesburg, Virginia, closer to Washington, is pending before the FCC.

On June 25, 2020, Venture Technologies Group filed an agreement with the FCC to sell WDCO-CD and WIAV-CD to Sinclair Broadcast Group for $8.5 million. The sale was completed on October 15, 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 full high definition. WAZT-CD was not included in the sale and continues to air Jewelry TV programming.

Sinclair's express intention for the purchase of the two stations was to convert WIAV-CD to Washington's first ATSC 3.0 broadcaster. WDCO-CD is to continue ATSC 1.0 service and honor the existing channel-sharing agreement with UniMás affiliate WMDO-CD (channel 47). To clear the way for ATSC 3.0 conversion work, WMDO-CD switched its channel-share from WIAV-CD to WDCO-CD at the end of 2020.

Sinclair subsequently commenced ATSC 3.0 operation over WIAV-CD on March 25, 2021.

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WJLA 24/7 News is an American regional cable news television channel in Washington D.C. by ABC-affiliated station WJLA-TV (channel 7) that is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The channel provides 24-hour news coverage primarily focused on Washington, D.C., northern Virginia and suburban areas of Maryland within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The channel shares studio facilities and offices with WJLA-TV and the Rosslyn-based Circa News in Arlington, Virginia. In addition, the channel operates two Maryland news bureaus (in Rockville and Landover), and one in Washington D.C. WJLA 24/7 News reaches more than 1.2 million cable television households within the D.C metropolitan area.

The channel was launched on October 7, 1991 as NewsChannel 8. The "8" branding was selected as a part of the name to attempt to get Washington-area cable providers to place the channel between its parent ABC-affiliated station, WJLA-TV (at channel 7), and local CBS affiliate WUSA-TV on channel 9. Allbritton also bundled the channel along with WJLA in carriage contracts. In 1995, the channel began airing timeshifted ABC News programs hours or days after their original broadcast.

NewsChannel 8 initially only had ad revenue stream until federal regulations required cable operators to pay for its carriage. In 1997, the channel was reported as profitable and started a streak of profitability by Allbritton.

As NewsChannel 8's carriage expanded to those areas, coverage was expanded to include Southern Maryland and Prince William County governmental meetings by the end of the 1990s. In July 2001, NewsChannel 8 beat CNN, Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC in the ratings, the highest viewership that the channel had ever accrued in its first 10 years. In August 2001, Comcast agreed to carry the channel for another 10 years. In August 2002, Allbritton Communications merged NewsChannel 8 and WJLA-TV. The channel in Springfield and station in Northwest Washington moved to a Rosslyn section twin towers office complex in Arlington, Gannett Co. and USA Today's former home.

On September 5, 2006, Comcast moved NewsChannel 8, at the channel's request, to channel 28 on the analog tiers of some of its systems, placing it next to sister station WJLA-TV on channel 27 (Comcast's systems in the immediate Washington, D.C. area slot the market's broadcast stations in the 20-29 channel range; this is an artifact from when television stations broadcast in analog prior to the 2009 digital television transition in order to avert co-channel interference with the broadcast signals).

Systems outside of Washington, D.C. proper carry it on channel 8, next to WJLA on channel 7. In all cases, however, the channel's high definition feed is carried on digital channel 808. On July 17, 2013, satellite provider DirecTV began carrying NewsChannel 8 on channel 8 within the Washington, D.C. market. On December 21, 2015, the channel was added to satellite provider Dish Network's D.C.-area broadcast lineup, also on channel 8.

On August 9, 2010, the channel was rebranded as TBD TV, in order to associate it with the recently established news website TBD.com, which provided news content for both the channel and WJLA. Allbritton subsequently reverted its news channel's branding to the original NewsChannel 8 name in February 2011.

On July 29, 2013, Allbritton Communications announced that it would sell its entire television group, including NewsChannel 8 and WJLA-TV, to Hunt Valley-based Sinclair Broadcast Group (owners of flagship station WBFF, as well as operators of two other stations in the adjacent Baltimore market).

On July 23, 2018, WJLA announced that NewsChannel 8 will be rebranded as WJLA 24/7 News on Tuesday July 24, aligning it further with the call letters of its broadcast station, WJLA-TV.

On March 25, 2021, Sinclair launched ATSC 3.0 operations on WIAV-CD and for the first time, made the channel available over the air via the station.

Through a fiber optic delivery system, WJLA 24/7 News provides programming and advertising targeted at three separate geographical regions of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and is known for airing specific "Zone Reports" on weeknights to these regions, including "The Washington Report" (featuring news stories affecting the District of Columbia), "The Virginia Report" (featuring news stories from northern Virginia) and "The Maryland Report" (featuring news from communities in adjacent suburban areas of Maryland). The appropriate edition is fed to each of the cable systems in the region. The newscasts are all the same, except for the second segment (aired between the first and second commercial breaks), which is specifically tailored to each "zone".

WJLA 24/7 News employs its own anchors and certain meteorologists while sharing reporting and weather staffers with WJLA-TV. The two news operations share the same on-air news staffers for the weekend evening newscasts aired respectively by the cable channel and television station.

When it is not airing newscasts, WJLA 24/7 News airs encore presentations of ABC News programs as well as various local programs, including Let's Talk Live (an hour-long call-in talk show), NewsTalk (a live hour-long daily call-in show featuring prominent newsmakers), Government Matters (a news show geared towards federal government employees and contractors and the "business of government"), SportsTalk (a sports discussion program), Moms Talk (a Monday morning advice show hosted by two housewives), Entertainment Forecast (a Wednesday night movie review show), and Capital Golf Weekly (a program featuring golf instruction and feature reports on the sport). Unlike most regional news channels which air newscasts during overnights and weekends on a recorded loop, WJLA 24/7 News airs some paid programming during certain timeslots within those periods.