Owned by Good Companion Broadcasting, a Christian
non-profit organization, WJAL first broadcast on August 1, 1984, originally licensed to
Hagerstown, Maryland, as that city's third television station (after
WHAG-TV and
WWPB). It was also the fourth
independent station in the Washington DMA (after
WTTG,
WDCA, and
WCQR) and the first independent in the market outside the city of Washington. Despite being licensed to Hagerstown (and assigned by
Nielsen to the Washington
television market), WJAL's offices were located in
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (within the
Harrisburg market), and its transmitter was located 15 miles (24 km) west of Chambersburg, atop
Tuscarora Mountain near the town of
McConnellsburg.
WJAL was the Washington market's charter
WB affiliate when the network launched on January 11, 1995. Six weeks later, The WB added WFTY (channel 50, now
CWowned-and-operated station WDCW), based in Washington proper. As WJAL had a largely rural coverage area far from Washington at the time, both stations aired the network's programming.[4] The station ended its WB affiliation on September 14, 1998, as Good Companion felt the network's programming did not fit with their desired family-friendly image.[5]
In 2001, Good Companion sold WJAL-TV to Entravision for $10.3 million.[6][7] The main impetus of the purchase of WJAL for Entravision was to attempt to move the station's license to Silver Spring, Maryland as a replacement for its low-power WMDO-CA (now digital WMDO-CD), which at the time was a Univision affiliate.[8] WJAL first attempted to move its then-proposed digital signal on channel 16 to Silver Spring in 2002. The application was denied as the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determined local television service to Hagerstown would be unfairly affected. The proposed signal would also cause unacceptable interference to adjacent channel 17, which is used for public safety services in Washington. Entravision submitted an appeal in 2006, as it had changed WJAL's choice for its post-digital-transition channel from 16 to 39. By this time, the FCC had decided to stop considering the relocation of a station's city of license in preparation for the 2009 digital television transition. After the freeze, the FCC decided it would no longer support such a move and dismissed the application in 2012.[9][10] Thus, WJAL continued to run a family-friendly English format for Hagerstown, a market with a low need for a
Spanish-language outlet.
Spectrum sale and channel-sharing agreement; move to Washington
In the FCC's
incentive auction, WJAL sold its channel 39 allocation for $25,492,333 and indicated that it would enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement.[11] On July 28, 2017, WJAL submitted a channel-sharing agreement with WUSA (channel 9).[3] WJAL retained its existing callsign and virtual channel number, but moved its city of license to Silver Spring, Maryland.[12][1]> The over-the-air signal from Tuscarora Mountain went
dark at midnight on September 30, 2017, and the station immediately moved to WUSA's transmitter in the early morning of October 1.[13][14]
Although Entravision's stated goal was to convert WJAL to a
UniMás affiliate, WJAL broadcast
LATV instead. Entravision and
Univision Communications entered into a 16-year
joint sales agreement on January 1, 2006, under which Entravision operated Univision affiliate
WFDC (channel 14). Current UniMás affiliate
WMDO-CD (channel 47) was additionally bound to the network until the contract's expiration on December 31, 2021.[15] A provision prohibiting Entravision from operating another station with a "Spanish-language format" in the Washington market was removed in a revision that took effect on the first weekday after the channel-share was implemented, October 2, 2017, allowing WJAL to air LATV.[16]
In May 2018, WJAL switched its affiliation to the
Heartland network.[citation needed] LATV has since returned to its previous location on WMDO-CD's second subchannel. WJAL flipped again to the
brokeredSonlife Broadcasting Network on June 15, joining
WWTD-LD as the second SBN station in Washington.[17]
In September 2021, WJAL began airing
NTD America programming. This was flipped to
home shopping programming from
ShopHQ in November 2023.[18]
WJAL shut down its analog signal, over
UHF channel 68, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were to
transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 39,[21] using
virtual channel 68.
(*) – indicates station is in one of Maryland's primary
TV markets (**) – indicates station is in an out-of-state TV market, but reaches a small portion of Maryland
(*) – indicates station is in one of Virginia's primary
TV markets (**) – indicates station is in an out-of-state TV market, but reaches a small portion of Virginia
(*) – indicates station is in one of West Virginia's primary
TV markets (**) – indicates station is in an out-of-state TV market, but reaches a small portion of West Virginia