WUVC DT

History

Channel 40 had its beginnings in Fayetteville as WKFT-TV, the first independent station in eastern North Carolina. It received a construction permit on July 22, 1980, and went on the air less than a year later on June 1, 1981. WKFT first operated from the old First Union Bank on the corner of Donaldson and Russell Streets in downtown Fayetteville and transmitted its signal from a 750-foot (230 m) tower in unincorporated Cumberland County on Cliffdale Road, with 1.54 million watts of power (the tower site has since been annexed into Fayetteville).

Fayetteville Television, a group of local businessmen organized by Robert Warren, a former Fayetteville reporter for then-ABC affiliate WRAL-TV (channel 5, now a NBC affiliate) in Raleigh, founded the station. Warren served as WKFT's first general manager, but was never an investor and was let go after only a month. WKFT offered a general entertainment format consisting of cartoons, westerns, religious shows, dramas and classic sitcoms. The station put a fairly decent signal into the southern portion of the Triangle, but was harder to receive in the more populated areas of the market.

In 1985, WKFT was sold to SJL Broadcasting, which formed Central Carolina Television to manage the station. The new owners subsequently invested about $5 million to build a new 1,800-foot (550 m) tower near the Harnett/Lee County line. The new transmitter, activated in June 1986, operated with a full five million watts of power. It brought WKFT's signal to the entire Triangle, and as far west as Greensboro. The station also rebranded itself as "Counterforce 40" and significantly upgraded its programming, filling a void left when WLFL, the Triangle's largest independent, joined the upstart Fox network. However, it operated on a low budget, selling advertising mainly in the southern part of the market. By 1989, the station was in dire financial straits, reportedly from debts owed to film houses for movies shown on the station.

In December 1989, WRAL's transmission tower was destroyed in a severe ice storm, forcing it off the air. Within three hours, WKFT picked up WRAL-TV's entire broadcast schedule. It simulcast WRAL entirely until October 1990, when WRAL's new transmission tower was erected. Additionally, WRAL purchased the WKFT tower at Broadway. It installed Electronic news-gathering microwave receivers vital to relaying Fayetteville coverage to the WRAL studios in West Raleigh. After the simulcast ended, WKFT resumed a general entertainment format that fall with stronger programming offering a blend of sitcoms, cartoons, movies, talk shows and reality shows.

In the spring of 1991, Delta Broadcasting bought WKFT. By this time, the station was known as simply "TV 40." In 1994, the station was sold to Allied Communications, who subsequently sold it to Bahakel Communications in 1996. WKFT lost bids for the UPN and WB affiliations to WRDC and WRAZ respectively, and remained the only full-market general entertainment independent in the Triangle.

As the 1990s went on, stronger programming became more difficult to find, and WKFT moved toward more paid programming (though it did briefly serve as the over-the-air home of the Carolina Hurricanes). On March 14, 2002, the station's transmission tower was struck by a small aircraft. Although the station's broadcasts continued on local cable systems, the station remained off the air for a few months.

The station was purchased by Univision Communications in April 2003. It switched its callsign and network affiliation on June 1 of that year, becoming the North Carolina's area's first Spanish-language television station. Its English-language programming inventory was picked up by WLFL and WRDC. The station later moved from its longtime studios in downtown Fayetteville to a new facility in Raleigh.

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WUVC discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 40, 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 continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 38. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 40.

News operation

In 1986, WKFT debuted a locally produced prime-time newscast at 10 p.m., which focused more on Fayetteville and the southern part of the Triangle market. The newscast was later cancelled in 1989. After Delta Broadcasting bought WKFT in 1991, news programming was reinstated, although relegated to hourly news updates. In the mid-1990s, WKFT produced a live noon newscast, with national segments provided by Conus Communications' All News Channel.

After becoming a Univision-owned station, on April 19, 2004, WUVC launched the first Spanish-language news operation in North Carolina, with prime-time news briefs branded as Notibreves. As part of an expansion of Univision's local news operations, the station added a weeknight 6 p.m. and 11 pm newscast, titled Noticias 40, on August 29, 2011; it is the first Spanish-language newscast in North Carolina.

Out-of-market cable carriage

In recent years, WUVC has been carried on cable in multiple areas outside of the Raleigh-Durham media market. That includes cable systems within the Greensboro, Greenville and Myrtle Beach, SC markets in North Carolina.

On October 16, 2013, WUVC replaced the national Univision feed on Time Warner Cable's Charlotte-area systems. The station changed its branding from simply "Univision 40" to "Univision 40 North Carolina," reflecting that it now reaches half the state via cable.