WGFL (channel 28) is a television station licensed to High Springs, Florida, United States, serving the Gainesville area as an affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. It is owned by New Age Media alongside low-power broadcasting#Television, low-power, Class A television service, Class A Antenna TV affiliate WYME-CD (channel 45); New Age also provides certain services to NBC affiliate WNBW-DT (channel 9) under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with MPS Media. All three stations, in turn, are operated under a master service agreement by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The stations share studios on Northwest 80th Boulevard (along Interstate 75 in Florida, I-75/Florida State Road 93, SR 93) in Gainesville; WGFL's transmitter is located on Southwest 30th Avenue near Newberry, Florida, Newberry. WGFL was also used to provide full-market over-the-air high-definition television, high definition digital coverage of co-owned low-power Analog television, analog MyNetworkTV affiliate WMYG-LP (simulcast over WGFL-DT2). This ended when the low-power station's license was canceled on November 18, 2015; it now operates solely as a subchannel of WGFL. The Gainesville media market, market is located between several other Florida TV markets. In these areas, local cable systems opt instead for the affiliate for their home market instead of WGFL. This includes Spectrum (cable service), Charter Spectrum and Cox in Ocala, Florida, Ocala (part of the Orlando, Florida, Orlando market) that both offer WKMG-TV. In Lake City, Florida, Lake City (part of the Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville market), Xfinity, Comcast Xfinity provides WJAX-TV.

History

As a WB affiliate

WGFL signed on September 20, 1997, offering an analog television, analog signal on UHF channel 53. It originally served as the The WB, WB affiliate for the Gainesville area and was known on-air as "WB 53". The station also maintained a secondary affiliation with UPN, carrying its programming at 10 p.m. following WB's regular prime time schedule. WGFL's daytime programming mainly consisted of classic sitcom reruns along with various reality television, reality/talk shows such as ''The Queen Latifah Show, Queen Latifah''. Like most WB affiliates at the time, WGFL carried the afternoon Kids' WB line up along with more youth oriented sitcoms like ''Sister, Sister (TV series), Sister, Sister'' during the evenings.

Joining CBS

In May 2002, WGFL announced its intention to affiliate with the CBS network on July 15, 2002; this came about as an affiliation switch arose involving then-CBS affiliate WJXT and then-UPN affiliate WTEV (now WJAX-TV) in Jacksonville, which led WJXT to drop CBS programming and become an Independent station (North America), independent. Up until that point, WJXT had served as the default CBS affiliate for Gainesville because its signal offered Rimshot (broadcasting), city-grade coverage into the area. When the switch took place, WGFL gained the CBS affiliation and the station re-branded to "CBS 4" (preferring to go by its cable channel number on Cox systems). Now displaced, the UPN programs were moved to Late night television, late night hours on WGFL while The WB moved over to a new cable-only station branded as "WB 10" (again referring to the Cox channel assignment). The UPN programming would later move from WGFL in 2004 (see #Translators, Translators). The CBS affiliation also brought Florida Gators football as well as the National Football League, NFL to the station through the network's rights to air Southeastern Conference, SEC and American Football Conference, AFC football games. The SEC on CBS, SEC games have been high ratings draws especially during the Gators' national championship seasons of 2006 and 2008. WGFL also aired the Florida Gators men's basketball team's victories in the 2006 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game, 2006 and 2007 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game, 2007 NCAA national championship games. During the mid 2000s, WGFL went through a couple of ownership changes. In 2004, the station was sold to Pegasus Communications due an earlier Local marketing agreement, time brokerage agreement with then-owner Budd Broadcasting A short time later, WGFL would become part of New Age Media after Pegasus filed for bankruptcy in 2005. On September 25, 2013, New Age Media announced that it would sell most of its stations, including WGFL and WMYG-LP, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Concurrently, sister station WNBW-DT was slated to be sold to Cunningham Broadcasting and was to continue to be operated by WGFL. On October 31, 2014, New Age Media requested the dismissal of its application to sell WGFL; the next day, Sinclair purchased the non-license assets of the stations it planned to buy from New Age Media and began operating them through a master service agreement. After WGFL's acquisition by Sinclair, the station retired its 12 year old "CBS 4" logo in April 2016 and replaced it with a simplified logo identical to sister station KDBC-TV, KDBC in El Paso, Texas.

Programming

As of September 2022, broadcast syndication, syndicated programming on WGFL includes ''The Jennifer Hudson Show'', ''Rachael Ray (talk show), Rachael Ray'', ''Jeopardy!'', ''Wheel of Fortune (American game show), Wheel of Fortune'', ''Hot Bench'', and ''Judge Judy'' among others. The latter five programs are distributed by CBS Media Ventures. Syndicated programming on WGFL-DT2 includes ''Judge Mathis'', ''Judge Judy'', ''Two and a Half Men'', ''2 Broke Girls'', ''Last Man Standing (American TV series), Last Man Standing'', ''Young Sheldon'', ''Modern Family'', and ''Pawn Stars'' among others. WGFL also airs ''The Ilene Silverman Show'', a local public affairs (broadcasting), public affairs program, on Saturdays at 6:30 a.m. In 2002, WGFL aired a weekly sports-oriented show on Friday evenings called ''Sports Showdown''. The show mainly focused on the Florida Gators, Gator sports teams and was originally hosted by Larry Vettel with former The Gainesville Sun, Gainesville Sun sports columnist Pat Dooley.

News operation

When the station became a CBS affiliate in 2002, there were plans to start a local news operation as early as the fall of that year. In 2003, WGFL reached an agreement to simulcast the noon, 6:00 p.m., and 11:00 p.m. newscasts from fellow CBS affiliate WTEV in Jacksonville, beginning that November. While WTEV's newscasts focused on the Jacksonville area, they did cover Gainesville during Gator football season or major news events. After a few years, WGFL quietly dropped the WTEV simulcasts in the fall of 2006 and replaced it with the nationally syndicated ''INN News'', produced by Independent News Network. On October 27, 2010, WGFL launched a local newscast produced by INN under the branding ''GTN News'' (standing for "Gainesville Television Network"). The newscast was produced from INN's studios (initially in Davenport, Iowa, but later Little Rock, Arkansas) using centralized anchors, and footage from local reporters. Currently, WGFL simulcasts with WNBW-DT, WNBW at 6:00 and 11:00 p.m.; the 11:00 p.m. newscast can be broadcast delay, delayed on either station due to network obligations. WGFL and WNBW also simulcast local news and weather cut-ins on weekday mornings during their respective Breakfast television, national network shows. WGFL also aired a standalone 5:30 p.m. newscast which was canceled a few years later. On April 4, 2016, it began using Sinclair's standard News music, music and graphics package, and was renamed ''CBS 4 News''. By October 2019, production of the newscast had been taken over by Sinclair's West Palm Beach CBS affiliate WPEC, using a secondary studio and set that been previously used by Sinclair's defunct American Sports Network.

Technical information

Subchannels

The station's digital signal is Multiplex (TV), multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital conversion

WGFL discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over Ultra high frequency, UHF channel 53, on July 18, 2008. The station's digital signal broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 28. It was one of very few Big Three television networks, big three affiliates permitted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cease analog transmission prior to the national Digital television transition in the United States, digital switchover on June 12, 2009. As part of the Spectrum reallocation#Repacking, repacking process following the Spectrum reallocation#Broadcast incentive auction, 2016–2017 FCC incentive auction, WGFL moved its UHF channel allocation number from 28 to 29 on January 17, 2020.

Former translators

WGFL formerly operated two analog Broadcast relay station#Broadcast translators, translator stations, which rebroadcast its signal to other parts of the Media market, broadcast market: # WLCF/WMYG had operated as a translator of WGFL since the station's sign-on in 1997. # WYPN became a translator of WGFL on July 15, 2002; it had previously operated as an independent station since 1994. It would later become a separate station when it picked up the UPN affiliation on December 1, 2004.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wgfl CBS network affiliates MyNetworkTV affiliates TBD (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1997 1997 establishments in Florida Television stations in Gainesville, Florida, GFL Sinclair Broadcast Group