WFDC-DT

Channel 14 first signed on as WOOK-TV on March 5, 1963 as the first television station in the country aimed at the African-American demographic. WOOK's claim to fame was their teen-oriented dance show called Teenarama, which featured big-name acts such as James Brown and Marvin Gaye. In 1968, the station changed its call letters, to WFAN-TV (the WFAN call letters are now used on a radio station at 660 AM in New York City). From 1968 to 1972, channel 14 was the sister station to WMET-TV (channel 24) in Baltimore, Maryland. Both stations were owned by United Broadcasting. On February 12, 1972, WFAN-TV went dark after accumulating financial difficulties and due to license hearings affecting its sister stations.[3]

Channel 14 was back on the air by 1976 in the form of translator W14AA, relaying Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation's WNVT from Annandale, Virginia. CVETC attempted to have the full-powered channel 14 allocation moved to Fairfax, but this request was denied. What was to become WNVC was constructed on channel 56 instead, and upon its sign-on in June 1981 W14AA was no longer necessary.[4][3] CVETC received special approval to broadcast Congressional hearings in the interim; later in the year, the station was sold to Los Cerezos Television Co., who converted it to an affiliate of the Spanish International Network (Univision's predecessor). This station moved to channel 48 in 1989 and is today WMDO-CD.[5]

A new station on channel 14 signed on as WTMW on August 3, 1993; the call letters came from the initials of the station's owner, Theodore M. White. From 1997 to May 1999, WTMW aired programming from America's Store, a discount shopping channel operated by the Home Shopping Network.

Former logo, used until December 31, 2012.

In May 1999, WTMW began airing the new Military Channel (not related to the cable channel of the same name owned by Discovery Communications, which is now the American Heroes Channel). After the Military Channel stopped broadcasting one month later, channel 14 aired programming from the Panda Shopping Network. Channel 14 became an affiliate of the American Independent Network in December 1999, which primarily broadcast reruns of old sitcoms and infomercials. The channel changed affiliations again in January 2001, when it became an affiliate of the Renaissance Network.

None of these formats were financially viable and in November 2001, Theodore M. White sold the station to Univision Communications and its call letters were changed to WFDC. Univision already had a Washington affiliate on channel 47, WMDO-CA (that station's owner, Entravision Communications, would take over WFDC through a local marketing agreement), so WFDC instead became one of the first flagship stations of their new network TeleFutura. The network was created to directly compete with Telemundo for the Latino American demographic, since Univision is more Mexican-oriented. Telefutura first broadcast on January 14, 2002 and channel 14 has done better financially since then.

On January 1, 2006, WFDC and WMDO swapped network affiliations: WFDC affiliated with Univision, while WMDO took the TeleFutura affiliation.

On April 3, 2014, Katz Broadcasting announced plans to multicast Grit and Escape on WFDC's DT3 and DT4 subchannels. The two networks began broadcasting on August 18, 2014. Escape was replaced by Katz's Bounce TV on September 30, 2017.[6]

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

WFDC does not carry WMDO-CD on a subchannel due to separate legal ownership; although WFDC is managed by Entravision, the license is held by Univision. In 2001, Entravision purchased WJAL (channel 68) for the sole purpose of moving it from Hagerstown, Maryland to Silver Spring to take over as a full-market UniMás affiliate, although they were unsuccessful.[7] WJAL was eventually able to relocate to Silver Spring as a result of the 2016–17 television spectrum reallocation, although it currently airs the SonLife Broadcasting Network (SBN) instead.

WFDC shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 14, 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 15.[8] Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 14.