The Mystery of WOFT-LD - LPTV Strikes Back

13th May, 2024

Ah, screw it. Do you ever just do something entirely out of spite? Even if it derails an ongoing project that you’ve been trying to publish for months? Because when I see anything LPTV-related be deemed as “not-notable enough”, I get so pissed that I make an entire blogpost about it.

Here I was thinking I was done with LPTV. Apparently not. When I was researching the new Weigel network, MeTV Toons, I found an unknown station listed as one of the new affiliates - WOME-LD, digital channel 11.1. Now, I know that’s not the title of this post, but I assure you that I always spiral down some kind of rabbit hole whenever I write these posts. Anyway, WOME-LD, a VHF station in unincorporated Bithlo, seemed like an interesting choice. I couldn’t pick it up at all and had never heard of it, so I went over to the AVSForum to see what was up. Apparently, it was airing something in late 2022, although no one was able to pick it up. The station went dark for a year and is now set to air the new network when it launches on 25 June. But something else caught my eye… a mysterious “channel 8” that kept getting brought up - WOME-LD.

Strap in. This is going to be another one of my descents into madness.

You’re Watching… 8?

And I mean literal madness. I knew a “channel eight” in the Orlando area sounded familiar. One poster on the forum had even compared it to an old UHF station with how shoddy the sound and video quality was. That was when I instantly put the pieces together.

Let me set the stage. The day is October 23, 2019. I’ve just driven over to the dentist’s office to finally get that filling (or was it drilling) that I had procrastinated on for so long. I get it done, drive home high as can be, and immediately plop down on the couch to watch anything as I ride out the novocaine-fueled high. I turn on the television, see some old western, and am immediately transfixed on the monochromatic horses prancing through the fields. Then, it’s 11:00. The signal cuts to a station ID with no sound, no video, just a still frame. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It felt like a minute, but it was really like ten seconds, and I just couldn’t grab my phone in time to take a picture. Yet there it was, a mysterious “channel 8” that I had never heard of before.

This was my best attempt to recreate exactly what I had seen on that fateful day, done about half an hour after seeing it. This was identical to the station ID that played at the top of the hour.

I never saw the mysterious “8” ever again. Until today in 2024 when I was looking for new information on the MeTV Toons affiliate, that is.

After seeing the name pop up so many times in the forums, I went to look it up. I saw a Wikipedia article and clicked on it. Well, it turns out the article was deleted not even a full day before I got to it.

Apparently, someone who had joined Wikipedia nine months ago deemed it as non-notable. Non-notable? NON-NOTABLE?! Oh, I’ll show you that this is very notable! At least to weird broadcasting nerds in Orlando like me! Screw the coverage of the UK’s transition to digital, we’re interrupting this program with a little history lesson on WOFT-LD, the non-notable LPTV station that I can’t even receive, yet care way too much about!

The Beginnings…?

WOFT-LD was first issued construction permits in March of 2005 to be a digital companion channel with the call sign W08EA. Just about two years and a month later, it became WOFT-LP. In June 2011, WOFT-LP became WOFT-LD, a common suffix for specifically digital LPTV stations. One has to assume that they made the jump to digital by then. Owned by Budd Broadcasting, the station (as of 2022) has four digital subchannels, airing Retro TV on 8-1, Heartland on 8-2, Ace TV on 8-3, and something called Rev’n on 8-4. WOFT-LD has an effective radiating power of only 3 kW and is located within unincorporated Bithlo, Florida, just east of Orlando. From what I remember of that dodgy station ID, they claim to serve the Orlando/Daytona Beach area.

…And that’s just about all I can dig up on the specifics. Budd Broadcasting isn’t even listed on RabbitEars as owning a WOFT-LD, nor a WOFT-LP. I found the unfortunately-named (in this day and age) WNFT-LD, but nothing for our station here. When I looked on Yelp for them, I found a particularly useful review from one Richard H., a disgruntled viewer.

Yeah, that helps a lot.

A Notable Lead…?

Actually, it does help. I remember hearing about poor sound. I remember hearing about the station going dark sometime in 2023. Now we know that they were indeed broadcasting in August 2023, albeit without sound. I went back to the forums to dig up some more information.

By October 2023, WOFT-LD had been off the air for two weeks. This continued into November. Apparently, they had been installing a new transmitter and filed to go silent in November, first going silent on 13 October 2023. The applicant is Bridge News LLC, so it seems like Budd Broadcasting may be out of the picture now. Then, by the eleventh (of November that is), they were back on the air.

In December 2022, they were having audio issues, but could be picked up as far as the theme parks in Orlando proper. In January 2023, the audio issues returned. Seems like a common theme with this station. By the eighth of that month, WOME-LD (remember them?) was on the air. By November 2023, both 8-1 and 8-3 were airing the Ace channel, meaning Retro TV (what I likely saw in 2019) was out. Knowing the station’s history, I’m not sure if this was an error or not. By December 2023, things had changed again. The current roster seems to be the following:

“The rest”, as the poster claimed, is your usual teleshopping paid programming faire. And then, just a few days later, the sound issues return. Either way, no one seemed to know what was going on for a while.

…And that’s all there is. But I have to ask myself, is that all there is to a non-notable low power television station? Is that all there is?

IS THAT ALL THERE ISSSSSS…

If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep digging! Hell, there’s got to be something here. The AVSForum had been exceptionally helpful in my hunt thus far and I wasn’t ready to accept defeat and finally take my medication for the night, so I went searching for more references. But first, I decided to check YouTube… and there it was!

So I wasn’t crazy! It did air black and white programming. I did see those horses that day! And I sure as shit saw that foreboding 8. I wasn’t imagining things. It was REAL. IT WAS… NOTABLE! And look, there’s another one with more than still images! (Thank you to artax84z for this capture!) It’s early, so Retro TV was airing their FCC-mandated E/i programming for the day - Biz Kids.

Going back on the forums, I found a few closing tidbits. The earliest mention of WOFT-DT (not LP, as the deleted Wikipedia page claimed) was in May 2008 when the poster erroneously claimed it to be a Melbourne station on channel 43. By January 2009, another poster confirmed that WOFT did not appear to be on the air. By March, WOFT-LP (not LD) was “a mystery” to one poster.

I was just about to mention W07BP! Stay tuned- no, keep looking up-, er, just keep reading.

In 2013, Unimas was reported to be on WOFT-LD. Lord Zedd seemed to be reporting on the spotty station in 2016, already showing some early signs of faltering. The lack of commercials makes me question if Retro TV was something picked up in the later years and if it was truly run like an old high-UHF independent station in the early years.

Throughout the year, WOFT-LD 8.1, when it decided to sign-on, aired old movies with no commercials and very low volume. In December 2017, Lord Zedd confirmed that Retro TV and Heartland were to air on the station, confirming my suspicions. At the start of the new year, the lineup looked more like this:

This is exactly what the second video shows. By 2021, 8-3 was finally aligned with whatever “Ace” is. In May, Lord Zedd came back with another update - Rev’n (which seems to be a motorsports-focused network, something I’d be into) was now on 8-4.

So now our timeline’s finally complete! I can finally sleep safely knowing that someone out there has documented the mysterious WOFT-LD, or “8”. Now, did it turn out to be notable after all? Absolutely not. I think I just wasted three hours going through this rubbish. But something being “non-notable” doesn’t mean it deserves to get wiped away. I think that there should be some kind of place for smaller broadcasting mysteries like WOFT-LD and I’m more than happy to make my blog that place.

I’d like to extend a special thank you to the members over at the AVSForum for tracking this station down over the years! Without you guys, I’d just be stuck on that new MeTV Toons station’s call sign.

So, notable or not, this closes the case on another LPTV mystery. I can only hope we’re done covering them, but now that I’ve dug myself into this deep rabbit hole of low-powered wackiness… I think I just need to keep looking up. (AND DIGGING MYSELF OUT OF IT!)

- Lcd101

By the way, remember W07BP? Our friend Florida TV DX did a scan ten years ago that picked that station up! I figured the low-budget station ID was too on-brand to not cover here. Enjoy! (Starts at 1:33. I've also uploaded the station ID by itself on my YouTube channel.