WAMI-DT (channel 69) is a television station licensed to Hollywood, Florida, United States, serving as the Miami-area outlet for the Spanish-language network UniMás. It is owned and operated by TelevisaUnivision alongside Univision station WLTV-DT (channel 23). The two stations share studios known as "NewsPort" (a converted studio facility that also houses Noticias Univision) on Northwest 30th Terrace in Doral; WAMI-DT's transmitter is located in Pembroke Park, Florida.
WAMI is one of two commercial television stations with a city of license in Broward County, the other being Telemundo station WSCV (channel 51), licensed to Fort Lauderdale. The station also serves as the de facto UniMás outlet for the West Palm Beach market.
History
Prior to being used by a full-power station, the channel 69 allocation was occupied by W69AA, a translator for WCIX (channel 6). The analog channel 6 transmitter was located in Homestead because of station spacing restrictions to channel 6 in Orlando; W69AA and two other translators, all commissioned in 1972, provided WCIX programming to areas in Broward County and Boca Raton. As applications proceeded on the full-power allotment, W69AA was displaced; it went silent and returned as W58BU, a translator of WTVJ, on March 10, 1994.
Early years
In 1981, four applications were received for a full-power television station on channel 69, from Whitco Broadcasters; Family Television 69, owned by Hialeah pastor Adib Eden, Sr.; Golden East Broadcasters; and Christian Media of Florida. In April, the FCC selected Whitco over the other applicants, saying that Christian Media of Florida's three pastor owners would not be able to balance ministry and station operations; Whitco offered $111,000 to its competitors to end the proceeding.
Whitco, owned by Eddie Whitehead and Thomas Coates, proposed the first African-American-owned television station in South Florida, aimed at the same audience. The construction permit took the call letters WDEM and secured space on the new tower being built by Guy Gannett Communications in Pembroke Park.
An attempt to sell a majority stake in the construction permit to an investor group that sought to program channel 69 as a Spanish-language station fell through in early 1985. On February 19, 1987, the Home Shopping Network (HSN) announced that it was acquiring a majority stake in WDEM, with the option to buy the facility outright upon completion for $10 million.
WAMI first signed on the air on August 10, 1988, as WYHS-TV. Before the station launched, WYHS-TV simulcast audio from WHYI-FM (Y-100) with live telecasting views of Miami before signing on. When it signed on, WYHS-TV carried programming from the Home Shopping Network. Two months later, HSN's broadcasting division, Silver King Communications, acquired the remainder of the station. The primary purpose of these stations was to force carriage of HSN on cable providers in each market through the Federal Communications Commission's must-carry provisions as QVC was taking away a large slice of HSN's audience as several providers had held an ownership interest in QVC, but not HSN. Eventually, Silver King Communications acquired an ownership interest in the USA Network, and as a result, later became USA Broadcasting, the broadcast arm of media company USA Networks, Inc. In the fall of 1997, channel 69 began carrying Fox Kids programming, after it was dropped by the market's WB affiliate WDZL (channel 39, later WBZL and now WSFL-TV), which acquired the block in 1993 after Fox affiliate WSVN (channel 7) decided to stop carrying Fox's children's programming.