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WHDF
Florence/Huntsville/Decatur, Alabama
Branding	The Valley's CW
Channels	Analog: 15 (UHF) Digital: 14 (UHF)
Affiliations	The CW
Owner	Lockwood Broadcasting
Founded	October 1957
Call letters meaning	W Huntsville Decatur Florence
Former callsigns	WOWL-TV (1957-2000)
Former affiliations	NBC (1957-2000) UPN (2000-2006)
Transmitter Power	2510 kW (analog) 1000 kW (digital)
Height	431 m (both)
Facility ID	65128
Transmitter Coordinates	35°0′5.7″N, 87°8′3.9″W
Website	www.thevalleyscw.tv

WHDF is The CW affiliate in northern Alabama, airing on channel 15. WHDF is under the ownership of Lockwood Broadcasting.

The station began in 1957 as WOWL-TV, based in Florence. The station was owned by Richard "Dick" Biddle. Up until 2000, that station broadcast NBC programs to northwestern Alabama and portions of southern middle Tennessee and northeastern Mississippi; it carried also some popular CBS shows like the soap opera As the World Turns.

WOWL-TV always faced competing NBC affiliates in Huntsville or Decatur, whose signals reached much of its broadcast area; however, it retained viewership in the Shoals region by offering local newscasts, which for most of the station's 40-plus years were the only TV newscasts concerned with that area only. However, channel 15 lost much of that advantage when the Huntsville stations began opening news bureaus in the Shoals in the 1980s or so. That factor probably played the decisive role in influencing WOWL-TV's local owners to sell to outside interests, along with NBC giving them notice of dis-affiliation(WAFF fully services market) to redirect the signal and the coverage area eastward, toward the growing Huntsville-Decatur market and roll out UPN in the Huntsville market. WAAY-TV packaged a 9PM newscast for UPN15 for the first 2 years of operation.

WHDF's studios are located in Florence, and the station maintains a Huntsville sales office on Andrew Jackson Way, in the Five Points neighborhood. The station's transmitter is located southeast of Minor Hill, Tennessee, just 450 meters (500 yards) north of the Alabama state line.

In September 2006, both UPN and The WB television network ceased operations. A single new network, The CW, replaced those two struggling entities. WHDF, the UPN affiliate, was granted the northern Alabama affiliation rights for the new network earlier that year, and rebranded as The Valley's CW at Midnight on July 27, 2006. (The former WB affiliate, meanwhile, became WAMY-TV, affiliated with My Network TV.)

The Huntsville-Decatur television market is the only Southeastern U.S. market to have only UHF channel allocations. No full-power VHF stations exist at all in the state of Alabama north of Birmingham; thus, none of the North Alabama-based channels have ever suffered a disadvantage from competing against established VHF stations in the same area, a problem that particularly affected UHF broadcasters elsewhere, well into the early 1980s.

• www.thevalleyscw.tv
• CW Huntsville WHDF Homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WHDF