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WOOK-TV was a television station that broadcast on channel 14 to Washington, D.C., United States. Operating from 1963 to 1972 (using the WFAN-TV call sign from 1968 to 1972), it was the first television station in the United States to orient its entire programming to an African-American audience, along the lines of co-owned WOOK radio. Mounting license troubles for the United Broadcasting station group, economic difficulties faced by independent and UHF stations, and an inability to upgrade channel 14's facilities to be competitive in the market led to the closure of WFAN-TV on February 12, 1972.
In February, Eaton announced that WOOK-TV would debut with programming in the evenings only and would not feature a network affiliation or a schedule of films; in addition, Eaton, planned to build out the Baltimore construction permit as a semi-satellite of WOOK-TV. The station signed jazz musician Lionel Hampton as its musical director. WOOK-TV would launch from WOOK radio's studio facility in the Chillum Castle Manor subdivision, on 1st Place, NE.
Initially planned to debut in September 1962, WOOK-TV's start was delayed due to technical challenges. It missed another launch date, in February, in part due to equipment issues and also because it had a problem to sort out in the Black community. Leaders in the Urban League and the NAACP worried that the station would not represent the community well, that WOOK-TV would depict African Americans "in the tap-dancing, shouting type of program", much as in radio; Eaton pledged not to program "distasteful" shows on the new station. The station finally debuted on March 6, 1963. It was the District's second UHF television station, after public WETA-TV (channel 26), which had gone on the air in 1961. Some 90,000 to 100,000 UHF converters were in place when channel 14 signed on.
Channel 14's connection with WOOK radio also had its advantages. Six days a week, WOOK disc jockey Bob King hosted Teenarama Dance Party, an in-studio dance show with a black teenage audience. Over a seven-year run on the air (though King left in a dispute with management in 1968), Teenarama hosted rising stars and famous musicians including Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp and Brook Benton, as well as musical talent in town to play the Howard Theatre. Teenarama Dance Party would later be considered the most important program in WOOK-TV/WFAN-TV's broadcast history.
WOOK-TV also produced for local and national advertisers commercials for its target market. The station's production department counted among its clients Budweiser, Safeway, Sinclair Oil, Newport cigarettes and Speed Queen washers and dryers.
On March 1, 1967, the Baltimore station, with the call letters WMET-TV and having been moved to channel 24 in a 1961 allocation revision, began telecasting, with plans to carry 80 percent of WOOK-TV's programming. An attempted 1971 sale of WMET-TV to the Christian Broadcasting Network never closed, and channel 24 folded on January 14, 1972.
More than the programming and call letters was changing at the newly renamed WFAN-TV in 1968. John Panagos, the station's general manager and vice president of United, was replaced with E. Carlton "Bud" Myers; Bob King left, leaving Teenarama Dance Party to rotate hosts until it ended in 1970; and an attempt to unionize led to a walkout at the end of August.
At the next renewal cycle, in 1969, the FCC designated Washington Community's challenges alongside WOOK's and WFAN-TV's license renewals for hearing. Washington Community had become the only challenger for channel 14 when Washington Civic Television dropped out and merged with it, bringing Truman-era Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold into its fold. It then dropped out of the television fight in 1970 after the death of Pearson the year before. (Washington Community would eventually win the 1340 frequency held by WOOK radio, with the result being the launch of WYCB in August 1978.) United also attempted to upgrade WFAN-TV's signal, boosting its effective radiated power to 1,265 kW from a transmitter site in Bethesda, Maryland; however, the FCC denied the move because of overlap with WMET-TV's signal.
That November, amid calls to delete channel 14 from television use in Washington and convert it to land mobile use, United found a buyer for WFAN-TV: two Milwaukee businessmen, Robert S. Block and Marvin Fishman, who proposed operation of channel 14 on a subscription television basis and would pay $250,000 for the channel if the FCC approved their plan.
In 1973, while the hearing examiner's initial decision found against WOOK and preferred its competing application to the renewal of that station, it found United qualified to be a licensee and recommended renewal of channel 14's (unchallenged) license. United asked the FCC to keep the WFAN-TV license active while it tried to sell it, but the FCC said that because of the multiple and interrelated proceedings against Eaton that were likely to take years, that would simply take too long. The commission ordered United to put WFAN-TV and WMET-TV back on the air by July 1. The deadline was pushed back to December 1; United notified the FCC that it intended to appeal the order. On April 26, 1974, the FCC ruled that both licenses should be revoked so that new applications could be accepted for Washington's channel 14 and Baltimore's channel 24.
Later in the year, CVETC sold W14AA to Los Cerezos Television Company. Los Cerezos (Spanish for "Cherry Trees") had established in 1980 a satellite-fed translator station on channel 56 of the Spanish International Network, the second such "satellator", initially authorized on an experimental basis. After the FCC gave its approval to feed translators by satellite, W14AA returned to air as the Washington affiliate of SIN (now known as Univision). In order to accommodate the new full-power channel 14, this station moved to channel 48 in 1989 and is today WMDO-CD.
As the FCC began taking applications for a new licensee for channel 14, now licensed to Arlington, Virginia, D.C. mayor Walter E. Washington expressed his desire that the new channel 14 be minority-owned. Overruling his initial decision, in 1984, administrative law judge Edward Kuhlmann selected the bid of Urban Telecommunications Corporation, finding that since Urban was financially qualified, its management and operations were more integrated than those of previous winner WSCT-TV. After years of extensions, the station went on the air in 1993 as WTMW, named for Urban's sole owner, Theodore M. White.
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