The station first broadcast on August 1, 1984, originally licensed to Hagerstown, Maryland as that city's third television station. It was also the fourth independent station in the Washington DMA and the first independent in the market outside the core city of Washington. Despite being licensed to Hagerstown, WJAL's offices were located in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and its transmitter was located west of Chambersburg, atop Tuscarora Mountain near the town of McConnellsburg. WJAL was the Washington market's charter WB affiliate when the network launched on January 11, 1995. Six weeks later, The WB added WFTY, based in Washington proper. As WJAL had a largely rural coverage area far from Washington, both stations aired the network's programming. The station ended its WB affiliation on September 14, 1998, as management felt its programming did not fit with their family-friendly image. In 2001, Good Companion Broadcasting, a Christian broadcasting non-profit organization, sold WJAL-TV to Entravision for $10.3 million. The main impetus of the purchase of WJAL for Entravision was to attempt to move the station's license to Silver Spring, Maryland as a replacement for its low-power WMDO-CA, which at the time was a Univision affiliate. WJAL first attempted to move its then-proposed digital signal on channel 16 to Silver Spring in 2002. The application was denied as the Federal Communications Commission determined local television service to Hagerstown would be unfairly affected. The proposed signal would also cause unacceptable interference to adjacent channel 17, which is used for public safety services in Washington. Entravision submitted an appeal in 2006, as it had changed WJAL's choice for its post-digital-transition channel from 16 to 39. By this time, the FCC had decided to stop considering the relocation of a station's city of license in preparation for the 2009 digital television transition. After the freeze, the FCC decided it would no longer support such a move and dismissed the application in 2012. Thus, WJAL continued to run a family-friendly English format for Hagerstown, a market with a traditionally low need for a Spanish-language outlet.
Spectrum sale and channel-sharing agreement; move to Washington
In the FCC's incentive auction, WJAL sold its channel 39 allocation for $25,492,333 and indicated that it would enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement. On July 28, 2017, WJAL submitted a channel-sharing agreement with WUSA. WJAL retained its existing callsign and virtual channel number, but moved its city of license to Silver Spring, Maryland. The over-the-air signal from Tuscarora Mountain went dark at midnight on September 30, 2017, and the station immediately moved to WUSA's transmitter in the early morning of October 1. Although Entravision's stated goal was to convert WJAL to a UniMas affiliate, WJAL broadcast LATV instead. Entravision and Univision Communications entered into a 16-year joint sales agreement on January 1, 2006, under which Entravision operates Univision affiliate WFDC. Current UniMás affiliate WMDO-CD is additionally bound to the network until the contract's expiration on December 31, 2021. A provision prohibiting Entravision from operating another station with a "Spanish-language format" in the Washington market was removed in a revision that took effect on the first weekday after the channel-share was implemented, October 2, 2017, allowing WJAL to air LATV. In May 2018, WJAL switched its affiliation to the Heartland network. LATV has since returned to its previous location on WMDO-CD's second subchannel. WJAL flipped again to the brokeredSonLife Broadcasting Network on June 15, joining WWTD-LD as the second SBN station in Washington.
Digital television
Digital channel
Analog-to-digital conversion
WJAL shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 68, on February 17, 2009, the original target date in which full-power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 39. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 68, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.
