WAFF is the NBC television affiliate for Huntsville, Alabama. Broadcasting on UHF channel 48, the station serves the northern fifth of Alabama and three counties in southern Middle Tennessee.
The station first began broadcasting from studios and transmitters in Decatur (30 miles / 50 km west of Huntsville) on July 4, 1954 as WMSL-TV, channel 23. It was owned by Frank Whisenant, a Decatur businessman who also owned WMSL-AM. It originally carried p...
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WAFF is the NBC television affiliate for Huntsville, Alabama. Broadcasting on UHF channel 48, the station serves the northern fifth of Alabama and three counties in southern Middle Tennessee.
The station first began broadcasting from studios and transmitters in Decatur (30 miles / 50 km west of Huntsville) on July 4, 1954 as WMSL-TV, channel 23. It was owned by Frank Whisenant, a Decatur businessman who also owned WMSL-AM. It originally carried programming from all four networks of the time--NBC, CBS, ABC and DuMont--but was a primary NBC affiliate. It lost DuMont when that network began shutting down in 1955, lost ABC when WAAY-TV started in Huntsville in 1959 and lost CBS when WHNT-TV began in 1963. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.
Until the early 1960s, Decatur was the largest town in the viewing area and centrally located, thus making it a perfect location for the region's first television station. However, when Huntsville...
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