WHFT-TV is a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 television station

Television station

A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...

 serving the greater Miami

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

/Ft. Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, on the Atlantic coast. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010...

 area. Broadcasting on digital channel 46, the station is owned and operated by the Trinity Broadcasting Network

Trinity Broadcasting Network

The Trinity Broadcasting Network is a major American Christian television network. TBN is based in Costa Mesa, California, with auxiliary studio facilities in Irving, Texas; Hendersonville, Tennessee; Gadsden, Alabama; Decatur, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Orlando, Florida; and New...

. The station's studios and transmitter is located at the Lake Trinity Estates complex on Pembroke Road in Hollywood

Hollywood, Florida

-Demographics:As of 2000, there were 59,673 households out of which 24.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.5% were married couples living together, 11.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 42.2% were non-families. 34.4% of all households were made up of...

, west of I-95

Interstate 95

Interstate 95 is the main highway on the East Coast of the United States, running parallel to the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Florida and serving some of the most populated urban areas in the country, including Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore,...

.

History

WHFT-TV signed on in 1975 as WFCB-TV as a religious station owned by Florida Baptist Television. The station was on the air about 8 hours a day, but they were unable to keep the station solvent, so they put the station up for sale in early 1976 , with a request to sell it to a Christian ministry.

World Harvest Television, a.k.a. LeSEA Broadcasting

LeSEA

LeSEA Broadcasting , also known as World Harvest Television, is an American Christian television network with over 40 affiliate stations in a number of U.S...

 purchased the station and took over in June 1976. The call letters were changed to the current WHFT-TV (standing for World Harvest Florida Television). LeSEA added their own religious programming, along with televangelist programming like The 700 Club

The 700 Club

The 700 Club is the flagship news talk show of the Christian Broadcasting Network, airing in syndication throughout the United States and Canada. In production since 1966, it is currently hosted by Pat Robertson, Terry Meeuwsen, Kristi Watts, and Gordon P. Robertson, two of whom will host on any...

. The station expanded their broadcast day to 24 hours a day. In addition, the station aired a general entertainment format

Independent station

An independent station is in the category of television terminology used to describe a television station broadcasting in the United States or Canada that is not affiliated with any television network....

 for families during the 7-9 a.m. and 2-7 p.m. timeslots on weekdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Sundays were reserved for religious programming). However, the station's conservative programming policy kept it from making much headway against the market's dominant independent, WCIX (channel 6, now CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 O&O WFOR-TV

WFOR-TV

WFOR-TV, virtual channel 4.1 , is the CBS owned-and-operated station in Miami, Florida. WFOR shares its TV studio facilities with sister station WBFS-TV in Doral, near Miami International Airport, and its transmitter is located in Miramar.WFOR-TV also previously had two translator stations in the...

 on channel 4). Their secular shows included Leave It To Beaver

Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood...

, Little Rascals, Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...

, Popeye

Popeye

Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...

, Rocky and his Friends

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show

The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959 to June 28, 1964 on the ABC and NBC television networks...

, Dennis The Menace (sitcom), The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

, and others.

The station was profitable, but in 1980, Trinity Broadcasting gave LeSEA a high offer for that time, so the station was sold. In the summer of 1980, all the secular shows were dropped (some eventually moved to WDZL

WSFL-TV

WSFL-TV, channel 39, is a The CW Television Network-affiliated television station located in Miami. Owned by the Tribune Company, the station shares studios with co-owned newspaper the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, and has its transmitter based in Miramar, Florida.It is a television station in...

 or WBFS

WBFS

WBFS, or Wii Backup File System, is a file system developed by Wii homebrew coders kwiirk and Waninkoko. It uses Waninkoko's cIOS and works by creating a WBFS partition on a SD or USB device. A Wii homebrew application may then be run to dump a Wii game to the partition...

, while others never reappeared on Miami television stations) and the station switched to TBN programming. The WHFT-TV callsign, however, remained on the station.

Some of the religious shows that had aired on WHFT-TV during the LeSEA era remained on the station because TBN was also airing these programs, but shows like The 700 Club were removed (however, TBN would begin running The 700 Club a few years later).
Lake Trinity Estates
Adjacent to WHFT's studios is Lake Trinity Estates (formerly known as Trinity Towers), a TBN-owned recreational vehicle [RV] park. 255 sites are available with full hook-ups (30 & 50 AMP service). Swimming, tennis, fishing, shuffleboard, Patanque, basketball, and nearby golfing are available for guests.