WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29), which provides a full-market high definition simulcast of WFAA's main channel on its UHF physical channel assigned to channel 8.8, due to long-term issues involving WFAA's digital VHF signal. WFAA maintains studio facilities and business offices at the WFAA Communications Center Studios on Young Street in downtown Dallas (next to the offices of its former sister newspaper under the ownership of former parent company Belo, The Dallas Morning News); sister station KMPX maintains separate facilities on Gateway Drive in Irving. WFAA's transmitter is located in Cedar Hill, Texas. WFAA is the largest ABC affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the network through its ABC Owned Television Stations subsidiary. This also makes Dallas the largest media market with a "Big Four" station (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox) that is not owned by that respective network. It is also the only station among the Big Four in the Dallas–Fort Worth market that is not network-owned and operated. History Early history The initial application for the television station was filed on October 23, 1944, when local businessman Karl Hoblitzelle, owner of movie theater chain Interstate Circuit Theatres, applied with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to obtain a construction permit and license to operate a television station on VHF channel 8; it was the first such license application for a television station in the Southern United States. Hoblitzelle planned to operate the station out of the Republic Bank building in downtown Dallas, and even conducted a closed-circuit television broadcast of the opening of one of his properties, the Wilshire Theatre. Texas oil magnate Tom Potter filed a separate application for the Channel 8 license and was ultimately awarded the permit over Hoblitzelle. The station first signed on the air at 8 p.m. on September 17, 1949, as KBTV, with a fifteen-minute ceremony inaugurating the launch of Channel 8 as its first broadcast; KBTV broadcast for one hour that evening, with the remainder of its initial schedule consisting of its first locally produced program, the variety series Dallas in Wonderland. Potter founded and operated the station through the Lacy-Potter TV Broadcasting Company, which he partially controlled. It was the third television station to sign