WOTF-TV (channel 26) is a television station licensed to Daytona Beach, Florida, United States, serving the Orlando area as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Grit. The station is owned by Entravision Communications, and has a transmitter near Orange City, Florida. History The station began operation on July 5, 1982, as an independent station on UHF channel 43 in Melbourne under the call sign WMOD. It was owned by Press Broadcasting, and programmed a general entertainment format with an emphasis on movies and drama series, along with some game shows. The station's original studio facilities were located on Enterprise Court in Melbourne. Shows broadcast by the station in its early years included among others Ironside, Bonanza, Soap, One Day at a Time, The Joker's Wild and Tic Tac Dough. In 1984, WMOD became a more traditional independent station, and added sitcoms (such as The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Lucy Show, All in the Family, The Odd Couple and The Honeymooners) and cartoons (such as Inspector Gadget, Super Friends and He-Man). Being licensed to Melbourne placed the station at a disadvantage, as its transmitter was located southeast of Orlando due to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules at the time that required a station's transmitter to be located within of its city of license; the signal reached Orlando with only grade B coverage and no signal at all was receivable in Daytona Beach. As a result, the station received low ratings despite decent programming. Soon afterwards, the FCC allocated a commercial license to Clermont, a western suburb of Orlando in Lake County, on UHF channel 68. Press applied for the license in 1985, and received it in March 1986. The plan was for Press Broadcasting to sell off WMOD to the Home Shopping Network at the same time as the company's new station on channel 68 was built and signed on the air. In the meantime, WMOD agreed to affiliate with HSN on a part-time basis. Initially in October 1986, WMOD began carrying HSN programming during the overnight hours. In January 1987, HSN programming was expanded to the midday hours and by the summer of 1987, the network occupied 18 hours of WMOD's daily schedule. General entertainment programming continued to run on the station evenings from 5 to 11 p.m. The station still was unable to move its programming unit of general entertainment shows to channel 68