Soon after moving to channel 18, WKCF started producing a kids club program called The Buckaroo Club, hosted by Ranger Bob (aka Tim Kincaid), a talented character actor, whose popularity as Ranger Bob, made him a local legend in Rochester, New York where he hosted the first version of the kid's program, The Circle B Club, produced by Jan Shaw. After the switch, WKCF re-branded itself as "TV 18."
BACKAROO CLUB LICENSE
As a result, in 1992, WKCF moved to channel 18 which was reclassified as a commercial license and WRES moved to channel 68 as well as adopting the call sign WBCC (it is now WEFS). The college agreed and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the swap. However, if that station moved to Bithlo, it would be able to boost its power to the maximum five million watts. At the time, WRES was a relatively low-powered station serving the immediate Brevard County area on UHF channel 18.
Under this plan, both stations would move their transmitters to Bithlo. In 1991, Press Broadcasting approached Brevard Community College about swapping channels with its educational station, WRES. However, the company soon discovered that as long as WKCF transmitted on channel 68, it could not move its transmitter to Bithlo and still reach Clermont with a city-grade signal.
Press Broadcasting wanted to move WKCF's transmitter to the Christmas/Bithlo tower farm in order to improve its signal in the other two major cities in the market, Daytona Beach and Melbourne. The station eventually moved from the strip mall to new facilities located on Courtland Street in Orlando. The station provided a city-grade signal to Orlando and a Grade B signal to Daytona Beach and Melbourne. The shows were originally a blend of cartoons, classic sitcoms, recent sitcoms, older movies, and drama series. The channel's early programming lineup consisted mostly of shows that had previously been seen on WMOD until January. It first aired an analog signal from studios located at a strip mall on Adanson Street in Orlando. Finally, UHF channel 68 went on the air as WKCF in December 1988. Its barter cartoons and other barter shows moved to WAYK (channel 56, now Ion Television owned-and-operated station WOPX-TV). That February, the station began to run HSN programming full-time (except for a few hours of religious and public affairs shows on Sunday mornings) and its call letters were changed to WBSF. In January 1988 to finish building the new station, Press sold WMOD to Blackstar Broadcasting (an HSN sister company). This section needs expansion with: more on WKCF's pre-1988 history.
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