History
UPN affiliation
The station first signed on the air on 1 November 1999 as XHUPN-TV, more than a year after Alco received its concession on 2 July 1998. Operated as an English-language commercial station since its debut (the second such Baja California-licensed station in the San Diego–Tijuana market to operate in this manner, after XETV (channel 6)), it originally served as the market's UPN affiliate, which brought that network's programming back to the market just over a year after charter affiliate KUSI-TV (channel 51) dropped UPN due to the network's low viewership locally and reverted to being an independent station in 1998. In the interim, UPN programming was brought in out-of-market from KCOP-TV, the network's owned-and-operated station in Los Angeles, on San Diego area cable providers. When XHUPN went on the air, the station asked those cable providers to drop KCOP from their lineups. Thereafter, XHUPN adopted the "UPN 13" moniker; while XHUPN was the station's official callsign as licensed by the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT), it used the fictional and abbreviated callsign "XUPN" on-air.
MyNetworkTV affiliation
On 24 January 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that they would shut down The WB and UPN. The two networks would then have some of their programming folded into a single service, The CW. On that same date, The CW signed KSWB-TV (channel 69) as the network's San Diego charter affiliate as part of a ten-year affiliation agreement between the network and KSWB owner Tribune Broadcasting's 14 WB-affiliated stations at the time.[4][5] After the merger was announced, XHUPN was initially expected to become an affiliate of Spanish-language network Telefutura; however on 18 March 2006, it was announced that XHUPN would instead become a charter affiliate of MyNetworkTV, another upstart network created by the Fox Entertainment Group subsidiary of News Corporation[6] (the Telefutura affiliation instead went to KDTF-LP (channel 51)).[citation needed]
The station dropped all UPN references on-air soon afterward and simply called itself "Channel 13" and later "TV 13" (this same practice of stations dropping UPN branding following the announcement of The CW's launch had become common on UPN affiliates owned by News Corporation's Fox Television Stations unit). It also received SCT approval on 10 April 2006 to change its callsign to XHDTV-TV. UPN programming on XHDTV ended on 4 September, with the exception of WWE SmackDown, which aired on late Friday nights/early Saturday mornings after midnight for two weeks prior to The CW's launch. As a MyNetworkTV affiliate, the station branded as "XDTV MyTV 13", with "XDTV" serving as its new fictional and abbreviated callsign.[citation needed]
Milenio Television affiliation
In September 2018, XHDTV-TDT dropped MyNetworkTV and all American syndicated programming from the schedule and joined Milenio Televisión; MyNetworkTV's programming moved to a secondary clearance on the CW-affiliated second digital subchannel of KFMB-TV (channel 8), an increasingly common fate for the service. XHDTV was the final Mexican-licensed station carrying an English language schedule meant more for American audiences (following XETV-TDT's switch from The CW to Canal 5 in 2017); at the time of the switch, it was also the only English-language commercial television station in the San Diego–Tijuana market without any form of news, either produced in-house or from another market station. It is unknown if Milenio's parent network Multimedios Televisión (which has begun a nationwide expansion from their traditional Monterrey base) will eventually join this station's channel lineup to expand the network to Mexico's Pacific coast, either by purchase or affiliation. Grupo Cadena's XHBJ-TDT (channel 45) affiliated with Multimedios on 1 November 2019.