It began operations on November 8, 1985 as WETO-TV owned by East Tennessee's Own, Inc.
The UDH is used in other protocols for short message transport - Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP), Universal Computer Protocol (UCP) and in WEMT teleservice in CDMA2000.
The station signed on October 15, 1965 as WEMT under the ownership of Downeast Television, an ownership group that included Melvin Stone, owner of WGUY (1250 AM, later WNSW on 1200 AM; now defunct) and Rumford's WRUM, and Herbert Hoffman, owner of WBOS-AM-FM in Boston.