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| '''WWOR-TV''', channel nine, is the ] ] |
'''WWOR-TV''', channel nine, is the ] affiliate station of the ]. Licensed to ], the station serves the New York City ]. WWOR is owned by ], a division of the ], but goes by its legal name '''WWOR-TV, Incorporated'''. In areas of the United States where UPN programs are not available over-the-air, WWOR is seen via satellite to subscribers of ]'s ]. Prior to ], it was one of the leading independent stations in the country, as well as a cable ]. | ||
| On ], ], Fox announced that WWOR-TV will be part of a new primetime network called ''']''', which is scheduled to launch on September 5, 2006. My Network TV will be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. | On ], ], Fox announced that WWOR-TV will be part of a new primetime network called ''']''', which is scheduled to launch on September 5, 2006. My Network TV will be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television. | ||
Revision as of 04:20, 3 April 2006
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WWOR-TV, channel nine, is the New York City affiliate station of the United Paramount Network. Licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey, the station serves the New York City metropolitan area. WWOR is owned by Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, but goes by its legal name WWOR-TV, Incorporated. In areas of the United States where UPN programs are not available over-the-air, WWOR is seen via satellite to subscribers of Echostar's Dish Network. Prior to 1995, it was one of the leading independent stations in the country, as well as a cable superstation.
On February 22, 2006, Fox announced that WWOR-TV will be part of a new primetime network called My Network TV, which is scheduled to launch on September 5, 2006. My Network TV will be operated by Fox Television Stations and its syndication division, Twentieth Television.
As WOR-TV
The Bamberger/RKO Years
Channel 9 signed on the air on October 11, 1949, as WOR-TV, owned by the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, which also operated WOR-AM (710 kHz.) and WOR-FM (98.7 MHz., later WXLO and now WRKS). Bamberger Broadcasting was a division of R. H. Macy and Company, and was named after the Bamberger's department store chain. Exactly ten months earlier, Bamberger launched Washington, D.C.'s fourth television station, WOIC-TV (now WUSA), also on channel nine. WOR radio was first based inside Bamberger's Newark, New Jersey store in 1922, seven years before the sale to Macy's. On WOR-TV's opening night, a welcome address was read by WOR radio's morning host, John B. Gambling. The only problem was the audio portion of the speech wasn't heard because of a technical glitch. The gremlin was fixed, and Gambling repeated the message later that evening, prior to sign-off. That first broadcast, and other early WOR-TV shows, eminated from the New Amsterdam Roof Theatre, located near Times Square.
WOR-TV entered the New York market as the last of the city's VHF stations to sign-on, and one of three independents -- the others being WPIX (channel 11) and Newark-based WATV (channel 13, later WNTA-TV). However, plans were underway to make both channel nine and its Washington sister station charter affiliates of the Mutual Television Network. WOR radio had enjoyed a long relationship with the Mutual Radio Network, and WOR-TV was chosen to be the New York outlet for Mutual television, which never went to air. Channel nine remained an independent, while WOIC-TV was sold to a joint venture of the Washington Post and CBS in 1950.
WOR-TV didn't get a network affiliation, but it did get a new owner in 1952, when Macy's/Bamberger's sold the WOR stations to the General Tire and Rubber Company, which had already broadcasting interests in four cities: the Yankee Network in Boston, and its flagship stations WNAC-AM-FM-TV there; WHBQ radio in Memphis, and its new television station that would debut a year later; and Don Lee Broadcasting, the operators of KHJ-AM-FM-TV in Los Angeles and KFRC-AM-FM in San Francisco. General Tire later merged its broadcast interests as General Teleradio. In 1955, General Tire bought RKO Radio Pictures, giving General Teleradio's TV stations access to RKO's film library. In 1957, General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed as RKO General.
During the 1950s, all three independent stations struggled to find acceptable programming -- the field would increase by one in 1956 when former DuMont flagship station WABD (channel 5, later WNEW-TV and now WNYW) became an independent. Through this era, WOR-TV's programming was comparable to its rivals, with a blend of movies, children's programs, and public affairs shows. In 1962 the independent field was narrowed to three, as WOR-TV and its competition benefitted from the sale of WNTA-TV to the non-profit Educational Broadcasting Corporation, who would convert channel 13 into a non-commercial educational station (now WNET).
Channel nine was heavy on sports programming as an independent. WOR-TV was the home of National League baseball in New York, carrying games of the Brooklyn Dodgers (beginning in 1950) and the New York Giants (beginning in 1951) until both teams moved to California following the 1957 season. From 1958 to 1961, the station aired Philadelphia Phillies telecasts. In 1962, the station began a relationship with the expansion New York Mets that would last until 1998. Later in the 1960s, WOR-TV would gain rights for the NHL's New York Rangers and the NBA's New York Knicks, holding onto both teams until 1989. The New York Islanders, New York/New Jersey Nets, local college basketball, New York Cosmos soccer, and WWWF/WWF wrestling also shared airtime on channel nine.
By 1970, WNEW-TV became the leading station for cartoons and sitcoms, while WPIX aired a similar format with more movies. As a result WOR-TV sought a different programming strategy, one that was more adult-oriented, with a heavy emphasis on films and sports. The station dropped all of their children's programming with the exception of the local version of Romper Room, which moved from WNEW-TV several years earlier. Later in the decade, WOR-TV looked towards the United Kingdom for alternative offerings. On the week of September 6, 1976, channel 9 offered programming from Thames Television during primetime, completely presented as if Thames was actually running WOR. Many of these shows had never before been seen on American television, and one of them provided America's first look at Thames' greatest export -- The Benny Hill Show. Also included that week was an episode of Man About The House, which would be reinvented the following year on ABC as Three's Company. WOR-TV aired episodes of the BBC's science-fiction series Doctor Who during this period as well. Despite their ambitious programming, WOR-TV was perceived as an also-ran, even though the station was very profitable for RKO General. But with the advent of cable and satellite-delivered television, independent stations were being uplinked for regional and national distribution, thus gaining the title of "superstations". In April 1979, Syracuse, New York-based Eastern Microwave, Inc. began distributing WOR-TV to cable and C-band satellite subscribers across the United States, joining WTBS in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago as national superstations.
The Move to New Jersey
While WOR-TV was gaining national exposure, a battle for the station's survival -- and that of its licensee -- was well underway. In 1975, RKO applied for renewal of its license to operate WOR-TV. The Federal Communications Commission conditioned this renewal on that of its sister station, WNAC-TV in Boston. In 1980, the FCC stripped RKO of WNAC-TV's license due to a litany of offenses dating back to the 1960s, but ultimately because RKO had lied to the FCC about corporate misconduct by General Tire. The decision meant that RKO lost WOR-TV's license and that of another sister station, KHJ-TV in Los Angeles (RKO General, Inc. (KHJ-TV), 3 FCC Rcd 5057 (1988)). However, an appeals court ruled that the FCC had erred in tying WOR-TV and KHJ-TV's renewals to WNAC-TV, and ordered new proceedings.
In order to buy itself some time, RKO persuaded the U.S. Congress to pass a law requiring the FCC to automatically renew the license of any VHF station that moved its license to New Jersey, a state which for many years complained of being "underserved" by VHF stations from the New York City and Philadelphia markets. (With the 1962 conversion of Newark's channel 13 to non-commercial, New Jersey had no commercial VHF allocations located within the state.) Thanks to this, and with help of New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, RKO was able to retain WOR-TV by moving the channel nine license to Secaucus (seven miles west of Manhattan) in April 1983. WOR-TV established a physical presence in Secaucus as well, moving its studios from the Times Square area to a new facility called Nine Broadcast Plaza, where the station is still located today. But, for all practical purposes, WOR remained a New York City station. A month later, the New Jersey state senate petitioned the FCC to approve an extension of the channel nine signal into southern New Jersey. However, Because of various other issues, the request was denied.
As the FCC investigation of RKO General's business practices continued, the agency advised RKO that it would almost certainly deny any appeals, persuading the company to sell its properties and avoid the indignity of having their licenses taken away. Westinghouse Broadcasting and MCA/Universal emerged as the leading bidders for WOR-TV, and the station was sold to MCA in late 1986. The announcement of this deal came just in the nick of time for RKO: in 1987, an administrative law judge recommended that General Tire and Rubber be stripped of its remaining broadcast properties due to a litany of misconduct. The broadcast division, later renamed GenCorp, would retain its New York radio stations for a brief time afterward; eventually WOR radio would be sold to Hartford, Connecticut-based Buckley Broadcasting, and WRKS-FM would go to Summit Broadcasting.
As WWOR-TV
The MCA Years
After assuming control of channel nine in the early spring of 1987, MCA not only had to change the station's call letters, but they also gave channel nine a complete facelift and a programming overhaul. That fall, WWOR-TV was a station almost different from a year prior. The station dropped most of their public affairs shows; Romper Room, now in reruns, was cut back to 30 minutes and moved to 6 AM; religious shows on weekdays were cancelled; cartoons were added to the station's weekday morning lineup; and sitcoms were added to the early evenings. The afternoons continued to consist of drama shows and movies held over from the RKO days. In primetime, the Million Dollar Movie was relegated to weekends in favor of the controversial Morton Downey Jr. talk show; and the 8:00 newscast was moved to 10:00 PM, and expanded to an hour. The overhaul continued in 1988, when they added reruns of NBC's The Cosby Show. WWOR-TV also borrowed some program formats used on the Westinghouse stations: a short-lived version of Evening Magazine aired in primetime, and a talk show called People Are Talking ran in late mornings. That show would later change its title to 9 Broadcast Plaza (named after the station's Secaucus studio location), and then to The Richard Bey Show for syndication. A few years later, radio shock jock Howard Stern hosted a weekly syndicated series from the WWOR-TV studios.
In 1988, the station premiered a new Sunday morning children's show, Steampipe Alley, which was hosted by Mario Cantone, a then-unknown comedian who would appear years later in Sex and the City. Steampipe Alley showed Looney Tunes and Popeye cartoons for which WWOR had the exclusive rights in the New York City market. In 1989, the FCC created the "Syndicated Exclusivity Rights" rule, otherwise known as "SyndEx." This rule stated that when a station in any market had the rights to air certain syndicated programs, the cable company had to block it out on out-of-town stations. Due to this rule, and to lighten the burden on cable companies, Eastern Microwave picked up broadcast rights to shows that were considered "SyndEx-proof" and could be inserted into WWOR's cable feed to replace programming that could not be aired nationally. Most of the programs came from the Universal and Quinn Martin libraries, along with some shows from the Christian Science Monitor's television service. Eastern Microwave would eventually launch a separate feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, known as the "WWOR-EMI Service".
In the fall of 1990, WWOR-TV began using Universal 9 for its on-air branding, highlighting its association with the MCA/Universal entertainment empire. However, the station would not stay under MCA ownership for long: a takeover of MCA by the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. of Osaka, Japan meant that the station had to be sold to comply with FCC ownership rules (foreign companies could not own over 25 percent of a U.S. television station). On January 1, 1991, MCA spun-off the assets of WWOR-TV into a new company called Pinelands, Incorporated.
As a UPN Affiliate
In 1993 Pinelands was acquired by boat maker Chris-Craft Industries and its broadcasting subsidiary, United Television. A year later, Chris-Craft/United and Viacom's newly-acquired subsidiary Paramount Pictures banded together to form the United Paramount Network, the sixth U.S. television service when it debuted in January 1995. At the network's launch, WWOR-TV was UPN's "flagship" station. However, UPN did not allow WWOR's superstation feed to carry UPN programming nationally. (In contrast the WB allowed WGN-TV, one of WWOR's superstation counterparts, to air network programming on its cable feed during that network's early years.) On January 1, 1997, with little advance warning, AEC, which purchased the satellite distribution rights to WWOR from Eastern Microwave a few months earlier, decided to cease uplinking the national version. A few weeks later, another company, National Programming Services, uplinked the station again exclusively for satellite subscribers, and the national feed was back to being the same feed as the New York market. In 1999, the station lost the Mets broadcast rights to rival WPIX who, in turn, had just lost the Yankees to WNYW. NPS discontinued WWOR in 1999, in favor of Pax.
In 2000, Chris-Craft announced they would put their stations up for sale. It was believed that Viacom, which had gained complete control of UPN a year earlier by purchasing Chris-Craft/United's half of the network not long after buying CBS, would end up buying the group as a whole. Viacom lost the bid for Chris-Craft/United to the News Corporation's Fox Broadcasting unit, making WWOR-TV a sister station to one-time rival WNYW. This created a unique situation in which the largest affiliate station of one network was owned by the operator of another network. The closing of the sale of the Chris-Craft/United stations to Fox was set for mid-September 2001, but was delayed for several days.
On September 11, 2001, the transmitter facilities of WWOR-TV and eight other New York City television stations, and several radio stations, were destroyed when two hijacked airplanes crashed into and destroyed the World Trade Center towers. With its broadcast signal shut down, WWOR fed its signal directly to cable and satellite systems, running wall-to-wall 9/11 news coverage from CNN and later the Fox News Channel. Channel nine resumed regular programming September 17, 2001 at 1 AM. The transmitter has since been relocated to an antenna located atop the Empire State Building.
Fox began integrating the operations of its two stations soon afterwards. In late September of 2001, WWOR-TV aired a number of Yankee games that were originally scheduled to air on WNYW. In the fall of 2001, WWOR-TV began running Fox Kids programs that were moved from WNYW. The afternoon Fox Kids block would be short-lived, as Fox cancelled all weekday kids programming several months later. The station still runs syndicated kids shows for one hour (7 to 8 AM) on weekdays, and is the only commercial station remaining in New York City to air children's programming on weekdays. WNYW also placed several of its underperforming programs on WWOR, and cherry-picked channel nine's stronger-performing programs for placement on channel five's schedule. Currently, WWOR offers several "double-runs" of WNYW programming, but the two stations' individual schedules (outside of network programming) are much different.
In April 2005, WWOR-TV picked up baseball once again, this time airing Yankee games. Produced by the team-owned YES Network, channel nine's Yankee contests air mostly on Friday evenings. As YES produces the games, there is virtually no difference between games broadcast by YES and WWOR. In the spring of 2006, the New Jersey Nets returned to WWOR, with channel nine airing several regular-season games produced by YES. These are games that cannot be carried by YES due to conflicts with YES's Yankees coverage.
In December 2005, WWOR-TV and WNYW shared resources for the first time when portions of WNYW's Good Day New York was simulcast on both stations due to the 2005 New York City transit strike. Some WWOR-TV reporters appeared on GDNY during the strike.
From UPN to My Network
On January 24, 2006, the UPN and WB networks announced that they would merge. The newly combined network would be called The CW, the letters representing the first initial of its corporate parents CBS (the parent company of UPN) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner. The merger will take effect in September 2006, and current WB station WPIX was announced as the CW's New York affiliate.
On January 25, 2006, the day following the announcement of the creation of the CW Network, WWOR-TV changed its branding from UPN 9 to WWOR 9, and revamped its logo to just feature the boxed "9". Oddly, WWOR introduced a new news graphics package and introduced a revised UPN 9 logo almost three weeks prior. The station also announced that they would no longer promote any UPN programing. Similar changes were also made to Fox's other UPN affiliates, as the CW network list does not include WWOR or its sister stations.
With the impending switch to My Network TV, WWOR's on-air branding is currently slated to be "My 9 New York."
Logo Gallery
- WOR-TV logo from early-1960s WOR-TV logo from early-1960s
- WOR-TV logo from the mid-1960s WOR-TV logo from the mid-1960s
- WOR-TV "New York 9" logo, from 1969 to 1970 WOR-TV "New York 9" logo, from 1969 to 1970
-
WOR-TV's cut-out, "stylised 9" logo, used from 1971 to 1987 (modified in 1983 for their new Secaucus city of license)
WOR-TV's cut-out, "stylised 9" logo, used from 1971 to 1987
(modified in 1983 for their new Secaucus city of license) -
WOR-TV / RKO copyright endcap, from 1986
- The first WWOR logo, used from April to September 1987, after MCA took over the station The first WWOR logo, used from April to September 1987, after MCA took over the station
- The second WWOR logo, used from September 1987 to January 1995 The second WWOR logo, used from September 1987 to January 1995
- WWOR "Universal 9" logo from 1990 to 1992 WWOR "Universal 9" logo from 1990 to 1992
- The first "UPN-9" logo, used from 1995 to 2002 (similar to the "stylised 9" logo used from 1971 to 1987) The first "UPN-9" logo, used from 1995 to 2002 (similar to the "stylised 9" logo used from 1971 to 1987)
- The second "UPN-9" logo, used from 2002 to 2006 The second "UPN-9" logo, used from 2002 to 2006
-
Current WWOR logo, sans the "UPN" half, which debuted in January 2006 (introduced the day after plans for CW were announced, which do not include WWOR)
Current WWOR logo, sans the "UPN" half, which debuted in January 2006
(introduced the day after plans for CW were announced, which do not include WWOR) - WWOR-TV logo starting September 2006 when it becomes a My Network TV affiliate WWOR-TV logo starting September 2006 when it becomes a My Network TV affiliate
Office Locations
WOR-TV's first studio location was in the New Amsterdam Roof Theatre, located on 42nd Street west of Times Square. This was a temporary setup; some time later the station moved uptown to a new facility on West 67th Street, near the present-day location of WABC-TV.
During the early years of RKO General ownership, WOR-TV moved back to Times Square, and closer to its sister radio stations. Channel 9's studios were based at 1481 Broadway, while their offices were co-located with WOR-AM-FM's studios and offices three blocks south, at 1440 Broadway. In the 1971 film Shaft, a sign for WOR-TV's studios can be seen for a brief second in the opening sequence (look for the "stylised 9" logo as Richard Roundtree, playing the film's title character, walks around Times Square).
When the WOR-TV license was moved to New Jersey in 1983, a modern complex was constructed in Secaucus, known as Nine Broadcast Plaza. After News Corporation purchased the station in 2001, there were rumors and expectations that WWOR would leave Secaucus and move back to Manhattan, to be consolidated with WNYW at the Fox Television Center on East 67th Street in Yorkville. Though some office functions of the two stations have been merged, rumors of a full move (primarily that of WWOR's newsroom) were squashed within months.
See also
- RKO Pictures
- WOR EMI Service, the national version of WWOR-TV seen outside the New York market from 1990 to 1997
External links
- UPN9 WWOR-TV Engineering Department Website
- WOR/WWOR-TV Classic and Current Station IDs/Promos
- Two articles about WOR-TV's premiere night on the air in 1949
- "Thames on 9" -- WOR's prime-time schedule from 6-10 September 1976, when Thames took over WOR
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