WWOR-TV
WWOR-TV is a television station licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York metropolitan area and owned by the Fox Television Stations group. It is programmed mainly as an independent, but airs MyNetworkTV. Under common ownership with Fox flagship WNYW, the two stations share studios at the Fox Television Center on East 67th Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood; WWOR-TV's transmitter is located at One World Trade Center.
History
WOR-TV (1949–1987)
Early history
Channel 9 signed on the air on October 11, 1949, as WOR-TV. It was owned by the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, which also operated WOR and WOR-FM. Exactly ten months earlier, Bamberger launched Washington, D.C.'s fourth television station, WOIC, also on channel 9. 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 and Newark, New Jersey–based WATV. On WOR-TV's opening night, a welcome address was read by WOR radio's morning host, John B. Gambling. However, the audio portion of the speech was not heard because of a technical glitch. The problem was fixed and Gambling repeated the message later that evening, prior to the station's sign-off.That first broadcast and other early WOR-TV shows emanated from the New Amsterdam Theatre's Roof Garden, located west of Times Square. For a short time, the station's transmitter operated from WOR TV Tower in North Bergen, New Jersey, and was later moved to the Empire State Building. At the start of 1950, Bamberger Broadcasting changed its name to General Teleradio. Later that year, WOIC was sold to a joint venture of The Washington Post and CBS, who would change that station's call sign to WTOP-TV. In 1951, the station moved uptown to the newly constructed "9 Television Square" facility at 101 West 67th Street. The West 67th Street studio was built from the ground up as a television facility. Initially built by the Robert Gless Co. for the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, the building itself was owned by the Macy's employee pension fund, and it had been leased prior to completion to Thomas S. Lee Enterprises. Lee, the son of the broadcasting pioneer Don Lee, owned several Mutual Network stations on the West Coast, and held a 25-year lease on the building running January 1952 to January 1977. Soon after the building was completed in 1952, Macy's–Bamberger's merged the WOR stations with the General Tire and Rubber Company, which already had broadcasting interests in three cities through two other subsidiaries: the regional Yankee Radio Network and WNAC AM–FM–TV in Boston; and the Don Lee Broadcasting System, which operated KHJ AM–FM–TV in Los Angeles and KFRC AM–FM in San Francisco. The subsidiaries were then brought together under the General Teleradio name. The main impetus for the merger was to give General Tire a controlling share in the Mutual Radio Network, which was affiliated with and partially owned by WOR and other stations. The merger also raised speculation that Mutual would launch a television network, plans that were discussed since before WOR-TV went on the air. However, shortly before the merger, in April 1950, plans for the proposed Mutual-branded network advanced far enough that, at the annual meeting of Mutual stockholders, network president Frank White made an official announcement of the planned creation of a limited five-station Mutual network. At that same time Mutual radio station KQV in Pittsburgh, which was engaged in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get a television license, was reportedly hoping for their station to be a Mutual television affiliate. "Mutual Television Network" ended up being the decided-on branding for the Mutual-branded network. However, the five-station Mutual network failed in short time. After a transitional period, WOR relocated TV operations to their headquarters at 1440 Broadway closer to its radio station sisters and to a new compact studio for news and special events programming located on the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building. In early 1954, RKO sublet the 67th Street facility to NBC for three years with options for extensions.
In 1955, General Tire purchased RKO Radio Pictures, giving the company's TV stations access to RKO's film library, and in 1959, General Tire's broadcasting and film divisions were renamed as RKO General. During the 1950s and early 1960s, all three of New York's independents struggled to find competitive and acceptable programming. The field would increase by one in 1956 when former DuMont flagship station WABD became an independent. During this era, WOR-TV's programming was comparable to its rivals, with a blend of movies, children's programs, canceled TV series which had previously run on one of the networks, and public affairs shows. In 1962, the field of independent stations was narrowed to three, as WOR-TV and its competition benefited from the sale of WNTA-TV, formerly the anchor station of the short-lived NTA Film Network, to the non-profit Educational Broadcasting Corporation, who would convert the station to a non-commercial educational station and National Educational Television affiliate/member station.
For much of the 1960s, WOR-TV was a standard independent station with a schedule composed of some local public affairs shows, off-network programs, children's shows such as The Friendly Giant and Romper Room, sporting events, and a large catalog of movies, some of which came from the RKO Radio Pictures film library. Until 1985, the station had a tradition of showing King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young on Thanksgiving and Godzilla films the day after Thanksgiving.
In 1962, nostalgia maven Joe Franklin moved his daily talk program to WOR-TV, after a 12-year run on WABC-TV. The Joe Franklin Show ended on August 6, 1993, which, having run for 42 years, makes it one of the longest-running programs in television history, local or national. The long-running public affairs show Firing Line began on WOR-TV in 1966 and ran on the station until 1971, after which its host, William F. Buckley, Jr., moved the program to public television where the program aired until it ended in 1999. In 1968, the station continued to maintain offices at 1440 Broadway, while the station moved to new studio facilities two blocks north at 1481 Broadway.
1970s
By the early 1970s, WNEW-TV evolved into the leading station for cartoons and sitcoms, while WPIX aired a similar format though with more movies. In the early 1970s, WOR-TV had shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gilligan's Island and The Avengers. Beginning in 1971, the station began gradually seeking a different programming strategy—one that was more adult-oriented with a heavy emphasis on films, reruns of hour-long network dramas, game shows and sports. The station also gradually phased out most sitcoms and all children's programming with the exception of Romper Room. It was also the first New York City station to have a noon newscast on weekdays, in addition to producing several hours a day of local talk shows. WOR-TV also aired Spanish-language telenovelas on weekdays in the early 1970s, such as the Argentinian-Peruvian co-production Nino, las cosas simples de la vida.Later in the 1970s, WOR-TV looked towards the United Kingdom for alternative offerings. On September 6, 1976, WOR-TV offered a week of programs from Thames Television during prime time; many of these shows had never before been seen on American television, including the first U.S. telecasts of The Benny Hill Show, the Quentin Crisp biographical film The Naked Civil Servant, and an airing of an episode of Man About the House, which would be adapted by ABC as Three's Company the following year. WOR-TV also aired episodes of the ITV musical drama Rock Follies and the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who during this period. On April 5, 1980, WOR-TV presented Japan Tonight!, a seven-hour block of programs from Japan's Tokyo Broadcasting System, featuring shows that were either dubbed or subtitled in English. During this period, various sports telecasts aired on most nights in prime time, with feature films running on nights where sports did not air under the Million Dollar Movie banner.
In 1984, WOR-TV began moving classic sitcoms like Bewitched, Burns & Allen, I Dream of Jeannie, and others into its weekday lineup, focused slightly less on sports, and added more off network drama shows to the lineup. The station also pulled back religious programming as well, pushing it earlier in the morning. With the advent of cable and satellite-delivered television, independent stations were being uplinked for regional and national distribution, thus becoming "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.