WVNY
WVNY is a television station licensed to Burlington, Vermont, United States, serving the Burlington, Vermont–Plattsburgh, New York market as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Mission Broadcasting, which maintains a shared services agreement with Nexstar Media Group, owner of Burlington Fox affiliate WFFF-TV, for the provision of certain services. The two stations share studios in Colchester, Vermont; WVNY's transmitter is located on Mount Mansfield.
WVNY began broadcasting on August 19, 1968, as the third commercial station in the region. It was built by Vermont New York Television and operated from studios in the former officer's club at Fort Ethan Allen. While it failed to make much of an impression in the area of news, it broadcast local and regional sports. Financing difficulties left the station off the air for five months in mid-1971. International Television Corporation assumed control of the station in 1971 and bought it outright in 1974. Under its control, channel 22 made two further, low-rated attempts at local news programming and moved into the former WCAX studios in Burlington. Between 1974 and 1982, the station was WEZF-TV, matching co-owned radio station WEZF. In 1982, it became the first broadcast property of Citadel Communications. WVNY continued to emphasize sports programming, which included Boston Red Sox baseball and—at one point—an affiliation with the Canadian Football Network, owing to its widespread availability on cable in Montreal across the Canadian border.
After Straightline Communications acquired the station in 1998, the news department was retooled and relaunched in August 1999. Despite being seen as the station's most credible local news offering to date, the newscasts were discontinued in 2003 due to continued low ratings. Lambert Broadcasting bought WVNY in 2005 in partnership with Smith Media, owner of WFFF-TV; the station moved to Colchester. Local news returned after WFFF-TV began a local news department in 2007. Mission acquired WVNY in 2013 after Nexstar purchased WFFF. The WVNY–WFFF news department produces 35 hours of local news programming a week, just over half of it for air on channel 22.
Early years
On November 12, 1966, Vermont New York Television applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a construction permit to build a new television station on channel 22 in Burlington, Vermont. The application, proposing a transmitter site atop Mount Mansfield, foresaw a station to provide full ABC affiliation in the region. Over an objection filed by Vermont's existing commercial TV station, WCAX-TV, the FCC granted the permit on February 15, 1967. The news was well-received by one particular Vermonter: governor Philip H. Hoff, who commented that it was "one of the greatest pieces of news the people of the State of Vermont have ever received"; WCAX-TV's owner was known to be a bitter opponent of Hoff's policies. Though the company was unable to start up in 1967 due to delays in procuring necessary equipment, it selected a studio site in the former Fort Ethan Allen, which was also home to Vermont Educational Television. The station leased the former officer's club on the base and expanded it with a studio.WVNY-TV began broadcasting August 19, 1968. Local programming at launch included 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, a local children's show, and sports telecasts, including the first-ever telecast of Vermont Catamounts home athletic events. In 1969, it aired the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 's coverage of Montreal Expos baseball. The station was also known for its all-night movie telecasts, which prompted interest from cable operators in Quebec and Cornwall, Ontario, in adding the station to their lineups. In July 1969, an FM radio station, WVNY-FM 92.9, launched; its call sign was changed in October 1973 to WEZF.
In its early years, WVNY-TV suffered from financial difficulties in a tight credit market. The station cut back its broadcast day in January 1970, ending a 24-hour broadcast day and consigning the all-night movies to Saturday nights only. Between June and August 1970, the station was signing on six days a week at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 5 p.m. Between the two cutbacks, 11 employees lost their jobs. The 6 p.m. local newscast was discontinued in September, leaving an 11 p.m. newscast four nights a week and the children's show as its only local studio programs. On April 2, 1971, at 1 a.m., WVNY-TV went off the air temporarily. While channel 22 was off the air, Vermont New York Television negotiated to sell it. The station was back on the air September 17, after more than five months out of service, under the operational control of the International Television Corporation, though ITC did not file to have the license transferred to it until October 1973 and was not the approved licensee until April 1974.
In 1972, the station joined the Boston Bruins hockey television network. When it attempted to renew for the 1973–1974 season, it was met with strong opposition from the Montreal Canadiens, who feared that WVNY's signal in the direction of Montreal was hurting their attendance. Station management and analysts in Montreal disagreed on the availability and signal strength of WVNY in the Montreal area. The Canadiens' decision spurred a letter-writing campaign, including a caravan of local residents that planned to travel to the Canadian border to present a petition, but the team reversed its stance. In 1976, the Canadiens ordered WVNY not to air several Bruins playoff games because they conflicted with Montreal home games to which there were unsold tickets.
ITC closed on the purchase of WVNY-TV and WEZF in July 1974. On September 3, WVNY-TV became WEZF-TV. After several years of not airing local newscasts, WEZF-TV debuted a new local news department in 1975, which was discontinued the next year. The news staff consisted of one person, and the newscasts were largely "rip-and-read", with the station instead emphasizing sports coverage and entertainment. It tried again in 1979, when it launched a half-hour news and features newscast titled First News 5:30. The 1979 reintroduction of news came after scrutiny from the FCC during channel 22's 1978 license renewal as to whether the station was meeting its five-percent local programming quota. The station relocated from Fort Ethan Allen to the former WCAX studios in Burlington's Market Square in 1980. The next year, the 5:30 news was retooled and moved to 6 p.m., where it would compete against WCAX and WPTZ, under the new title News Center 22. However, the newscast lacked sufficient resources and continued to rely heavily on features, and it was a very distant third-place to WCAX and WPTZ.
John R. Hughes, a former vice president of WEZF-TV who had attempted to buy the station, resigned in 1981 and filed a license challenge, including a competing application for channel 22. Hughes promised increased news coverage and local children's and talk shows. ITC president Donald Martin bought Hughes's stake out in March 1982 as the license challenge was settled.
Citadel ownership
Philip J. Lombardo agreed in August 1982 to acquire WEZF-TV from International Television Corporation for $4.5 million. Lombardo stepped down as the president of Corinthian Broadcasting to pursue a career in station ownership and hoped to buy additional stations. After taking control in November, Lombardo made major changes. Separated from WEZF radio, the station reverted to its original WVNY call sign; though all part-time employees were laid off, Lombardo promised an 11 p.m. newscast, new cameras, and electronic news gathering equipment to enable reporters to cover events in the field. Lombardo initiated further belt-tightening, dropping out of the Boston Red Sox television network and reducing its involvement in filming re-enactments for the local Crimestoppers. The 11 p.m. newscast was added in mid-1983. By 1984, when he acquired WUTV in Buffalo, New York, Lombardo's ownership group was known as Citadel Communications.In 1987, WVNY carried 15 Friday night telecasts from the Canadian Football Network. The network, which consisted otherwise of Canadian independent stations, had no other outlet available to reach Montreal as all stations there passed on the package; though WVNY could not carry the entire 37-game network schedule due to commitments to ABC weekend sports programming, station management thought the Canadian football was good counterprogramming to Friday-night reruns, and the Montreal Alouettes were among the last teams in the Canadian Football League to not have a secured CFN outlet in their market. By this time, 70 percent of Montreal homes had cable and could see the station, plus additional viewers who received it over the air. Channel 22 planned to air live games through the summer and delayed broadcasts once the fall TV season started. The Alouettes folded in late June, days before the CFL season began. WVNY rejoined the Red Sox TV network for 1988.
WVNY was a comparatively heavy preempter of ABC network programming in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It occasionally found that it would make more money programming reruns in which it could sell its own commercials than from network compensation to air selected ABC programs, such as Step by Step and The Commish. Months into the 1991–1992 television season, in part to repair relations with ABC, the station relented and dropped its preemptions of those shows and the ABC Sunday Night Movie. Two years later, when ABC moved Nightline from an 11:30 to an 11:35 p.m. start, WVNY balked; not wanting to extend its local news by five minutes just for a poorly-rated show, it dropped the program altogether in favor of reruns of Married... With Children. This lasted six months and ended when ABC gave affiliates additional prime time commercials to sell if they aired Nightline. For years until 1996, the station did not air General Hospital, replacing it with children's shows. From January to August 1995, it aired Star Trek: Voyager, as the market had no UPN affiliate.