WFXT
WFXT is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with the Fox network and owned by Cox Media Group. Its studios are located on Fox Drive in Dedham, and its transmitter is located on Cabot Street in Needham. WFXT is the largest Fox affiliate by market size that is not owned and operated by the network, although it was previously owned by Fox on two occasions.
History
Early years (1977–1986)
The station first signed on the air on October 10, 1977, as WXNE-TV ; originally operating as an independent station, it was founded by the then–Portsmouth, Virginia–based Christian Broadcasting Network. After being awarded a construction permit to build the station from the Federal Communications Commission in June 1972, CBN targeted the new channel 25 to begin operations within one year. However, various delays in obtaining both a studio and transmitter location resulted in a wait of over five years for the station to finally sign-on. WXNE-TV's early programming format was targeted at a family audience, consisting of older syndicated reruns and a decent amount of religious programming—including CBN's flagship show, The 700 Club, hosted by the ministry's founder Pat Robertson. Religious programs ran for about six hours a day during the week, and throughout the day on Sundays. The station also carried the daily and Sunday Mass from the Boston Catholic Television Center. Secular programming consisted of westerns, older movies, family-oriented drama series, old film shorts, and classic television series. For several years under CBN ownership, Tim Robertson served as the station's program director, appointed by his father, Pat Robertson.The station began adding more cartoons, made-for-TV movies, and off-network sitcoms and family dramas during the early 1980s. Most notably, in 1980, WXNE took over production of the weekday bowling program Candlepins for Cash, which had just been canceled by CBS affiliate WNAC-TV after seven seasons. With new host Rico Petrocelli, the show moved production from WNAC-TV's studios, in bowling lanes that were built in the basement of the facility, to the now-defunct Wal-Lex Lanes in Waltham. After only a few months as host, Petrocelli was ousted in favor of the program's original host when it aired on WNAC-TV, Bob Gamere, who remained on Candlepins until it ended its run on channel 25 in 1983. During this time, the station rebranded itself as "Boston 25", as it converted into a true independent. While the station was carried only on cable providers in the Greater Boston market, WXNE-TV held a solid third place among the area's independent stations, behind the longer-established WSBK-TV and WLVI-TV, and sixth in the ratings among the market's commercial television stations.
In April 1986, WXNE and the other two CBN-owned stations—KXTX-TV in Dallas and WYAH-TV in Portsmouth—were put up for sale. That August, News Corporation announced that it would purchase channel 25, with plans to make it an owned-and-operated station of its Fox Broadcasting Company. Fox had been in preliminary negotiations to secure an affiliation with either WSBK or WLVI, but ended its pursuit of both outlets. Until the sale was completed, channel 25, upon the Fox network's startup on October 9, 1986, did not air the network's inaugural program and what was then its lone offering, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, a late-night talk show that aired opposite The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on NBC. The outgoing CBN ownership believed that the program did not fit its strict content guidelines. Fox instead contracted Boston radio station WMRE to carry the audio portion of The Late Show in the interim.
As WFXT (1987–present)
When the sale to News Corporation was completed on December 31, 1986, WXNE-TV, renamed WFXT on January 19, 1987, became the seventh Fox-owned property and the first to be acquired separately from News Corporation's 1986 purchase of Metromedia's six television stations that served as the foundation for the new network. Besides adding The Late Show to the schedule, airings of The 700 Club were cut to once a day, and the daily broadcast of the Roman Catholic Mass was moved to an earlier timeslot. The station also began airing the syndicated, Fox-produced tabloid magazine A Current Affair on weeknights; WFXT was the second station, after producing station and Fox flagship WNYW in New York City, to air the program. WXNE staff announcer Chris Clausen had already been let go in late 1986 in favor of the services of Fox affiliate voiceover Beau Weaver, who would remain with both the station and Fox Television Stations for over a decade. The station's schedule, however, was largely unchanged at the outset, aside from the removal of several older sitcoms that soon resurfaced on WQTV. The Sunday evening religious program block was finally discontinued on April 5, 1987, when Fox launched its prime time lineup, which initially aired only on Sundays before expanding to Saturdays that July.Over the next few years, WFXT, for the most part was unable to acquire the better syndicated programs and continued to only acquire shows that WSBK, WLVI, and the market's network affiliates passed on. In addition to Fox programming, most of the shows added to WFXT's schedule were low-budget, first-run syndicated programs and cartoons. However, in 1988, the station did manage to buy two popular weekday syndicated shows away from WNEV—Hollywood Squares and Entertainment Tonight—when the CBS affiliate phased them off its schedule, due to other programming commitments. WFXT aired Squares through its 1989 cancellation; it carried ET weeknights at 7 p.m., as the lead-in to A Current Affair, until selling the show back to WHDH-TV in 1990. WFXT has again aired ET since 2015.
Sale to the Boston Celtics
As the FCC prohibited the common ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market, in purchasing channel 25, News Corporation had to apply for and was granted a temporary waiver in order to retain WFXT and the newspaper it had also published, the Boston Herald. On April 21, 1988, Rupert Murdoch, who had earlier stated his intention to retain the Herald, announced that WFXT would be put up for sale. In 1989, Fox proposed placing WFXT in a trust company as it sought to find a buyer willing to meet its $35 million asking price; on April 26, the FCC ruled that the trust would be required to sever all of the station's ties to Fox, including the network affiliation. That September, Fox agreed to sell the station to the Boston Celtics' ownership group for $20 million; the sale was completed on May 11, 1990. As part of the deal, News Corporation was given the opportunity to eventually buy back a 37.5-percent stake in the station. The Celtics made WFXT the NBA team's flagship station starting with the 1990–91 season, following the expiration of its existing contract with WLVI-TV. The station also gained a radio sister station, as the Celtics also purchased WEEI at the same time.The Celtics did not have the financial means to compete as a broadcaster. Nonetheless, under Celtics ownership, WFXT finally began to acquire stronger programming, becoming a serious competitor to WSBK and WLVI for the first time. In 1990, among securing the rights to several new, high-profile rerun syndication packages, WFXT managed to buy rights to The Cosby Show, reruns of which had been airing on WCVB-TV for the past two years. WCVB, which had lost a lot of money airing The Cosby Show in weekend blocks only, retained a small portion of the show's syndication rights for weekends and occasional airings in prime time. WFXT, meanwhile, began airing Cosby Show reruns on weekdays in the fall of 1990; aside from a couple of years off between 1994 and 1996, The Cosby Show would remain a staple of WFXT's schedule for well over a decade.
Return to Fox ownership
By 1992, WFXT was carried on many cable providers in areas of New England where there was no locally-based Fox affiliate station. Locally, however, the station was still rated in third place, behind WSBK and WLVI. Still, for a while under the Celtics' watch, WFXT was perceived to be in danger of losing its Fox affiliation. As early as March 1993, Fox was again considering the purchase of a Boston television station, even though News Corporation still owned the Boston Herald, and entered into preliminary discussions with Boston Celtics Communications about reacquiring WFXT; the Celtics subsequently said, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that Fox had warned the company that it could pull its affiliation from the station if it were to acquire another property in the market. By this point, Fox held a 25-percent convertible interest in WFXT, and indicated it was seeking to expand this interest. That October, Fox obtained a 10-year option to repurchase the station as early as 1995, and immediately announced that it would not seek a waiver to own both channel 25 and the Herald; News Corporation sold the newspaper to its publisher, Pat Purcell, in February 1994, clearing the way for a potential purchase of WFXT. The Celtics also moved their games off their own station, shifting the team's over-the-air broadcast rights to WSBK-TV in a five-year deal that began with the 1993–94 season; this move followed WFXT's increasing difficulty in scheduling Celtics telecasts around the Fox lineup.WFXT's Fox affiliation again came into question in 1994, in the wake of the network's affiliation deal with twelve New World Communications stations, when reports emerged that then-CBS affiliate WHDH-TV was considering a switch to Fox. After Westinghouse Broadcasting signed a deal that July to affiliate all of its stations, including WBZ-TV, with CBS, WHDH was given the opportunity to choose between Fox and the NBC affiliation being vacated by WBZ; it elected to sign with NBC in August 1994, keeping Fox on WFXT. On October 5, 1994, Fox announced it would exercise its purchase option and buy WFXT. That November, the deal, as well as Fox's concurrent purchase of WTXF in Philadelphia, encountered objections from NBC, alleging that Fox's interest in SF Broadcasting, in connection with the Boston and Philadelphia purchases, would put Fox over the FCC's 12-station ownership limit; NBC subsequently filed a separate petition concerning Fox's ties to the then-Australian-based News Corporation. NBC withdrew its petitions on February 17, 1995, allowing Fox to retake control of channel 25 on July 7.
As the 1990s progressed, WFXT began phasing in more talk and reality programs. It continued running cartoons each weekday—later becoming the last station in the market that had run a morning children's program block—and sitcoms during the evening hours. WFXT served as the television flagship of the Boston Red Sox for three seasons from 2000 to 2002.
In the fall of 2001, WPXT disaffiliated from Fox due to a payment dispute between Pegasus Broadcasting and the network. This left Portland and the entire state of Maine without a Fox affiliate until then-Pax TV affiliate WMPX-TV switched to the network in April 2003; during this time, WFXT served as the default Fox affiliate for the New Hampshire side of the Portland market, while Foxnet provided the network's programming throughout Maine.
At one point in 2006, the station was "tentatively planning" to carry programming from News Corporation-owned MyNetworkTV on weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. if the new network was unable to find an affiliate in the Boston market. On July 21, 2006, News Corporation announced that Derry, New Hampshire–based WZMY-TV would become the market's MyNetworkTV affiliate when the network began operations on September 5, 2006. Channel 50 ended its affiliation with MyNetworkTV in September 2011, shortly after changing call letters to WBIN-TV; WSBK took over the affiliation at that time. Before MyNetworkTV became a programming service consisting solely of reruns, WFXT occasionally promoted that network's programming.
On October 12, 2007, Comcast began blacking out Fox prime time and sports programming from WFXT on its systems in Bristol County due to an invocation of the FCC's network non-duplication rule by WNAC-TV, the Fox affiliate in Providence, Rhode Island, leaving only channel 25's syndicated programs and newscasts available in that area. On July 31, 2008, Charter Communications' system in Westport also became subject to the blackouts, this contributed to WFXT's eventual removal from that system on September 23, 2008.