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WWOR-TV

Secaucus, New Jersey/New York City, New York
City of license	Secaucus, New Jersey
Branding	My 9
Slogan	Now's the Time for My 9 (primary) C. More My 9! (secondary)
Channels	Digital: 38 (UHF) Virtual: 9 (PSIP)
Affiliations	MyNetworkTV
Owner	Fox Television Stations (Fox Television Stations, Inc.)
First air date	October 11, 1949
Call letters' meaning	WOR, the original calls with an extra W added (itself derived from WOR (AM))
Sister station(s)	WNYW
Former callsigns	WOR-TV (1949-1987)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 9 (VHF, 1949-2009)
Former affiliations	Independent (1949-1995) UPN (1995-2006)
Transmitter power	170 kW
Height	397 m (1,302 ft)
Facility ID	74197
Transmitter coordinates	40°44′54.4″N 73°59′8.4″W / 40.748444°N 73.985667°W / 40.748444; -73.985667
Licensing authority	FCC
Public license information:	Profile CDBS
Website	www.my9tv.com

WWOR-TV, channel 9, is a television station in Secaucus, New Jersey that serves the New York City television market as the flagship station of the MyNetworkTV programming service. The station is owned by the Fox Television Stations division of News Corporation, and is a sister station to Fox owned-and-operated station WNYW (channel 5). WWOR-TV's studios and main offices are located south of Route 3 east of the Meadowlands Sports Complex and its transmitter is located atop the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

The station is available to Dish Network subscribers as part of the satellite provider's superstations package, except in markets where the local MyNetworkTV affiliate invokes syndication exclusivity to block access to WWOR's programming within the market.

Digital television [edit]

Digital channels [edit]

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

WWOR-TV also has a Mobile DTV feed of sister station WNYW 5.1 (via its subchannel on 9.2), broadcasting at 1.83 Mbit/s, with plans to add a subchannel of its own, also at 1.83 Mbit/s^[1][2]

Bounce TV [edit]

On November 3, 2011, Fox Television Stations signed an affiliation agreement with Bounce TV, a subchannel network aimed at African American audiences, to carry the service on the second or third digital subchannels of its MyNetworkTV-affiliated stations.^[3]

MundoFox [edit]

On May 17, 2013, Fox began carrying MundoFox, via the primary channel of WPXO-LD East Orange (NJ), over WWOR-TV subchannel 9-4. This is the first time that WWOR-TV has broadcasted three subchannels over RF channel 38.

Analog-to-digital conversion [edit]

At 11:59 p.m. on June 12, 2009, WWOR-TV turned off its analog signal on VHF channel 9 as part of the digital television transition.^[4] The station remained on its pre-transition UHF digital channel 38, using PSIP to display its virtual channel as 9.^[5][6]

History [edit]

As WOR-TV [edit]

Early history [edit]

Channel 9 signed on the air on October 11, 1949 as WOR-TV, it was owned by the Bamberger Broadcasting Service (a division of R. H. Macy and Company and named after the Bamberger's department store chain), which also operated WOR radio (710 AM) and WOR-FM (98.7 MHz, later WRKS and now WEPN-FM).^[7] 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 (channel 11) and Newark, New Jersey-based WATV (channel 13, later WNTA-TV). 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 Roof Theatre, 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. In 1949, the station moved uptown to the newly-constructed "9 Television Square" facility on West 67th Street (near the present-day location of WABC-TV's studios). At the start of 1950, Bamberger Broadcasting changed its name to General Teleradio.^[8] Later that year, WOIC was sold to a joint venture of the Washington Post and CBS, who would change that station's callsign to WTOP-TV (it is now WUSA).^[9] In 1953, WOR-TV began operating a separate studio for news and special events programming located on the 83rd floor of the Empire State Building.^[10]

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: in Boston, with the regional Yankee Radio Network and WNAC-AM-FM-TV there; 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 the brought together under the General Teleradio name.^[11][12] The main impetus for the merger was to give General Tire a controlling share in 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 but ultimately did not come to fruition.

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 early years of RKO General ownership, WOR-TV moved back to Times Square, and closer to its radio station sisters. Channel 9's studios were co-located with WOR radio at 1440 Broadway (near West 40th Street) for several years. 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 (channel 5, later WNEW-TV and now WNYW) became an independent. During 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 field of independent stations was narrowed to three, as WOR-TV and its competition benefited from the sale of WNTA-TV to the non-profit Educational Broadcasting Corporation, who would convert channel 13 into a non-commercial educational station (it is now WNET).

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 Friendly Giant and Romper Room (which moved to the station from WNEW-TV in 1966), sporting events, and a large catalog of movies, some of which came from the RKO Radio Pictures film library. Until 1990, the station had a tradition of showing King Kong; Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young on Thanksgiving, and Godzilla films on Thanksgiving and the day after.

In 1962, nostalgia maven Joe Franklin moved his daily talk program to WOR-TV, after a 12-year run on WABC-TV. When The Joe Franklin Show ended on August 6, 1993, Franklin had interviewed over 350,000 guests on over 28,000 episodes, making it one of the longest-running programs in television history, local or national. The long-running public affairs show Firing Line got its start at 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 [edit]

By the early 1970s, WNEW-TV became 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. But channel 9 was behind the other two independent stations in the local ratings. 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 12 p.m. newscast on weekdays, in addition to producing several hours a day of local talk shows (such as The Joe Franklin Show, Straight Talk and public affairs shows such as Meet the Mayors, titles that were shared by other RKO General television stations).

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. telecast of Thames' greatest export: The Benny Hill Show, and an airing of an episode of Man About the House, which would be adapted by ABC as Three's Company the following year.^[13] WOR-TV also aired episodes of 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.^[14] 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.

Despite its ambitious programming, WOR-TV was perceived by people that preferred a more traditional independent to be 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 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 (now WPCH-TV) in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago as national superstations.

Troubles with the FCC [edit]

While WOR-TV was gaining national exposure, a battle for the station's survival – and that of its owner – 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 Boston sister station, WNAC-TV. 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 withheld evidence of corporate misconduct by General Tire. The decision meant that RKO lost WOR-TV's license and that of Los Angeles sister station KHJ-TV.^[15] 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. RKO soon found itself under renewed pressure from the FCC, which began soliciting applications for all of the company's broadcast licenses in February 1983.^[16]

Move to New Jersey [edit]

"Endcap" used during final months of RKO ownership before changing to WWOR-TV (1986)

In order to buy itself some time, RKO (with the help of New Jersey senator Bill Bradley) 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 a state not served by a commercial VHF station – New Jersey and Delaware were the only states not to be served by a commercial VHF station, there were complaints for many years that New Jersey in particular had been "underserved" by VHF stations from the New York City and Philadelphia markets (New Jersey was left without any commercial VHF allocations located within the state due to the 1962 conversion of Newark's channel 13 to a non-commercial outlet). RKO was able to retain WOR-TV by moving the channel 9 license to Secaucus (seven miles west of Manhattan) on April 20, 1983, but for all intents and purposes, it remained a New York City station.

One of the FCC's conditions of renewing channel 9's license required RKO to move the station's main studio to New Jersey as well. Three years after its city of license was moved to New Jersey, WOR-TV would establish a physical presence in that state with the opening of the 9 Broadcast Plaza studio facility on January 13, 1986. One month later, the New Jersey State Senate petitioned the FCC to approve an extension of the channel 9 signal into southern New Jersey. Because of various other issues, one of which would be the fact that rights to most syndicated programs would interfere with the local broadcast rights to these shows on Philadelphia stations, the request was denied.

The move to New Jersey did little to relieve the regulatory pressure on RKO, which opted to put WOR-TV up for sale in 1985. Westinghouse Broadcasting,^[17] Chris-Craft Industries,^[18] and a joint venture of Cox Enterprises and MCA/Universal emerged as the leading suitors for WOR-TV, and the station was sold to the Cox/MCA group in late 1986 for $387 million.^[19] Cox later backed out due to disagreements between the two firms on who would be responsible for running the station. But the announcement of this deal came just in the nick of time for RKO: in 1987, an administrative law judge recommended that RKO be stripped of its remaining broadcast properties due to a litany of misconduct. Eventually, WOR radio would be sold to Hartford, Connecticut-based Buckley Broadcasting, and WRKS-FM would go to Summit Broadcasting.

As WWOR-TV [edit]

MCA assumed control of WOR-TV on April 21, 1987. Initially, only the callsign changed (simply by adding a "W"), becoming WWOR-TV with a new logo, and programming stayed pretty much the same. That fall, WWOR-TV relaunched as a station perceived as different from a year prior. The station dropped most of its public affairs shows, Romper Room was cut back to a half-hour and moved to 6:00 a.m., all religious shows except for the Sunday Mass were dropped, cartoons were added to the station's morning lineup, and stronger syndicated shows were added in the early evenings. Late morning timeslots consisting of classic sitcoms and afternoons continuing to consist of game shows, drama series and movies – programs seen in both dayparts were largely those held over from the station's later years under RKO ownership. Later that fall, in primetime, the Million Dollar Movie was relegated to weekends in favor of Morton Downey Jr.'s controversial new talk show, while the 8:00 newscast moved to 10:00 p.m., and was expanded to one hour. The overhaul continued in 1988 and 1989, when it added evening sitcoms, including among others, reruns of NBC's top-rated sitcom The Cosby Show, Who's The Boss? and 227. WWOR-TV also borrowed program formats used on the Westinghouse stations: a short-lived version of Evening Magazine aired in primetime, and a locally produced talk show called People Are Talking ran at 11 a.m. 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.

In 1989, the FCC passed the "Syndicated Exclusivity Rights" rule (or "SyndEx") into law – which required cable providers to block out certain syndicated programs on out-of-market stations that stations claim the rights to air in a particular market. In order to lighten the burden on cable providers as a result of this law, Eastern Microwave acquired the rights to programs that no stations claimed in-market exclusivity to for broadcast on WWOR's national feed to replace programs 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, as well as some holdover shows that had aired on the local New York feed before the SyndEx law's passage. Eastern Microwave would eventually launch a separate feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, called the "WWOR EMI Service".

In the fall of 1990, WWOR-TV began branding itself as Universal 9 on-air, highlighting its association with the MCA/Universal entertainment empire. However, MCA's ownership of the station ended with the company's purchase by Osaka, Japan-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.. Since FCC regulations do not allow foreign companies to own more than a 25% stake in a television station, MCA decided to spin off the assets of WWOR-TV into a new company called Pinelands, Incorporated on January 1, 1991. However, the station continued to brand itself as Universal 9 on-air until early 1992. In 1993, Pinelands was acquired by Chris-Craft Industries subsidiary BHC Communications, which had unsuccessfully bid for the station seven years earlier. In 1993, BHC aligned its independent stations with the Prime Time Entertainment Network.^[20][21]

UPN affiliation [edit]

In 1994, Chris-Craft and its broadcasting subsidiary, BHC Communications, and Viacom's newly-acquired subsidiary Paramount Pictures banded together to form the United Paramount Network, which debuted on January 16, 1995. At the network's launch, WWOR-TV was UPN's "flagship" station. However, UPN did not allow WWOR's superstation feed to carry the network's programs nationally (in contrast, The WB Television Network allowed fellow superstation WGN-TV to air network programming on its cable feed during that network's first four years on the air). In the 1990s, the station continued with a large amount of younger leaning talk shows, reality programming, some sitcoms in evenings, and syndicated cartoons during the morning hours.

On January 1, 1997, with only a month's advance warning, Advance Entertainment Corporation, which had purchased the satellite distribution rights to WWOR from Eastern Microwave a few months earlier, stopped uplinking the national version. The EMI Service's transponder space was sold to Discovery Communications for the then six-month-old Animal Planet. Amid outcries from satellite dish owners, National Programming Service, LLC uplinked the station again exclusively for satellite subscribers. The national feed was once again the same feed as the New York market feed. NPS dropped WWOR in 1999, in favor of Pax TV, but Dish Network still carries the New York feed of WWOR as part of its superstations package except in areas where the local UPN (and later, MyNetworkTV) affiliate invoked SyndEx to block the feed.

In 2000, Chris-Craft announced that it was selling its television stations. It was believed that Viacom, which had purchased Chris-Craft's half of the network that year not long after buying CBS – gaining full control of UPN (and effectively stripping WWOR of its status as an owned-and-operated station of the network in the process), would buy the stations. However, Viacom lost its bid for the group to News Corporation on August 12, 2000 in a $5.5 billion deal,^[22] making WWOR-TV a sister station to longtime rival WNYW – creating a unique situation in which the largest affiliate station of one network was owned by the operator of another network. While some cast doubt on UPN's future, Fox quickly cut a new affiliation deal with UPN.

On September 11, 2001, the transmitter facilities of WWOR-TV, 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. The attacks delayed the closing of the Chris-Craft deal for several days. 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 9 resumed regular programming on September 17, 2001. The transmitter has since been relocated to an antenna located atop the Empire State Building, along with most of the other major New York City stations.

Fox began integrating the operations of its two stations soon afterwards. In the fall of 2001, the Fox Kids weekday afternoon block moved to WWOR-TV from WNYW, while the station also ran UPN's Disney's One Too during the morning hours. Channel 9 was New York City's last remaining commercial station to air children's programming on both weekday mornings and aftertnoons, an ironic twist from 20 years earlier; however, Fox later discontinued the Fox Kids weekday block in January 2002 while UPN ended its cartoon block in August 2003, WWOR then picked up syndicated cartoons in the fall of 2003 in the 7 to 9 a.m. slot (and later until 8 a.m.), before dropping them in 2006. This made WWOR-TV the last commercial station to run any cartoons on weekdays. WNYW also placed several of its underperforming syndicated shows on WWOR, and cherry-picked channel 9's stronger programs for broadcast on channel 5's schedule. Currently, WWOR offers several "double-runs" of WNYW's programs, but the two stations' individual schedules (outside of network programming) are much different.

In 2004, Fox Television Stations announced that it would shut down WWOR-TV's Seacaucus facilities and move its operations to the Fox Television Center in Manhattan with sister station WNYW. Fox planned to keep 9 Broadcast Plaza as a satellite relay station for WNYW and WWOR (the facility also performs master control operations for Baltimore's MyNetworkTV affiliate WUTB). While some office functions were merged, plans for a full move to Manhattan were scuttled later that year due to pressure from New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman (whose congressional district includes Secaucus) and Senator Frank Lautenberg.^[23][24] The two lawmakers contended that any move to Manhattan would violate WWOR's conditions of its license, resulting in the shut down of channel 9's news department or at the very least downsizing it to the point that the station would not be able to adequately cover news events focused on New Jersey. The company also considered moving WNYW's operations to Seacaucus, but to date both stations continue to maintains separate studio facilities.

MyNetworkTV affiliation [edit]

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Time Warner announced that they would shut down UPN and The WB and create a new network with programs from both services, called The CW Television Network.^[25] WPIX, which had been a WB affiliate since 1995, was announced as The CW's New York City area affiliate as part of a 10-year affiliation deal with channel 11's parent company Tribune Broadcasting. The network's officials were on record as preferring the "strongest" stations among The WB and UPN's affiliates, none of which included any of Fox's UPN-affiliated stations – locally, WPIX had been well ahead of WWOR-TV in overall viewership for some time. The day after the announcement of The CW's formation (January 25, 2006), Fox removed all network references from the on-air branding of its UPN affiliates, and stopped promoting UPN programs altogether. WWOR accordingly changed its branding from "UPN 9" to "WWOR 9" (although the station was referred to on-air as simply "9"), and altered its logo to only feature the boxed "9" with a small red strip on the left side. WWOR had just introduced a new graphics package for its newscasts and a revised logo almost three weeks prior, with UPN branding.

The formation of MyNetworkTV, with WWOR-TV and the other Fox-owned UPN stations as the nuclei, was announced on February 22, 2006, less than one month later.^[26] With the impending switch to MyNetworkTV, channel 9's on-air branding was changed to My 9 beginning on April 4, with the new brand being introduced during Nets and Yankees game telecasts; two weeks later on April 17, WWOR incorporated the My 9 name into the station's remaining branding elements, including news. On June 2, WWOR changed its logo again, this time adopting one similar to the MyNetworkTV logo presented at the launch announcement. Despite MyNetworkTV's announcement that its launch date would be September 5, 2006, UPN continued to broadcast on stations across the country until September 15, 2006. While some UPN affiliates that switched to MyNetworkTV aired the final two weeks of UPN programming outside its regular primetime period, WWOR and the rest of the network's Fox-owned affiliates dropped UPN's programming entirely on August 31, 2006.

On October 15, 2010, News Corporation pulled the signal of WWOR, WNYW and three cable channels from Cablevision systems in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut due to a dispute between Fox and Cablevision in which Cablevision claimed that News Corporation demanded $150 million a year to renew its carriage of 12 Fox-owned channels.^[27] Cablevision called this "an unfortunate attempt to get unreasonable and unfair fee increases from Cablevision and our customers." ^[28] News Corporation responded to Cablevision's claims, stating that "Cablevision has refused to recognize how much [its subscribers] value our programming."^[29] Cablevision offered to submit to binding arbitration on October 14, 2010, though News Corporation rejected Cablevision's proposal, stating that it would "reward Cablevision for refusing to negotiate fairly". WWOR, WNYW and the three cable channels were restored on October 30, 2010, when Cablevision and News Corporation struck a new carriage deal.

On December 15, 2011, WWOR introduced an official mascot, C.More (pronounced SEE-more, and corresponding with its new slogan, "C.More My9"), an anthropomorphic "My9" logo featured on station promotions. WWOR started a Facebook^[30] and Twitter^[31] page dedicated to C.More, and also uploaded a YouTube video that C.More "recorded via webcam".^[32] Localized versions of the C.More mascot have since been rolled out to Fox's other MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated stations.

Pending license renewal [edit]

The station has been waiting for renewal of its broadcast license since 2007,^[33][34] the same year that two petitions to deny the license's renewal were submitted.^[35][36] According to claims from U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and media observers, who filed a complaint with the FCC in November 2009, WWOR-TV's performance was "clearly inadequate to meet its public interest obligations" and he questioned the truthfulness of its application.^[37] The station is also being accused of misrepresenting the number of station employees based in Secaucus, and failed to report a reduction in local news coverage.^[38]

On February 17, 2011, the FCC opened an investigation against News Corporation to determine whether the company misrepresented information about WWOR-TV's news operations and programming during the station's license review.^[39] News Corporation may be stripped of its licenses to operate both WWOR-TV and sister station WNYW, as well as facing other penalties if found guilty of any wrongdoing.^[40] Legal representation hired by WWOR has stated that the station had fulfilled its commitments.^[41] In December 2012, Lautenberg called for an investigation into the potential relaxing of FCC rules regarding ownership consolidation within media markets stating that News Corporation’s co-ownership of WNYW and the New York Post “has not served New Jersey well.”^[42]

Sports programming [edit]

As an independent station, channel 9's schedule was heavy on sports programming. Early in its history, WOR-TV established itself as the home of National League baseball in New York, carrying Brooklyn Dodgers (beginning in 1950) and New York Giants games (beginning in 1951) until both teams moved to California following the 1957 season. From 1958 to 1961, the station aired a limited schedule of Philadelphia Phillies games, consisting of matchups against the Dodgers and Giants. In 1962, WOR-TV gained broadcast rights to the New York Mets, the National League's new expansion team. The partnership between the station and the team would last through the 1998 season, after which the Mets moved their broadcasts to WPIX.

Channel 9 acquired rights to the NHL's New York Rangers and the NBA's New York Knicks in 1965, holding onto both teams until 1989 (when the two teams television rights moved to the cable-exclusive MSG Network). The New York Islanders; New York/New Jersey Nets; New Jersey Devils; local college basketball; New York Cosmos soccer; WWWF/WWF; WCW and briefly in the mid-1970s, IWA wrestling were also broadcast on channel 9. For a generation of New York sports fans, the station became synonymous with its relationships with the Mets, Knicks, Rangers, Islanders, Devils, Nets and the World Wrestling Federation.

Except for the Mets (for whom WOR/WWOR did cover a large number of home games), WWOR's pro sports coverage mainly featured away games, although in the mid-1960s, the station taped a handful of Rangers' Saturday afternoon home games for broadcast that evening. One such game, on November 12, 1965 against the Chicago Blackhawks, is said to be the first NHL game to ever be broadcast in color.^[43] In early 1968, the station also carried live coverage of the Rangers' and Knicks' last home games at the old Madison Square Garden and the first home games of both teams from the new MSG arena.

WWOR also broadcast an infamous interview between former World Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and the station's sports anchor Russ Salzberg in January 1999, whose intent was to discuss Tyson's then comeback fight against Francois Botha; Tyson shouted several expletives, made threats and told the audience to switch the station off. This prompted Salzberg to abruptly end the interview, giving Tyson a half-hearted wish of luck in his upcoming fight.^[44]

In late September 2001, WWOR-TV aired several New York Yankees baseball games that were originally scheduled to air on WNYW. In 2005, channel 9 picked up Yankees games on a full-time basis, with the broadcasts being produced by the YES Network. Whenever YES broadcasts a Yankees game during the same time period as a Brooklyn Nets game, the Nets game airs instead on WWOR due to channel overflow, and the mutual agreement between the two networks. This is usually the case during the month of April, and most of the Nets playoff games. On August 10, 2012, WWOR-TV aired a pre-season New York Giants football game, due to an arrangement between the team and WWOR to carry the game as WNBC could not air it due to its commitments to broadcast the 2012 Summer Olympics.^[45]

Newscasts [edit]

The station's lone newscast, The 10 O'Clock News, runs for 35 minutes on Monday through Friday evenings; as a result, WWOR has the lowest number of weekly hours devoted to local news programming (2½ hours) among the New York City market's television stations – this is in stark contrast to sister station WNYW, which produces 44 hours each week for the largest newscast output in the market. Sports director Russ Salzberg, anchor Brenda Blackmon, and reporter Brenda Flanagan are the station's longest-tenured on-air personalities. Flanagan has worked for the station since 1983, while Salzberg and Blackmon joined WWOR respectively in 1988 and 1992.^[46] In areas of central New Jersey, where the New York and Philadelphia markets overlap one another, both WWOR and WNYW share resources with their Philadelphia sister station WTXF-TV. The stations share reporters for stories occurring in New Jersey counties served by both markets.

Despite the presence of its sister station WNYW's long-running and successful news program at 10:00 p.m., WWOR was able to compete in that same timeslot simply because both stations use separate studios. As opposed to the model of most television station duopolies, WWOR-TV and sister station WNYW currently both operate news departments that are technically separate from one another: WWOR operates its news department from the station's Secaucus studios, while WNYW runs theirs from the Fox Television Center in Manhattan, allowing the two stations to maintain their own on-air identities and offer individual local news programs simultaneously. However, the two stations share a fairly significant amount in regards to news coverage, with some staffers having switched from one station to the other. Both stations maintain their own primary on-air personalities (such as news anchors and reporters) that only appear on one station. WWOR's newscasts also focus a larger porportion of its stories on New Jersey issues, a condition the station has adhered to since its license was transferred from New York City to Secaucus.

As most of New York's independent stations were during the 1960s and 1970s, WOR-TV was a very minor player in the area of local news. Before 1971, the station did not carry any live news programming, but had an early morning audio-only newscast read by the duty staff announcer over the station logo. Then in 1971, WOR-TV launched its first live newscast, News at Noon, which was also the first midday newscast from any New York City station. In 1983, following the move to New Jersey, channel 9 launched a nightly 8:00 p.m. newscast called News 9: Primetime. After the MCA takeover in 1987, the 8:00 newscast was moved two hours later to the 10:00 p.m. time period, and expanded to an hour (placing it in direct competition with newscasts in that timeslot airing on WPIX and eventual sister station WNYW). The noon program, which was later merged into 9 Broadcast Plaza, ended in 1993 and was replaced with syndicated programming.

On July 13, 2009, the 10:00 p.m. newscast was moved to 11:00 p.m. and was shortened to a half-hour due to budget cuts. In addition, weekend newscasts and a Sunday night sports highlight program were eliminated.^[47] On June 27, 2011, WWOR returned the newscast to its previous 10 p.m. timeslot; the newscast remains a half-hour in length and continues to air on weeknights only.^[48] On September 10, 2012, WWOR-TV began broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

News team [edit]

Current on-air staff^[46] [edit]

+ denotes personnel seen exclusively on WWOR-TV

Anchors

• + Brenda Blackmon - news anchor
• + Harry Martin - news anchor
• Audrey Puente (member, AMS; member, NWA) - meteorologist
• Russ Salzberg - sports director

Reporters

• Matt Alvarez - general assignment reporter
• Pat Collins - entertainment reporter/film critic
• + Sharon Crowley - general assignment reporter
• Brenda Flanagan - general assignment reporter
• Christine Persichette - general assignment reporter

Notable former on-air staff [edit]

Cultural references [edit]

• 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).
• A WOR-TV helicopter is shown in the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, complete with a video crew trying to get coverage of the bank hold-up; an NYPD helicopter forces WOR's helicopter out of the area.
• In the 1983 film Without a Trace, the main character, played by Kate Nelligan, is interviewed live by a fictional WOR-TV reporter, who has a "9" flag on her microphone and identifies herself with "WOR-TV News".
• In 1989/90, WWOR (then owned by MCA) was incorporated into the popular Universal Studios Florida ride, Kongfrontation. This ride was sacrificed in 2003 for "Mummy: The Ride", a high-speed indoor rollercoaster.
• Bruce Springsteen's song "You Can Look, But You Better Not Touch" from his 1980 album, "The River" references Channel 9 in the lyrics.
• Newscasts from the station can be seen in the 1990 film Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

See also [edit]

• WOR (AM) (710 kHz.)
• WRKS-FM, the former WOR-FM (98.7 MHz.)
• RKO General
• WWOR EMI Service, the national version of WWOR-TV seen outside the New York market from 1979 to 1997

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• My9TV.com - Official Website
• WOR/WWOR-TV Classic and Current Station IDs/Promos from TVARK
• Two articles about WOR-TV's premiere night on the air in 1949
• "Thames on 9" -- WOR-TV's prime-time schedule from 6-10 September 1976, when Thames took over channel 9
• WWOR-TV logos and screenshots from 1950s to the present day
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WWOR-TV
• Program Information for WWOR at TitanTV.com