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WHDH (TV)

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"WHDH" redirects here. For the history of WHDH-AM radio, see WEEI.

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WHDH-TV "7 NBC" is the NBC affiliate in the Boston, Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire television markets. The station's transmitter is located in Newton, Massachusetts, while its studios are located at 7 Bulfinch Place near Government Center in Downtown Boston. It is one of six local Boston TV stations seen in Canada on the Bell ExpressVu satellite provider.

The station is owned by NBC Universal and because of this, it is the 2nd largest NBC affiliate owned by the company (behind WMAQ-TV).

History

Channel 7 first went on the air on June 21, 1948, as WNAC-TV, the second television station in Boston (twelve days after WBZ-TV). It was owned by General Tire along with WNAC-AM 680 (now WRKO), flagship of the Yankee Network, a New England regional radio network. General Tire had purchased the Yankee Network in 1943. WNAC first broadcasted from studios at 21 Brookline Avenue (which had also been home to WNAC radio and the Yankee Network) before moving to its current facilities at 7 Bullfinch Place near Government Center in 1968.

In 1950, General Tire bought the West Coast regional Don Lee Broadcasting System. Two years later, it bought the Bamberger Broadcasting Service (WOR-AM-FM-TV in New York City) and merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio. General Tire bought RKO Radio Pictures in 1955 after General Tire found RKO's film library would be a perfect programming source for WNAC and its other television stations. The studio was merged into General Teleradio to become RKO Teleradio; after the film studio was dissolved, the business was renamed RKO General in 1959.

WNAC-TV was originally a CBS affiliate, but shared ABC programming with WBZ until 1957 when (the original) WHDH-TV signed on channel 5. It switched affiliations with WHDH in 1961 and joined ABC. [1] It stayed with ABC until 1972, when channel 5 lost its license. The licensees of the station that replaced it, WCVB-TV, planned to air more local programming than any other station in the country, heavily preempting CBS programming in the process. This didn't sit very well with CBS, who immediately moved back to WNAC. However, WNAC utilized the version of the circle 7 logo it had adopted in 1973 until 1977, when ABC complained it was infringing on its trademark, and it began using a Times-Serif-Italic "7". In 1980, a stylish, strip-layered "7" was introduced, which ended up being the last logo redesign under RKO General ownership.

Two legendary Boston TV personalities had shows on WNAC: Louise Morgan, who hosted a talk show and was known as "New England's First Lady of Radio and Television", and Ed McDonnell, who as the costumed (as an astronaut) character "Major Mudd", hosted a popular children's show in the 1960s and early 1970s.

File:WNAC-TV.JPG
A WNAC station ID

By 1965, RKO General faced numerous investigations into its business and financial practices. Though the FCC renewed the broadcast license for WNAC in 1969, RKO General lost the license in 1981 after General Tire admitted to a stunning litany of corporate misconduct as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Among other things, General Tire admitted that it had committed financial fraud over illegal political contributions and bribes. However, in the FCC hearings, RKO General had withheld evidence of General Tire's misconduct, and had also failed to disclose evidence of accounting errors on its own part. In light of RKO's dishonesty, the FCC stripped RKO of the Boston license and the licenses for WOR-TV in New York and KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. The FCC had previously conditioned renewal of the latter two stations' licenses on WNAC's renewal. An appeals court partially reversed the ruling, finding that the FCC had erred in tying the latter two stations' renewals to WNAC's license. It upheld the WNAC revocation and ordered a rehearing on the other stations.

File:SE7ENlogo.JPG
The WNEV SE7EN logo, used from 1982 to 1987

RKO appealed this decision, but after almost two years of legal action agreed to a settlement in 1982. It agreed to sell WNAC's assets to New England Television, a merger of two of the original challengers to the station's license controlled by Boston grocery magnate David Mugar. As part of the agreement, the FCC granted a full license to New England Television. The change took effect on May 22, 1982. At that time, the station's call letters were changed to WNEV and the "7" logo was dropped in favor of a new SE7EN logo. This logo would change to one of a number 7 made up of seven dots in 1987.

File:WNEV.JPG
A promo for Jeopardy! on WNEV

In 1990, WNEV's owner bought WHDH (850 AM, now WEEI) and renamed the TV station WHDH-TV. The switch to the WHDH calls took place on March 19, 1990, exactly 18 years to the day that they were last used on Channel 5. Those call letters had previously been used by what is now WCVB from 1957 until 1972. In June 1993, WHDH-TV was sold to Sunbeam Television of Miami (controlled by Ed Ansin), who still owns the station today. Shortly afterward, it adopted its present circle 7 logo, the same one also used by WSVN.

Over the years, channel 7 as WNAC preempted little programming. As WNEV, the station prempted programming in moderation. The preempted programs often aired on WHLL (now WUNI-TV). From 1989 to 1990, the station delayed CBS Morning News in favor of a children's show called Ready To Go. In late 1993, CBS News This Morning was dropped and picked up by WABU (now WBPX). WHDH then began an expanded morning local newscast. When the station became a NBC affiliate, WHDH ran the entire NBC lineup.

File:180px-Circle7boston.jpg
Boston's Circle 7 logos over the past 30+ years.

WNEV/WHDH also had exclusive rights to Lottery Live, broadcasting the Mass State Lottery games early & late evening from 1988 to 1994. Long-time host Dawn Hayes began her run during this era. The games were subsequently moved over to WCVB-TV Ch. 5.

WHDH stayed with CBS until January 2, 1995, when WBZ took over the CBS affiliation as part of a group deal between CBS and WBZ's owner, Group W. Fox considered an affiliation deal with WHDH. However, WHDH opted to become the NBC affiliate.

Between 1996 and 1997, WHDH also produced a mid-morning weekday newsmagazine for the NBC network called Real Life. [2]

In May of 2006, WHDH introduced NBC Weather Plus, which is offered on the station's DT2 digital subchannel and Comcast digital cable channel 297.

On September 14, 2006, it was announced that Tribune Broadcasting would sell WLVI, Boston's CW affiliate, to Sunbeam Television, owners of WHDH and WSVN, for $117.3 million dollars, after much speculation that Sunbeam would buy WLVI. [3] The sale was approved by the FCC in late November giving Boston its second television duopoly (the other is WBZ-TV and WSBK-TV). WLVI moved from its Dorchester studios to WHDH in Downtown Boston.

Newscasts

As WNAC-TV, the station had been among the first to use the music called "Move Closer to Your World" in 1970. Two years later, the station's news director moved to WPVI in Philadelphia and took the theme with him, where it became famous. It was also during that time that a young news personality by the name of Chuck Scarborough assumed the role of lead anchor at the WNAC news department. Scarborough would later move on to WNBC-TV in New York, where he remains today, and be prominently featured on NBC's national news. Due to his presence and those of other up-and-coming journalists, the station had begun to be fairly competitive with WCVB and WBZ in the early 1970s. For a brief period in 1974, WNAC's 6pm newscast actually catapulted from third place to first, thanks in part to its new hit lead-in, Candlepins For Cash, a local bowling show which had premiered the previous year. However, WNAC's news operation wasn't able to maintain this momentum for long; the RKO fiasco caused a sharp drop in the ratings.

By the time New England Television bought the station, a massive attempt to bring Channel 7 as WNEV out of the ratings basement occured with the infamous "dream team" headed by Tom Ellis and Robin Young. Ellis had previously maintained WBZ's dominance in the news market and then helped WCVB reach number one during his tenure there (1979-82). Young, on the other hand, had no hard news experience but was well-known to Boston viewers as former co-host of Evening Magazine. Along with other significant personnel changes, it seemed this 1982 "dream team" would work out; what would come for WNEV's news in the next few years was more shakeups, both in talent and identity due to ongoing sagging ratings, and the eventual firing of Ellis and Young in 1986. WNEV/WHDH would spend the rest of its years under NETV as the last-place news department, but it did gain a new solid lead newsman in R.D. Sahl, who arrived in 1986 and gained a following with his various co-anchors, two of which included Kate Sullivan (1987-1990) and Margie Reedy (early 1990s). In addition, Channel 7's news identity constantly changed under David Mugar, starting with NEWSE7EN (1982-84) The New England News (1984-1988) News 7 New England (1988-1990) and News 7 (1990-1994).

File:Toddgross-7weathercenter.JPG
Former chief meteorologist Todd Gross in the old 7 Weather Center.

Amid all the local prominent journalists who attempted to leverage WNEV's news, a few future national talents had brief stints at the station in the 1980s. Bill O'Reilly, long before his national exposure on Inside Edition and Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, co-anchored NEWSE7EN Weekend in 1982-83. His successor on that same newscast was Paula Zahn, now a well-renowned newswoman of many TV networks, who co-anchored weekends with Lester Strong from 1983-85. Later, for six months during 1988, future Today host Matt Lauer hosted WNEV's mid-morning talk show Talk of the Town. Then in the early 90s, two more would later hit the big time: Edye Tarbox, who was an anchor/reporter at WHDH from 1990-92, now goes by the name E.D. Hill and has been at Fox News Channel since 1999. Rehema Ellis, who anchored and reported at WHDH in the same period, is now with NBC News.

This all changed when Sunbeam Television bought the station in June of 1993. New station owner Ed Ansin brought Joel Cheatwood, the creator of WSVN's fast-paced news format, to Boston. Most of the station's prominent newscasters, including R.D. Sahl, wanted nothing to do with Cheatwood and promptly resigned. Cheatwood introduced a considerably watered-down version of the WSVN format. However, it was still shocking by Boston standards.

The new format soon rejuvenated WHDH, especially after switching to NBC. For most of the last decade, WHDH has waged a spirited battle for first behind longtime leader WCVB. In 2002, WHDH was noted as having the best newscast in the U.S. in a study published by the Columbia Journalism Review. In previous studies, the station was deemed as having one of the worst newscasts.

The station operates a Bell LongRanger 206L news helicopter entitled Sky 7. The station's radar is presented on-air as "Storm Scan Doppler", with a signal coming from the radar at the NWS Local Forcast Office in Taunton.

As of August 2006, WHDH airs the Boston area's only weekday 4 and 4:30 PM newscasts. Before this point, WBZ-TV also broadcasted news at this time.

As of December 19, 2006, WHDH began producing WLVI's 10:00 p.m. newscast, under the name 7 News at 10 on CW 56.

WHDH shares its resources with WJAR, the NBC affiliate for the state of Rhode Island and New Bedford, for news coverage of Southeastern Massachusetts. WWLP, the NBC affiliate for Springfield and Holyoke, shares its resources with WHDH for news coverage of Western Massachusetts.

Weekdays

File:Whdh newscast.JPG
WHDH's newscast opening, before current graphics.
File:7 news night team.JPG
WHDH's weekday 6 and 11 PM news anchors.
File:Whdh weather.JPG
WHDH Chief Meteorologist Pete Bouchard with new graphics.
  • 7 News Today in New England (5-7 a.m.)

Christa Delcamp & Jonathan Hall

  • 7 News at Noon (12-1 p.m.)

Christa Delcamp & Jonathan Hall

  • 7 News First at 4 (4-4:30 p.m.)

Matt Lorch & Lauren Przybyl

  • 7 News at 4:30 (4:30-5 p.m.)

Matt Lorch & Lauren Przybyl

  • 7 News at 5 (5-5:30 p.m.)

Randy Price & Frances Rivera

  • 7 News at 5:30 (5:30-6 p.m.)

Matt Lorch & Lauren Przybyl

  • 7 News at 6 (6-6:30 p.m.)

Randy Price & Frances Rivera

  • 7 News at 10 on CW 56 (10-11 p.m. on WLVI)

Matt Lorch & Frances Rivera

  • 7 News at 11 (11-11:35 p.m.)

Randy Price & Frances Rivera

Saturday

  • 7 News Today in New England (9-11 a.m.)
  • 7 News at 6 (6-6:30 p.m.)

Jeff Glor & Nichelle King

  • 7 News at 10 on CW 56 (10-11 p.m. on WLVI)

Jeff Glor and Nichelle King

  • 7 News at 11 (11-11:30 p.m.)

Jeff Glor and Nichelle King

Sunday

  • 7 News Today in New England (9-10:30 a.m.)
  • Urban Update (11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m., public affairs)
  • 7 News at 6 (6-6:30 p.m.)

Jeff Glor & Nichelle King

  • 7 News at 10 on CW 56 (10-11 p.m. on WLVI)

Jeff Glor & Nichele King

  • 7 News at 11 (11-11:25 p.m.)

Jeff Glor & Nichelle King

  • 7 Sports Xtra (11:25 p.m.-12 a.m.)

News Team

Anchors

  • Jonathan Hall - Weekday Mornings and Noon
  • Christa Delcamp - Weekday Mornings and Noon
  • Matt Lorch - Weeknights at 4 PM, 4:30 PM, and 5:30 PM (also at 10 PM on WLVI), also General Assignment Reporter
  • Randy Price - Weeknights at 5 PM, 6 PM and 11 PM
  • Frances Rivera - Weeknights at 5 PM, 6 PM, and 11 PM (also at 10 PM on WLVI)
  • Lauren Przybyl - Weeknights at 4 PM, 4:30 PM, and 5:30 PM, and General Assignment Reporter
  • Jeff Glor - Weekend Evenings on WHDH and WLVI, also General Assignment Reporter
  • Nichelle King - Weekend Evenings on WHDH and WLVI, also General Assignment Reporter

7 News Weather Plus Meteorologists (Note - They do not brand themselves "7NEWS Weather Plus", they brand themselves "7Weather".

  • Pete Bouchard - Chief seen Weeknights at 4 PM, 4:30 PM, 5 PM, 5:30 PM, 6 PM, and 11 PM (also at 10 PM on WLVI)
  • Jeremy Reiner - Weekday Mornings and Noon
  • Dylan Dreyer - Weekends
  • Terry Casey - Fill-in Meteorologist and Senior Weather Producer

7 News Sports Team

  • Joe Amorosino - Sports Director seen Weeknights at 5 PM, 5:30 PM, 6 PM, and 11 PM (also at 10 PM on WLVI), and host of "7 Sports Xtra"
  • Dave Briggs - Weekend Evenings on WHDH and WLVI, Weekday Sports Reporter
  • Larry Ridley - Substitute Sports Anchor, Sports Reporter
  • Duke Castiglione - Freelancer Sports Anchor, Sports Reporter

Reporters

  • Anne Allred - General Assignment Reporter
  • Sorboni Banerjee - General Assignment Reporter and Substitute Anchor
  • Byron Barnett - General Assignment Reporter and host of "Urban Update"
  • Victoria Block - Gerneral Assignment Reporter
  • Lori Bordonaro - General Assignment Reporter
  • Steve Cooper - General Assignment Reporter and Substitute Anchor
  • Linda Ergas - General Assignment Reporter and Substiute Anchor
  • Grant Greenberg - General Assignment Reporter
  • Dan Hausle - General Assignment Reporter and Substitute Anchor
  • Sean Hennessey - General Assignment Reporter
  • Andy Hiller - Political Reporter
  • Dr. Deanna Lites - Health Cast Reporter
  • Mike Macklin - General Assignment Reporter
  • Hank Phillippi Ryan - Investigative Reporter
  • Ryan Schulteis - General Assignment Reporter
  • Victoria Warren - General Assignment Reporter
  • Janet Wu - General Assignment Reporter and Substitute Anchor
  • Romeo - 10 PM Weeknight Entertainment Reporter on WLVI

==See also==

References


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