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WNYW

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For this and other stations that previously used the WNEW callsign, see WNEW.
For the former shortwave radio station WNYW, see WNYW (shortwave); For its replacement, see WYFR

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WNYW, channel 5, is the flagship television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, located in New York City. The station's transmitter is atop the Empire State Building and its studio facilities are located in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. WNYW is a sister station to Secaucus, New Jersey-based WWOR-TV (channel 9), the New York area's MyNetworkTV flagship station.

In the few areas of the eastern United States where viewers cannot receive Fox network programs over-the-air, WNYW is available on satellite via DirecTV, which also provides coverage of the station to Latin American countries and on JetBlue's LiveTV inflight entertainment system. WNYW is also available on cable in the Caribbean. As of March 4, 2009, WNYW is once again available on Dish Network as part of All American Direct's distant network package.

History

Early years

The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W2XVT (re-named as W2XWV in 1944), an experimental station. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license — the third in New York City — on channel 4 as WABD after DuMont's initials. It was one of the few stations that continued broadcasting during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States. The station broadcast from 515 Madison Avenue and on December 15, 1945 WABD was reassigned from channel 4 to channel 5.

Soon after channel 5 received its commercial license, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between WABD and W3XWT, a DuMont-owned experimental station in Washington, D.C. (now WTTG). These hookups were the beginning of the DuMont Television Network, the world's first licensed commercial television network. DuMont began regular network service in 1946 with WABD as the flagship station. In 1954, WABD and DuMont moved into the $5 million DuMont Tele-Centre at 205 East 67th Street in Yorkville, inside the shell of the space formerly occupied by Jacob Ruppert's Central Opera House. A half-century later, the station is still headquartered in the same building, which was later renamed the Metromedia Telecenter, and is known today as the Fox Television Center.

WNEW-TV

The Fox Television Center, 205 East 67th St. in New York City, was opened by DuMont in June 1954.

By February 1955, DuMont realized it could not continue in network television, and decided to shut down network operations and operate WABD and its Washington sister station, WTTG (also operating on channel 5), as independents. After DuMont aired its last network broadcast in August 1956, DuMont spun off WABD and WTTG as the "DuMont Broadcasting Corporation", which changed its name in early 1958 to Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. In 1958, Washington-based investor John Kluge acquired controlling interest in Metropolitan Broadcasting and installed himself as the company's chairman. WABD's operations were merged with WNEW radio (1130 AM, now WBBR; and 102.7 FM, now WWFS), also owned by Kluge. Channel 5's call letters were changed on September 7, 1958 to WNEW-TV to match its new radio sisters. Metropolitan Broadcasting would change its corporate name to Metromedia in 1961; however, the Metropolitan Broadcasting name was retained for Metromedia's TV and radio properties until 1967.

In the 1960s, WNEW-TV ran on a low budget like the other two major New York independents, WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) and WPIX. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, channel 5 benefited from Metromedia's aggressiveness in acquiring movies, cartoons and first-run syndicated shows, some of which (including the long-running children's program Wonderama) were produced by Metromedia. In the early 1960's, WNEW-TV produced a daily public affairs show eventually hosted by Gabe Pressman, Romper Room (until 1966, when it moved to WOR-TV), children's shows like The Sandy Becker Show, and The Sonny Fox Show, which was known as Wonderama. Bob McAllister took over hosting Wonderama in 1967 and by 1970, Wonderama was relegated to Sunday mornings but as a three hour produced show. In March of 1967, WNEW-TV began producing a weeknight newscast from 10 to 11 p.m. called The 10 O'Clock News. This was soon expanded to Saturday and Sunday nights as well. Shows like Sports Extra and The David Susskind Show were also produced at the station. WNEW-TV also produced the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon annually until 1987. Some of the syndicated shows in the 1960's included The Rifleman, The Cisco Kid, Mister Ed, Our Miss Brooks, My Little Margie, Our Gang MGM films, Beany and Cecil, among others.

By the 1970s, the station was New York's leading independent, despite its two rivals' eventual status as national superstations. During the 1970's, many shows such as I Love Lucy (run from 1967-2000), The Flintstones (run from 1967-1988), Hogan's Heroes, Bugs Bunny (post 1948 throughout, also pre-1948 after 1973 until 1986), Casper the Friendly Ghost, Dennis the Menace, Bewitched, The Partridge Family, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, My Three Sons, The Little Rascals (moving off WPIX in 1978), Superheroes, Woody Woodpecker, Adam-12, The Merv Griffin Show, Lost in Space, Mission: Impossible, and many others. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, channel 5 was a regional superstation available in large portions of the Northeast, including most of upstate New York, and portions of eastern Pennsylvania and southern New England. In the late 1970's, WNEW-TV also acquired second-hand shows such as Get Smart, Gilligan's Island, Make Room for Daddy, and The Addams Family which fell off stations like WPIX and WOR-TV.

Also, in the late 1970's, WNEW-TV won bids for top rated off-network syndicated shows such as M*A*S*H (which still runs on the station sometimes), All in the Family, Welcome Back, Kotter, What's Happening!!, Charlie's Angels, Kojak, and many others. The area where Channel 5 was weaker was feature films. Most movies run on the station were from the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1980s, shows like Three's Company, Taxi, Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, One Day at a Time, and others landed at WNEW-TV. Wonderama ended production in 1977 and ran in reruns until 1979. From 1980 to 1983, a children's news show went into production an hour a week with the Wonderama title. The 10 p.m. newscast also continued.

WNYW

In 1986 Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, who owned a controlling interest in the 20th Century Fox film studio, purchased the Metromedia television stations including WNEW-TV. The station's call letters were changed on March 7, 1986 to WNYW and it and the other Metromedia stations formed the cornerstone of the Fox network, with WNYW as the flagship station. Initially, WNYW's schedule changed little, as Fox only aired network programming on weekends. Channel 5 initially continued its format of cartoons and sitcoms into the late 1980's.

Murdoch had one local obstacle to overcome before his purchase of channel 5 could become final. The News Corporation had been publishing the New York Post since 1976, and Federal Communications Commission rules of the time did not allow common ownership of newspapers and broadcast licenses in the same city. Murdoch was granted a temporary waiver of this prohibition in order to complete the Metromedia television purchase. The News Corporation would sell the Post in 1988, but reacquired the paper five years later with a permanent waiver of the cross-ownership rules.

Starting in the late summer of 1986, WNYW produced the nightly newsmagazine A Current Affair, one of the first shows to be labeled under the tag "tabloid television". Originally a local program, it was first anchored by Maury Povich, formerly of WTTG (and who would later do double-duty, albeit briefly on WNYW's newscasts as an anchor). Within months of its launch, A Current Affair was on the other Fox-owned stations and in 1988 the series went into national syndication, where it remained until its cancellation in 1996.

The signs of change began in 1988 when some older sitcoms fell off Channel 5's schedule. On August 2, 1988, the station abruptly dropped the morning cartoons in favor of a morning newscast called Good Day New York. WNYW became the first Fox-owned station as well as Fox affiliate (note that WSVN was still an NBC affiliate at the time and would switch to fox a few months later making them the second Fox station with a morniong newscast) with a weekday morning newscast, and within five years of its launch it became the top-rated morning show in the New York market. Today it remains a viable competitor to the network morning shows, and the success of Good Day New York led to other Fox-owned stations launching morning shows of their own, notably Fox Morning News on WTTG, Fox News in the Morning on WFLD-TV in Chicago and Good Day L.A. on KTTV in Los Angeles.

As Fox continued to expand its primetime hours to an eventual seven nights by 1992, WNYW's schedule continued to feature children's programs from Fox Kids during afternoons, and sitcoms in early evenings. As the decade progressed, the station added talk/reality shows such as Gordon Elliot, Montel Williams, and others and court shows during middays. From 1999 to 2002, WNYW was the broadcast home of the New York Yankees, displacing long-time incumbent WPIX.

In 2001, Fox bought most of the television interests of Chris-Craft Industries, including WNYW's former rival, WWOR-TV. In the fall of 2001, WNYW dropped the Fox Kids weekday block and moved it to WWOR-TV, where it ran for a few more months before being cancelled at the end of the year. Some office functions have been merged, but most of the stations' operations remain separate. Fox announced plans to merge the two stations' operations in 2004, with WWOR-TV moving from its studios in Secaucus to the Fox Television Center. However, it backed off later in the year under pressure from New Jersey's congressional delegation.

On September 11, 2001, the transmitter facilities of WNYW as well as eight other local television stations and several radio stations were destroyed when two hijacked airplanes crashed into and destroyed the World Trade Center towers. Since then, WNYW has been transmitting its signal from the Empire State Building. The station had previously transmitted from the Empire State Building until moving to the World Trade Center in the 1970s.

Digital television

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

WNYW-DT

WNYW-DT broadcasts a multiplexed signal on digital channel 44.

Digital channels
Channel Name Video Aspect Programming
5.1 WNYW-DT 720p 16:9 Main WNYW/Fox programming
5.2 WNYW-DT2 480i 4:3 WWOR-DT

Analog-to-Digital Conversion

WNYW shut down its analog signal on June 12, 2009 [1], as part of the DTV transition in the United States. WNYW remained on its pre-transition digital assignment, channel 44 [2] using PSIP to display WNYW's virtual channel as 5.

News Operation

WNYW broadcasts a total of 38½ hours of local news a week (seven hours on weekdays, an hour-and-a-half on Saturdays and two hours on Sundays), more than any other television station in New York City and New York state.

The station is home to one of America's longest-running primetime local newscasts. The 10 O’Clock News (now Fox 5 News at Ten) premiered on March 13, 1967, as New York's first primetime newscast. The 10 O'Clock News each night began with the simple, but now-famous announcement: "It's 10:00 p.m. ... Do you know where your children are?" was used in this program first, and while its exact origins are unknown, [3] staff announcer Tom Gregory was one of the first people to say this famous line. Other television stations in the country have adopted this for their own 10 p.m. (or 11 p.m.) slots (which may depend on the start of the local youth curfew in each market). Celebrities were often used in the 1980s to read the slogan.

Another popular segment on The 10 O'Clock News, starting in 1975 and continuing to 1985, were nightly op-ed debates which pitted conservative Dr. Martin Abend against liberal Professor Sidney Offit. The debates were often shrill and frequently descended into acrimonious personal invective. In their tone, they were spoofed most famously on Saturday Night Live in the "Point/Counterpoint" sketches of Weekend Update, with Dan Aykroyd in the Dr. Abend-type role and Jane Curtin as the equivalent of Professor Offit.

WNYW also aired a 7:00 p.m. newscast from 1987 to 1993, known as Fox News at Seven.

In August 1988, WNYW launched Good Day New York, a program comparable to the Today Show, Good Morning America or The Early Show. In 1991 a new and eventually very popular music package was composed for the show by Edd Kalehoff, a New York composer who is best known for composing the themes and music cues for several game shows, notably The Price is Right.

Since the Fox takeover, WNYW's newscasts have become more tabloid in style and has been fodder for jokes, even to the point of being parodied on Saturday Night Live, and the consumer reporting segment The Problem Solvers receiving the same treatment on The Daily Show.

WNYW was portrayed in an episode of the Fox animated comedy Futurama, titled "When Aliens Attack", in which the station was accidentally knocked off the air by Philip J. Fry in 1999. That resulted in angry Omicronians invading Earth in the year 3000 (having received the broadcast signal 1000 years later being 1000 light-years away) and demanding to see the end of a program which had been cut off for them.

In 2002, WNYW added a 90-minute block of newscasts from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m on weekdays, giving the station just under 40 hours of local news per week, which is the most of any television station in New York City. In 2004, two events occurred involving the WNYW news department. Longtime anchor John Roland, a 35-year veteran of channel 5, retired from the station on June 4, 2004. Len Cannon, a former NBC News correspondent who had joined WNYW as a reporter and anchor some time earlier, was initially named as Roland's replacement. Then, several months later, veteran New York City anchorman Ernie Anastos signed a multi-year contract with WNYW, despite the fact that he was at the time anchoring at WCBS-TV. The signing would displace Cannon as lead anchor, and shortly after it was announced, he asked for, and was granted, a release from contractual obligations with the station. Anastos joined WNYW in July 2005, and Cannon joined KHOU-TV in Houston as its lead anchor in the spring of 2006.

In areas of New Jersey where the New York and Philadelphia markets overlap, both WNYW and sister station WWOR-TV share resources with Philadelphia sister station WTXF-TV. The stations share reporters for stories occuring in New Jersey counties served by both markets.

On April 3, 2006, WNYW revamped their entire on-air appearance with a new set, new music, new graphics, and a new logo. The new graphics and logo package was later standardized for all of News Corp.'s Fox stations. Channel 5 is also one of the first Fox owned-and-operated stations to launch a MyFox powered website, which features video, more detailed news, and new community features such as blogs and picture galleries.

WNYW's HD open as of November 2008

On November 9, 2008, WNYW began broadcasting their newscasts in high-definition, becoming the fifth New York City television station to do so.

Notable personalities

Current

Weather
  • Nick Gregory (AMS Seal of Approval) - chief meteorologist seen at 5pm, 6pm and 10pm
  • Mike Woods (AMS Seal of Approval) - Good Day Wakeup & Good Day New York (5am-9am)
  • Melissa Magee- Fox 5 Live (11am-11:30am)
  • Craig Allen (AMS Seal of Approval) - weekends at 6pm and 10pm
Sports
Traffic
Specialty Reports

Alumni

Newscasts

Weekdays

  • Good Day Wake Up 5-7 AM
  • Good Day New York 7-9 AM
  • FOX 5 Live 11-11:30 AM
  • FOX 5 News at 5 5-6 PM
  • FOX 5 News at 6 6-6:30 PM
  • FOX 5 News at 10 10-11 PM

Weekends

  • FOX 5 News at 6 6-6:30 PM
  • FOX 5 News at 10 10-11 PM

Future

Beginning July 13, 2009, There will be an Extra Morning hour added in from 9-10 on weekdays, taking over the current spot of The Morning Show With Mike And Juliet, which has been cancelled.

Branding and station identity

The station is also known for starting the trend of American stations using their network and channel number (or cable channel number) as their on-air name. After Fox bought the station, it began calling itself Fox Television Channel 5 New York. Soon after the Fox network premiered, the station shortened its on-air name to Fox Channel 5 and later shortened that to the current Fox 5. However, this practice dated in another form to its days as WNEW-TV. For much of the time from at least the 1970s until the Fox takeover, its main ID was "WNEW-TV, channel 5, Metromedia New York." Since the Fox purchase, station announcers have almost never used its call letters on-air.

In the early days after Fox took control, WNYW reporters would end their reports by saying "I'm (name) Fox News, Channel 5". This sign off would later be shortened to Fox News, then later it became Fox 5 News, as to avoid confusion with the Fox News Channel. Ironically, recent changes made to WNYW's logo and newscasts (effective April 2006) bear a close stylistic resemblance to the Fox News Channel.

Successful branding campaigns for WNEW-TV include the long-running "Choice" campaign. Well-known station jingles in the late 1970s and early 1980s included "Take Five!", "The Choice is Channel 5, Metromedia New York 5" and later, "Your Choice is 5."

Channel 5's public service announcements were also a key part of its image for decades. The phrase, It's 10:00 PM...Do you know where your children are? was coined in 1969 (though another source mentioned that it was Buffalo, New York's ABC affiliate WKBW that coined that phrase), and variations of the phrase would spread to television stations nationwide. In addition, WNEW-TV, used PSAs during the 1970s and 1980s that aired during different day parts, such as "Have you done your homework yet?"; "Have you hugged your child today?"; and "It's 6 PM. Do you know where your children are?", using a simple slide and staff voiceover.

In 2001, the slogan was "What New Yorkers Watch" derived from the call letters and was used until the logo was changed in early 2006.

News/Station Presentation

Newscast titles

  • Late Night News (1944-1945)
  • TV5 Late Report (1945-1962)
  • TV5 24 Hours (1962-1967)
  • The 10 O'Clock News (March 13, 1967-2001)
  • Channel 5 News (1980s)
  • Fox Channel 5 News (1987-1996)
  • Fox 5 News (1996-present)

Station Slogans

  • Take Five! (late 1970s)
  • The Choice is Channel 5, Metromedia New York 5 (early 1980s)
  • Your Choice is 5 (mid 1980s)
  • Don't Let 5 Weekend Pass You By (1987-1988; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • It's on 5 (1990-1992; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • You're Watching 5 (1992-1993; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • 5, You're Watching It (1993-1994; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • It Could Only Happen on 5 (January-September 1994; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • The Spirit of 5/We're Gonna Keep it on 5 (1994-1995; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • Non-Stop 5 (January-October 1996; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • Just One 5 (1997-2002; local version of Fox ad campaign)
  • What New Yorkers Watch (2001-2006)
  • 5 NOW (2002-2006)
  • The Most Powerful Name in Local News (2006-present)

News Music Packages

  • WNEW 1967 News
  • WNEW 1977 News
  • Black News
  • Metromedia News Theme
  • FOX O&O News Theme
  • Good Day
  • WNYW 1992 News
  • KRIV 1991 News
  • WNYW 1994 News
  • Top 10
  • Ten O'Clock News
  • WNYW News
  • FOX 5 News
  • FOX Affiliate News Theme

See also

References

  1. ^ http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf
  2. ^ CDBS Print
  3. ^ Elliot, Stuart (March 16, 2007). Do You Know Where Your Slogan Is?. The New York Times, accessed on April 11, 2007, [1]
Preceded by
Channel 11
1951–1998 		Broadcast Home of the
New York Yankees
1999–2001 		Succeeded by
Channel 2
2002–2004
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WNYW&oldid=301391666"