WWOR-TV

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WWOR-TV Channel 9 is the UPN Television affiliate serving the New York City DMA, with studios and license in Secaucus, New Jersey. The station is owned by Fox Broadcasting, a division of NewsCorp. Channel 9 signed on the air in 1949 as an Independent station under the Call Letters WOR, owned by Bamberger's Broadcasting a division of the L. Bamberger's department stores, owners of WOR radio. The original city of license was New York City. When the station first signed on, there was no audio for the first six minutes, during a message from the radio outlet's John B. Gambling. The message was repeated later on that night prior to sign off. WOR aired mostly old movies during the time when they were owned by Bamberger's, which was later purchased by the RKO General a division of General Tires and Rubber Company. The station aired Brooklyn Dodgers games for a few years, before the team moved to Los Angeles.

In late 1961, Channel 9 picked up the broadcast rights to the New York Mets, a new team that debuted the next year. For many years, they aired King Kong and Godzilla movies as part of a Thanksgiving marathon. In the 1950s, Joe Franklin began to host a talk show on the station, which would last until 1995. In the 1970s, with the invention of cable and satellite TV, Independent stations were being uplinked by satellite for national distribution, thus being called Superstations . With WGN in Chicago and TBS in Atlanta being distributed already, Channel 9 joined them in 1979, being distributed via satellite to cable and satellite subscribers across the United States by a company known as Eastern Microwave, Inc of Syracuse, New York.

In the 1980s, RKO General's parent company General Tires got into legal problems, causing them to forfeit one broadcast license without compensation, WNAC-TV in Boston, Massachusetts and sell the remaining TV and radio stations. However, the FCC made a ruling that said that any VHF Television station that were to move their city of license to the state of New Jersey would get an automatic 5 year renewal. Thanks to this, and with help of NJ senator Bill Bradley, RKO was able to retain the Channel 9 license by moving the station and the license to Secaucus, NJ in April 1983. In 1986, RKO put Channel 9 up for sale to the highest bidder. Involved in the bid were Westinghouse and MCA. MCA ended up winning the bid, and RKO sold WOR Radio to Buckley Broadcasting, which meant MCA would have to change Channel 9's call letters. Years later WWOR-TV would again be sold this time to a new company called Pinelands, Inc. after MCA, Inc. completed a merger with a Japanese corporation (Foreign Nationals could not own more than 25% of a broadcaster). In the 1990's Pinelands which was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange was acquired by boat maker Chris-Craft and then in the early 2000's, Chris Craft put their stations up for sale, and everyone thought at first that Viacom (who have purchased Paramount around the time UPN, which Chris-Craft cofounded, began) would end up getting the stations. Viacom lost the bid for Channel 9 and other stations to FOX. Channel 9 is now the sister station of WNYW Channel 5, due to the FOX ownership. In 2005, Channel 9 picked up the rights to air baseball once again, this time airing New York Yankees games.

In Spring 1987 Channel 9 began airing more first run syndicated shows and picked up off-network reruns. In 1988, Channel 9 premiered a new show, Steampipe Alley with host Mario Cantone , which showed cartoons that Channel 9 had the exclusive rights for in the New York market. In 1989, a law was passed by the FCC called Syndicated Exclusivity Rights, otherwise known as "SyndEx ." This law stated that when a TV station in any given market had the rights to air a syndicated program, the cable company had to block it out on out-of-town stations. Due to this law, to lighten the burden on cable companies, EMI, the distributor of WWOR to cable systems across the country, picked up the rights to shows that no stations had the local rights to, mostly from the Quinn Martin library.

EMI launched a separate WWOR feed for satellite and cable subscribers on January 1, 1990, otherwise known as WOR EMI Service. Viewers saw different programs on WWOR than the New York market did, except for newscasts, New York Mets games, and a few syndicated shows that other stations across the country claimed exclusive rights to. In 1990, Channel 9 began using the ID "Universal 9" for the New York market, until 1992. In 1994, Chris Craft and Paramount Pictures worked together on a new network. Stations owned by both companies, as well as others, would be a part of this network.

On January 16, 1995, United Paramount Network was launched, and Channel 9 was named the flagship station of the network. The national WWOR did not carry UPN shows. On January 1, 1997, with little advance warning, AEC, which purchased the satellite distribution rights to WWOR a few months earlier, decided to cease uplinking the national version. A few weeks later, another company, National Programming Services, uplinked WWOR again exclusively for Satellite subscribers, and the national WWOR was back to being the same feed as the New York market. In 1998, Channel 9 lost the Mets broadcast rights to rival WPIX, who had lost the Yankees to WNYW.

On September 11, 2001, the transmitter facilities of Channel 9 as well as six 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 transmitter has since been relocated to an antenna located atop the Empire State Building.

During the days of the RKO General ownership WOR-TV along with its two sister radio stations maintained their executive offices in Midtown Manhattan at 1440 Broadway (Between 40th & 41st Sts) and WOR-TV's studios and production facility were located down the street at 1481 Broadway (Between 42nd St. and Times Square). Meanwhile WOR Radio continued to keep its studios and production facility in the same building as the executive offices. When WOR-TV finally moved to New Jersey and became WWOR, it was in a new state of the art office and television production complex at 9 Broadcast Plaza in Secaucus.

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WWOR-TV

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