First air date 1993 Sister station(s) WTVE | Call letters' meaning PHillY | |
Channels Digital: 50 (UHF)
Virtual: 25 (PSIP) Affiliations Sonlife Broadcasting Network Owner NRJ TV, LLC
(Operated by Titan TV Broadcast Group)
(NRJ TV Philly License Co., LLC) | ||
WPHY-CD, virtual channel 25, is a digital Class A television station serving Mercer County, New Jersey, portions of Hunterdon, Burlington, Middlesex, and Somerset Counties in New Jersey. The station is an affiliate of the Sonlife Broadcasting Network. It is the only independent television station to exclusively serve the residents of central New Jersey; however, its transmitter is located in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia (Trenton is part of the Philadelphia television market).
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WPHY-CD is owned by NRJ TV of Coppell, Texas since June 15, 2012, which also owns WTVE in Reading, Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia television market.
History
The station first broadcast in 1993 on analog channel 25, and was originally assigned the call sign W25AW, though for much of its history it branded as "WZBN TV-25." The station's tower was located in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey. The station's call sign became W50DZ-D in January 2012 after converting to digital broadcasting on channel 50; however, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel 25.
The station has received several awards from the Community Broadcasters Association for local service and programming.
With the creation of a statewide and regional cable news service owned by the cable companies, cable outlets threatened to pull WZBN off their systems in the late 1990s. Protests by viewers ensured the station remained on cable. WZBN has since expanded its reach with additional broadcasts on three competing cable systems (Verizon Fios, Cablevision, Comcast) in the area.
In 2012, the station's longtime owners, the Zanoni family, announced that they would sell W50DZ-D to NRJ TV, LLC (a company unrelated to European broadcaster NRJ Radio), which already owned WTVE. The station's local programming was discontinued on June 8, 2012; the sale was completed a week later, on June 15, 2012.
On November 1, 2012, NRJ TV changed W50DZ-D's call sign to WPHY-CD. The WPHY call sign was previously used by two radio stations audible in the market; it was on 560 AM in Philadelphia for ten months in 1993-94, ending when that signal's heritage call sign WFIL became available and was reclaimed, and it was on 920 AM in Trenton from 2002 to 2008. In January 2014, Cablevision announced that it would drop WPHY from its Trenton-area systems on January 28 to accommodate a must-carry request from Me-TV affiliate KJWP (channel 2); WPHY's former channel 25 slot on Cablevision was taken by WCBS-TV from New York City, which lost its previous channel 2 slot on the system to KJWP. In June 2016, the station began to carry Sonlife Broadcasting Network programming; it had previously been affiliated with Youtoo America.