WWNY TV

History

The station signed-on October 22, 1954 as WCNY-TV, the North Country's first television station. It was locally owned by the Johnson family along with the Watertown Daily Times and WWNY radio (AM 790, now WTNY; and FM 100.5, now silent). The station carried programming from all four major networks at the time, (CBS, DuMont, ABC, and NBC) but has always been a primary CBS affiliate. During the late-1950s, WCNY was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. By the mid-1960s, the station benefited from the ratings-dominant CBS programming lineup and established a large viewership base, including much of eastern Ontario, Canada. After the Federal Communications Commission allowed television and radio stations to share the same base call sign even when they were licensed to different cities, channel 7 changed call letters to WWNY-TV to match its radio sisters in 1965. The WCNY-TV calls now reside on a PBS member station in nearby Syracuse.

From 1958 until 1971, WCNY/WWNY also aired educational programming through NET (becoming PBS in 1970) provided by the St. Lawrence Valley Educational Television Council. When the council established its own station, WNPE-TV (now WPBS-DT) in 1971 (taking the PBS affiliation in the process), WWNY donated its original studios to the new station as it had moved to its current location near the Watertown Daily Times offices on Arcade Street in Downtown Watertown in mid-February 1970. The Johnson family sold WWNY to current owner United Communications Corporation in 1981 for $8.2 million after an unsuccessful struggle against the Federal Communications Commission and its directive for newspapers to divest themselves of television stations held within the same market.

Until WJCK (now WWTI) signed-on in 1985 replacing a small WUTR repeater on analog UHF channel 50 and taking the ABC affiliation, WWNY was Watertown's only commercial station. As a primary CBS affiliate, WWNY carried the network's full prime time schedule and news programs while cherry-picking the most popular ABC and NBC shows aired at other hours. The station also aired some Fox programming starting in 1987 while Sunday Fox Sports National Football League games aired on WWTI. When cable arrived in the region in the 1970s, viewers could watch the full network schedules via NBC affiliate WSTM-TV and ABC affiliate WIXT (now WSYR-TV) in Syracuse or NBC affiliate WPTZ in Plattsburgh.

Channel 7 gradually phased out non-CBS programming in the 1980s. ABC completely disappeared from the schedule when WJCK signed-on. NBC programs (including Today and The Tonight Show) remained on WWNY into the 1980s with some prime time programming (which aired delayed) lasting until 1995. After that, viewers received NBC programming from either WSTM or WPTZ, depending on location, until December 1, 2016 when WVNC-LD signed on as Watertown's first full-time NBC affiliate. Fox programs largely disappeared in the early-1990s with the exception of Major League Baseball games from Fox Sports which lasted until 1998.

In 2001, United Communications entered into an agreement with Smith Broadcasting to operate Fox affiliate WNYF with transmitters in Watertown and Massena. After a year of joint operation, United Communications took complete ownership of WNYF. In May 2003, WWNY started broadcasting its digital signal on UHF channel 35 and began offering CBS programming in high definition. It then created a new second digital subchannel to offer a digital signal of WNYF as that station did not operate one of its own due to Class A and low-powered signals.

WWNY has been digital-only since February 17, 2009. Both broadcasts of WWNY and WWTI were set to become digital-only starting on February 17. However, the latter's plans were delayed to June 12 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). WWNY-DT's previous digital facilities on channel 35 were eventually re-employed by sister station WNYF to offer Fox in high definition for the first time.

Coverage area

Its coverage area includes Jefferson, Lewis, and St. Lawrence counties in northern New York as well as Kingston and Brockville in Southeastern Ontario, Canada. The most distant analog reception for the station fell just short of Ottawa approximately a hundred miles distant. In the United States, the outer limit of WWNY coverage falls near Massena and Tupper Lake to the east. It was distributed by cable systems in Ottawa from the late-1960s until the early-1980s but signal strength was poor and the station was dropped after area television stations complained that WWNY was broadcasting Ottawa commercials and competing with them for revenue.

At the time, the station had a sales office in Canada and was able to convince advertisers in Ontario to buy ads. The Ottawa cable companies eventually dropped WWNY and set up a series of microwave relay towers to carry American networks from affiliates in Rochester, New York. These were later replaced by satellite feeds from Detroit. For many years, WWNY's largest viewership was in Kingston because for nearly twenty years it was the only reliable over-the-air analog signal aside from CKWS-TV, at the time the local CBC Television affiliate. Prior to 2005, WWNY was also carried on cable in Belleville, Ontario.

Programming

Syndicated programming on this station includes Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and The Rachael Ray Show among others.

WWNY-TV and WNYF-CD both go off-the-air, for a couple hours, during overnights.

News operation

On the same night it began airing in 1954, WWNY produced a five-minute local update at 11:15. For its entire existence, the station has held the number one spot in area Nielsen ratings by a wide margin. WWNY has traditionally been the dominant outlet in the North Country because it had the market to itself until WWTI signed-on in 1987. That station's two attempts at local newscasts--from 1987 to 1991 and from 1995 to 2004--never made any headway in the ratings, and WWNY remained the most-watched and highest-rated station. Since 2004, it has been the only station in the market with a functioning news department.

In 1981, this station's weekday morning show only consisted of two five-minute cut-ins. As late as 1998, it was broadcasting for thirty minutes. In 2004, the station began producing ninety minutes of news on weekday mornings.

On April 11, 2001, WWNY began airing a 35-minute weeknight prime time broadcast at 10 on WNYF called 7 News Tonight on Fox. However, it was only seen by a handful of viewers able to receive that station's two low-powered over-the-air signals because WNYF was not yet being offered on cable. An agreement with Time Warner Cable in Fall 2001 placed the station on the system and the prime time news debuted for the rest of the area on October 4.

WNYF currently simulcasts the 6 o'clock hour of WWNY's weekday morning news. It then offers a second hour at 7 seen exclusively on the Fox affiliate while this station airs CBS This Morning. The simulcast and separate show is known on WNYF as 7 News This Morning on Fox. There is no weekday morning or noon meteorologist; news anchor Beth Hall presents a forecast from Accuweather during these segments. During the nightly evening weather forecasts, the station features a live National Weather Service weather radar based in Montague's Parkers section.