WLNY is an independent television station primarily serving the Long Island section of New York state, licensed to Riverhead, NY with the studios in Melville.

TV 55 signed on the air on April 1, 1985 under the call letters WLIG. The calls were changed in 1996 to WLNY.

Programming

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The station currently carries mostly old movies and shows distributed by King World. They are also seen on cable in New York City, parts of New York state and New Jersey. However, those areas see a separate feed due to SyndEx laws (similar to the old WOR EMI Service and Superstation WGN), except for subscribers in the metro New York City market who receive the station on DirecTV and Dish Network, both of which carry the same clean feed seen on Long Island. However, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune are the only two programs preempted on the SyndEx feed.

WLNY produces a weekday local news program which airs at 11 p.m. and is rebroadcast Tuesday through Saturday at 5 a.m..

Over the years, WLNY also broadcast professional and collegiate sports. Through the 2004-2005 season, the station broadcast a few New Jersey Nets games, which are produced by the YES Network. These games are shown on the station whenever a Net game is scheduled at the same time with the New York Yankees games as YES, being owned by the Yankees always opts for the Yankee game in such a situation. WLNY lost these rights to WWOR after the 2004-05 season.

WLNY carried Big East college basketball for many years until that conference moved its games exclusively to cable in the New York City market.

For a number of years, WLNY also carried a number of New York Islanders hockey games as well.

At the end of 2005, WLNY stopped broadcasting on UHF channel 55 in an effort to comply with new United States legislation which is phasing out traditional "analog" television by the year 2009.

Viewers can be able to watch WLNY as digital channel 57 later in 2006 if they have special equipment to receive digital television signals.

There are a few low-power analog repeaters on the air on W17CD Stamford, Connecticut, WLIG-LP channel 54 in Mineola, New York, W54CZ in Morristown, New Jersey, and WNHX-LP Channel 51 in New Haven, Connecticut. The station can also be seen on its normal channel on local cable systems, generally either on cable 55 or 10.

References

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Independent television stations in the United States | Television stations in New York