Gourt Home::Gourt :: WNYW
- For the former shortwave radio station WNYW, see WYFR
WNYW, "Fox 5 New York" is the flagship television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, located in New York City. As of 2006, the station's analog (channel five) and digital (channel 44) broadcasts originate from the Empire State Building. 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 its corporate cousin, DirecTV, and Echostar's Dish Network. DirecTV also provides coverage of WNYW to Latin American countries and on JetBlue flights. The station is also available on cable in the Caribbean. WNYW's digital signal consists of itself on DT1 and a feed from sister station WWOR-TV on DT2.
History
The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W2XWV, an experimental station. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license -- the third in New York City-- as WABD (after Dumont's initials).
Soon after channel five recieved 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 Manhattan's Yorkville neighborhood), 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.
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 five), as independents. After DuMont aired its last network broadcast in August 1956, DuMont spun off WABD and WTTG as the "DuMont Broadcasting Corporation", which later changed its name to Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. In 1958, Washington-based investor John W. Kluge acquired controlling interest in Metropolitan Broadcasting, and installed himself as the company's chairman. WABD's operations were merged with Kluge's New York radio stations, WNEW (1130 kHz., now WBBR) and WNEW-FM (102.7 MHz.), and channel five's call letters were subsequentially changed to WNEW-TV to match its new radio sisters. Metropolitan Broadcasting would change its name to Metromedia in 1961.
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. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, channel five benefited from Metromedia's aggressiveness in acquiring top-rated off-network series and movies, as well as cartoons (such as Looney Tunes, Popeye shorts from the 1960s, Woody Woodpecker and The Flintstones), and first-run syndicated shows, some of which were produced by Metromedia. By the 1970s the station was New York's leading independent, and WNEW-TV was also popular as well in most of upstate New York, and portions of New Jersey, New England, and eastern Pennsylvania, where the station was available on cable until the late 1980s.
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 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 didn't change that much, as Fox only aired network programming on weekends.
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.
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 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, including: 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 (KTTV also produced Good Day Live, a one-hour syndicated version of Good Day L.A., from 2002 to 2005).
As Fox continued to expand its primetime hours to an eventual seven nights by 1993, 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 shows and court shows during middays. From 1999 until 2001, 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, New Jersey 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 signals from the Empire State Building.
Logos
News
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. To this day, the broadcast has begun with an announcer intoning, "It's 10 P.M. Do you know where your children are?" Other television stations in the country adopted this practice. Celebrities were also used in the 1980s to read the slogan.
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 or Good Morning America. 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, entitled "When Aliens Attack", in which the station was accidentally knocked off the air. That resulted in angry aliens invading Earth 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 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 five, retired from the station on June 4. 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 presently anchoring at WCBS-TV. Shortly after the Anastos signing was announced, Cannon asked for, and received, a release from the station. Anastos would finally join WNYW in July 2005, and Cannon joined KHOU-TV in Houston as its lead anchor in the spring of 2006.
In December 2005, WNYW and WWOR-TV shared resources when portions of Good Day New York was simulcast on both stations due to the 2005 New York City transit strike. Reporters from WWOR-TV appeared on GDNY during the strike. Since then, brief previews for the following day's edition of GDNY have been aired during WWOR's 10 p.m. newscast.
In areas of New Jersey where the New York and Philadelphia markets overlap, both WNYW and WWOR share resources with Philadelphia sister station WTXF-TV. The stations share reporters for these stories.
On April 3, 2006, WNYW introduced new settings for its newscasts, along with a revamped sound and graphics package, identical to those currently used by the Fox News Channel. The new graphics and logo package will eventually be standardized for all of News Corp.'s Fox stations. Channel five is also one of the first Fox owned-and-operated stations to launch a website with the MyFox interface, which features video, more detailed news, and a consistent interface that will launch across all Fox station websites in the next few months.
Newscasts
Weekdays
- Good Day Wake Up - 5:00-6:00 a.m.
- ''Good Day First Edition - 6:00-7:00 a.m.
- Good Day New York - 7:00-9:00 a.m.
- Fox 5 Live - 11:30 a.m.-Noon
- Fox 5 News at 5 - 5:00-6:00 p.m.
- Fox 5 News at 6 - 6:00-6:30 p.m.
- Fox 5 News at 10 - 10:00-11:00 p.m.
Saturday
- Fox 5 News at 6 - 6:00-6:30 p.m.
- Fox 5 News at 10 - 10:00-11:00 p.m.
Sunday
- Fox 5 News at 6 - 6:00-6:30 p.m.
- Fox 5 News at 10 - 10:00-10:30 p.m.
- Sports Extra - 10:30-11 p.m.
Anchors
- Dari Alexander - weeknights 6 p.m.
- Ernie Anastos - weeknights 5 & 10 p.m.
- Jodi Applegate - host, Good Day New York (7-9 a.m.)
- Dick Brennan - weekends 6 & 10 p.m.
- John Discepolo - sports, weeknights 5, 6 & 10 p.m.
- Rick Folbaum - weeknights 6 p.m.
- Nick Gregory - meteorologist, weeknights 5, 6 & 10 p.m.
- Karen Hepp - weekends 6 & 10 p.m.
- Tracey Humphrey - meteorologist, weekends 6 & 10 p.m.
- Lucy Noland - Good Day New York (5-7 a.m.)
- Rosanna Scotto - weeknights 5 & 10 p.m.
- Mike Woods - meteorologist, Good Day New York & Fox 5 Live
Reporters
- Lisa Cabrera
- Reischea Canidate
- Anne Craig
- Katherine Creag
- Andrea Day
- Naamua Delaney
- John Deutzman
- Arnold Diaz
- Lisa Evers
- James Ford
- Mary Garofalo
- Stacy-Ann Gooden
- Andre Hepkins
- Tracy Humphrey
- Christopher Jones
- Mark Joyella
- Sapna Parikh
- Carl Reuter
- Linda Schmidt
- Toni Senecal
- Mike Sheehan
- Kai Simonsen
Former Personalities
- Bill Boggs - host of WNEW-TV's Midday Live with Bill Boggs from 1975-1986 *
- Lyn Brown - news reader, Good Day New York and co-anchor, Fox 5 Live (199?-2006)
- Chris Gailus - Good Day New York anchor from 2003-2006 (now at CHAN-TV in Vancouver)
- Tom Gregory - staff announcer
- Bill Jorgensen - original anchor of The 10 O'Clock News (1967-1978)
- Stewart Klein - entertainment reporter from 1967-1995
- Ed Ladd - staff announcer and cartoon show host
- Matt Lauer - co-host of WNEW-TV's version of PM Magazine in the 1980s
- Bill Mazer - sports anchor from 1970s-1990s; original host of Sports Extra
- Bill McCreary - reporter/anchor from 1967-1997
- Curt Menefee - sports anchor during the 1990s (now at Fox Sports)
- Roxie Roker - reporter/public affairs host during the early 1970s; better known as the mother of musician Lenny Kravitz and a star of The Jeffersons
- John Roland - reporter/anchor from 1969-2004
- Jim Ryan - reporter/anchor from 1985-2005; Good Day New York anchor from 1988-2005
- Soupy Sales - children's show host during the 1960s
- Fred Scott - staff announcer
- Lou Steele - staff announcer, known to many WNEW-TV/WNYW nostalgia buffs as "Metromedia Man"
Branding
The station is also known for starting the trend of stations using their network and channel number (or cable channel number) as their on-air name in the United States, although this practice had existed in Canada as early as the 1970s. 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. 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."
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 "The Choice is Channel 5, Metromedia New York 5" and later, "Your Choice is 5."
References
Newscast Titles
The 10 O' Clock News (1967-2000)
Channel 5 News (1980s)
Fox News (1987-94)
Fox 5 News (1998-present)
External links
Fox network affiliates | Fox Television Stations Group | Channel 5 TV stations in the United States | 1944 establishments
"WNYW"