GE bought NBC prior to Howard Stern being hired at WNNNNBC.
About the Channel 3 and radio NBC Group W swap; In June 1955 Westinghouse agreed to trade KYW and KYW TV 3, then an NBC affiliate to NBC in exchange for Cleveland's 3 WNBK television and WTAM-AM-FM, and $3 million in cash compensation. NBC had long sought an owned-and-operated TV station in Philadelphia, the largest market where it did not own a station. It had made several offers over the years for the Philadelphia stations, but Westinghouse said no each time. After being rebuffed by Westinghouse on several occasions, NBC threatened to drop its affiliation from KYW TV and Westinghouse's other NBC television affiliate, WBZ-TV in Boston, unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade. When NBC took over in February 1956, KYW TV Philadelphia's channel 3's call letters were changed to WRCV-TV (for the RCA-Victor record label; KYW radio adopted the WRCV calls as well).
However, almost immediately after the trade was finalized, Westinghouse complained to the FCC and the United States Department of Justice about NBC's coercion and a lengthy investigation was launched. In August 1964, the FCC renewed the licenses for WRCV-AM-TV—but only on the condition that the 1956 station swap be reversed.[5] Following nearly a year of appeals by NBC, Westinghouse regained control of WRCV-AM-TV on June 19, 1965. Westinghouse had moved the KYW call letters to Cleveland after the swap, and upon regaining control of the Philadelphia outlets channel 3 became KYW-TV. Channel 3 Cleveland became WKYC. To this day, KYW-TV insists that it "moved" to Cleveland in 1956 and "returned" to Philadelphia in 1965—in fact, some staffers who worked at KYW-TV in Cleveland (talk show host Mike Douglas and news anchor Tom Snyder among them) moved to Philadelphia along with the call letters.[7]
Since this had happened, Westinghouse became notorious for preempting NBC shows at a whim. Generally, if an NBC show had below average ratings, Westinghouse would preempt the show. If the show had average to high ratings it generally was shown. Westinghouse preempted prohgramming almost as much with its CBS stations. Its ABC station in Baltimore preeempted less than the others. Finally in 1995, All the Westinghouse stations took CBS affiliation and that fall stopped preemptions. In 1996 Westinghouse ended up buying CBS outright.
About Stern, He was fired because the GE Executives decided he did not fit in after a few antagonistic confrontations over the months leading up to his firing September 30 of 1985. Christmas of 1984, Stern played music - about 10 songs an hour, basically Hot AC cuts mixed with an occasional oldie. When Dale Parsons took over the station, Stern was given more freedom, reducing songs to maybe a couple an hour. His show became more talk intensive and much younger leaning. WNNNBC was holding its own pulling low 4 shares to upper 3 shares. After Stern was fired, WNNNBC dived from a low 4 to an upper 2 for the crucial fall book. The winter book they dived to a low 2 and for the all important spring book in 1986 they kept diving down to a 1 share. From Spring of 1986 till WNNNBC folded ratings were low to mid 1 shares. When they dumped Howard Stern, they killed the station overall. NBC failed at running WNNNBC miserably most of their years. In the 70's they did okay nothing great with AC then Adult Top 40 then Top 40 - evolving back to Adult Top 40/Hot AC. WNNNBC was successful from about 1980 to 1985. They surpassed WABC's ratings in 1980 and once WABC went Talk WNBC shot up to the number one spot. They were in the top 3 or so until Z 100's 1983 sign on. Even after that WNBC continued to be in teh Top 10. They modified their Hot AC format in 1984 to more of a full service AC early in 1985. After Stern was fired, WNBC went through severalo format modifications and failed.
