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Senator Seeks FCC Review of WWOR-TV’s License
- Thread starter AKA
- Start date
You have stations licensed to Atlantic City, NJ & Wilmington, DE that are nothing but Philly stations. AC gets a brand new channel 4, WACP. It's nothing but infomercials and they are on both the FiOS & Xfinity lineups all over the Philly metro. How are they serving the people of NJ? Or the Univision station licensed to Vineland, NJ with the transmitter in the antenna farm in Roxboro with all the Philly channels & WHYY?
Could it be the buttinsky lawmakers don't be Spanish? So these stations would be under their radar.
[/quote]
I think the "Gang of 8" bill sums that one all up.
One Nevada Senator
would throw a fit if those stations weren't under their radar.
[/quote]
I think the "Gang of 8" bill sums that one all up.
One Nevada Senator
would throw a fit if those stations weren't under their radar.
What people aren't grasping, and how Menendez can make his case, is that WWOR is unique. It all comes down to the Bradley Bill.
When RKO was in legal trouble in the 1980's, Bill Bradley saved their bacon by getting a law passed that required the FCC to renew the license of any commercial VHF station whose owners agreed to move it into a state that didn't already have one. The only two states (at the time) where the law applied were New Jersey and Delaware. Thus the move of WOR-TV to Secaucus.
The same law was recently perverted to begin the process of moving two stations from out West into Wilmington and New Jersey to aim their signals at Philly and New York respectively.
Among the conditions attached to the move were a physical presence in the state and coverage of state news and public affairs. Fox was shot down when they tried to move the operation of WWOR to New York a few years ago, and the cancellation of the newscast might be the final straw.
As for other stations like WACP, WUVP, WWSI, that are based in South Jersey but only target Philadelphia, their licenses should be pulled, too, and citizen's groups would be advised to oppose their renewals when they come up. The former NJN stations should also have their licenses pulled and given to other non-profits now that the State has given up control of them.
When RKO was in legal trouble in the 1980's, Bill Bradley saved their bacon by getting a law passed that required the FCC to renew the license of any commercial VHF station whose owners agreed to move it into a state that didn't already have one. The only two states (at the time) where the law applied were New Jersey and Delaware. Thus the move of WOR-TV to Secaucus.
The same law was recently perverted to begin the process of moving two stations from out West into Wilmington and New Jersey to aim their signals at Philly and New York respectively.
Among the conditions attached to the move were a physical presence in the state and coverage of state news and public affairs. Fox was shot down when they tried to move the operation of WWOR to New York a few years ago, and the cancellation of the newscast might be the final straw.
As for other stations like WACP, WUVP, WWSI, that are based in South Jersey but only target Philadelphia, their licenses should be pulled, too, and citizen's groups would be advised to oppose their renewals when they come up. The former NJN stations should also have their licenses pulled and given to other non-profits now that the State has given up control of them.
WUVP though has a newscast. I assume it covers news to the tri state area like KYW, WPVI, WCAU and WTXF's newscast but I don't know.
WWSI was bought out recently by NBCUniversal. I suppose there will be integration with WCAU and WWSI and maybe WWSI's signal will be on one of WCAU's subchannels. But there is nothing local to NJ AFAIK on it. Don't forget WGTW (TBN), WMCN and WMBC.
WWSI was bought out recently by NBCUniversal. I suppose there will be integration with WCAU and WWSI and maybe WWSI's signal will be on one of WCAU's subchannels. But there is nothing local to NJ AFAIK on it. Don't forget WGTW (TBN), WMCN and WMBC.
ding12 said:
WWSI will have a newscast by January 2014.
Comparing WWOR to the Spanish stations in the NY and Philadelphia markets in their 'lack of service' to New Jersey is ridiculous. Back in the days when they were just HSN and public domain movie pipelines the case might have been made, but these days? The market is there, and their newscasts definitely serve the public interest. At least they're making some kind of effort even if they're mostly airing national content most of the time.
WWOR though? The only interest they seem to serve is to push a service nationally which can best be described as 'ION in primetime' these days, a bunch of mediocre syndicated content, and a whole load of infomercials, and TMZ-ing the news has proven to be a dud, as Tribune's "EyeOpener" format has proven on their dud CW affiliates. Clearly they have not been serving the public interest and their license deserves a challenge. But WXTV, WNJU, WUVP and WWSI? It would be an embarrassment to challenge their licenses.
It would be like the FCC challenging the license of the CW affiliate in the Green Bay area just because they don't air only public affairs programming only pertaining to its 'city' of license, Suring, which has nothing going on about 362 days of the year and would be just the Kiwanis Club blabbering on about a fish fry every single week it was on; you look at the market situation, not the strictest interpretation of the law, and clearly WWOR isn't serving the market well while WXTV and WNJU have done what they've needed.
WWOR though? The only interest they seem to serve is to push a service nationally which can best be described as 'ION in primetime' these days, a bunch of mediocre syndicated content, and a whole load of infomercials, and TMZ-ing the news has proven to be a dud, as Tribune's "EyeOpener" format has proven on their dud CW affiliates. Clearly they have not been serving the public interest and their license deserves a challenge. But WXTV, WNJU, WUVP and WWSI? It would be an embarrassment to challenge their licenses.
It would be like the FCC challenging the license of the CW affiliate in the Green Bay area just because they don't air only public affairs programming only pertaining to its 'city' of license, Suring, which has nothing going on about 362 days of the year and would be just the Kiwanis Club blabbering on about a fish fry every single week it was on; you look at the market situation, not the strictest interpretation of the law, and clearly WWOR isn't serving the market well while WXTV and WNJU have done what they've needed.
You also have WMGM-TV Wildwood-Atlantic City, the only South Jersey station that does local news 7 days a week. Full disclosure. I was there for 13 years (1986-1999). It operated with a fraction of the budget of the Philadelphia stations, but a few of us have made the jump to Philly.
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